SUNDAY, 6 AUGUST I916
Elfriede Kuhr plays the piano at a party in Schneidemühl
It is a confusing time, dreadful and exciting, painful and alluring, agonising and happy. The world is changing and she is changing with it, both as a result of the things that are happening and also quite independently of them. Wheels are moving within wheels, sometimes in opposite directions, but still moving as one.
Once upon a time many people had rejoiced at the war as both a promise and a possibility, a promise that all that was best in mankind and culture might be realised, a possibility to tilt against the unease and the disintegration that had been discernible all over pre-war Europe.* But wars are and always have been paradoxical and deeply ironic phenomena that frequently change what people want to preserve, promote what people want to prevent and demolish what people want to protect.
In complete contradiction to the fine hopes of 1914, there is a tendency for certain phenomena—traditionally lumped together under the heading of "dangerous disintegration"—to mushroom out of control. Many people are concerned about the ever-increasing freedom in relationships between the sexes and the growing levels of sexual immorality. Some of this is blamed on the fact that so many women, like Elfriede's mother and grandmother, have been permitted or even compelled to take work previously done by men—men who are now in uniform. This has, of course, been absolutely crucial to the war effort and consequently should not really be called into question, but it is not difficult to find people who maintain that this "masculinisation" of women will prove to be fatal in the long run.** Some of this is blamed on the fact that the long absence of men at the front causes a drastic increase in sexual demand, which has in turn led to a huge rise in such behaviour as masturbation, homosexuality and extra-marital affairs, which were previously strictly forbidden or denounced.*** (Germany, like France, has witnessed an increase in prostitution and sexual diseases.) Some of it is blamed on the fact that the ceaseless flood of men in uniform backwards and forwards across the country causes there to be a sudden excess of young, sexually active men in certain places at the very time there are fewer resident men capable of supervising the women left at home. A marked rise in extra-marital pregnancies and illegal abortions, for instance, has been reported from garrison towns. Schneidemühl is no exception to this: the town is home to an infantry regiment and to the well-known Albatros factory, which both manufactures military aircraft and brings in large numbers of young pilots for training.
(Biplanes, both those that have crashed and those that have had to make an emergency landing, are not an unusual sight in the area, even in the centre of the town. And Elfriede knows that fatal accidents are not unusual: every week she sees funeral processions making their way either to the war cemetery in the forest or to the railway station, where the coffins are put aboard trains.)
Up until now Elfriede has watched all this from a distance—curious, confused and watchful. A thirteen-year-old girl at her school has been expelled after being made pregnant by an ensign. And during a visit home from the music school she runs in Berlin, Elfriede's mother was amazed to see that "the levels of elegance here are not far behind what you can see on the Kurfurstendamm." Elfriede thinks she knows why:
It's because of all the officers from away who are in the 134th Reserve Battalion or in the 1st and 2nd Reserve Air Squadrons. Because of these men, our women and girls spend a lot of time doing themselves up.
The older girls can often be seen hanging round with soldiers, as indeed can some adult women, ultimately perhaps "out of sympathy" because the soldiers "are on their way to the front where they will be killed or wounded anyway." It is obvious that the proximity of death and the sheer volume of deaths have helped to break down what would otherwise be strict moral codes.**** Elfriede has not yet let herself be tempted but she has noticed that soldiers have begun talking to her in a new way. She believes it is because she is now wearing a proper skirt and has her hair pinned up like a grown-up.
The big sister of one of her classmates often organises small parties for the young pilots. Coffee and cakes are on offer, couples chat and, indeed, even kiss a little while Elfriede plays the piano. So far the whole business has just been a titillating game for Elfriede. On these occasions she has pretended to be "Lieutenant von Yellenic" (the persona she often resorts to when playing war games), playing background music in the officers' mess for friends, "just like in a novel by Tolstoy."
As she arrives at today's party she meets a young, blond and blue-eyed pilot officer on the stairs:
He stopped, greeted me and wondered whether I was also "one of the people who had been invited."***** I said no, I was just the one who played the piano. He pulled a face and answered: "I see. That's a pity." "Why is it a pity?" I asked. He just laughed and disappeared into the room.
* The British field marshal Lord Roberts, for instance, thought that a war was the onM antidote to "the great human rottenness that is rife in our industrial cities." Remembef too, Thomas Mann's fine hopes in 1914 that the war would make German culture bo "freer and better." For more examples of the war as hope, promise and liberation, Kdnslornas krigby Jens Ljunggren.
** Interestingly enough, this might be compared with the fact that soldiers who had a breakdown as a result of their experiences at the front were frequently considertl to be "hysterical," for which reason their behaviour could be interpreted as a forma "feminisation."
*** In June 1915 a German magazine published the story of a cinema proprietor who stood up in front of the audience during the interval and warned them that a man in uniform had just entered the establishment intending to catch his wife and her lover, whom he knew were in there somewhere. To avoid the scandal the cinema proprietor pointed out that there was a small, discreet emergency exit on the right-hand side: 320 couples immediately left the cinema in the semi-darkness.
**** To quote Frederic Manning: "In the shuddering revulsion from death one turns instinctively to love as an act which seems to affirm the completeness of being."
***** The words used in her journal are "mit von der Partie."
~ From The Beauty and the Sorrow by Peter Englund, p. 284