2023-10-05 06:47:22
A month ago, the Berlin poet, musician and puber Bert Papenfuß died at the age of 67. The city has lost a hero, punk and fool of language and bar, Mareile Fellien lost her husband. Editors, colleagues and institutions wrote obituaries, Mareile Fellien wrote a farewell letter. The artist founded the Rumbalotte pub with Bert Papenfuß, writes literary texts and works as a cook in a Marzahn facility for children with behavioral problems, whom readers of the Berliner Zeitung know from their fairy tale columns. We publish the farewell letter with information about the memorial service and burial.
For Bert
Chaos yawns behind my chest. It expands, crushing the entire apparatus. Normally I would come to your room. You sit at the desk and say: “Sit with me, Mareile.”
We would talk. I ask you about words and we would research the origins. We solve word equations together or browse through the political news on the websites. You are currently translating a text and ask which word in German fits better or whether I can think of any others. You read to me from Klemperer’s cinema diary. A chapter every evening, and when we were done, we watched the silent films online. With the Strugatzki brothers we moved further and further away from this earth.
“You, the black runner”
That’s where I see you – with the hikers or on the way to one well-equipped planet. You, the black runner, shoveling the landscape past you with your hands. You don’t move in it, you push it away, past you. Forward to the stone circles, ship settlements, barrows and breathe in thousands of years of rain-soaked history.
Advertisement | Scroll to continue reading
I want to touch your hand and hear something you repeat, something you just pulled out of the earth or read from the picture in the stone or grabbed from the air. I miss your voice. Your writing, your notes are like a hedge through which I now struggle and get stuck. Give me cracks and wounds. As I move through the city, my thoughts also move. They make way for memories – unbearable.
Space rock echoes through the apartment. The cat howls out the window into the yard. There are better acoustics.
Many people now see you sitting at some counter with Lemmy. I think you will go looking for your friend Knofo. He’s been in your ears the whole time. The grief is like a wave, building threateningly and giving time to marvel at the full extent in fear.
“Dreamed-out existence”
I dreamed of a meter-high wave grabbing me. In the curve of which I race like a surfer. Curled up, the complex thing chases me away. There is still air inside, where the crest of the wave turns so that it hits your own stomach. And I’m breathing like crazy, prepared for the vehicle to become unstable, crash and I’ll be pushed into the depths. No orientation.
Darling, you really left quite spontaneously. A hectic pace that doesn’t suit you at all. In your penultimate poem you write: “At some point in the process the smoke is gone/ the real existence is also dreamed out/ through which I am under anesthesia/ delete key (12.4.23, suicide is the triumph of exhaustion)”. I love you. And everything that hurts so much, rumbles and rages inside me now, reminds me of our beginning. Infatuation and love and sadness are sisters. All three of them are visiting and want to be entertained. It’s going to be a long meal.
I kiss you, M.
On October 6th At 9 p.m. the poet Bert Papenfuß will be honored with readings, a concert and film quotes in the Volksbühne. “It shouldn’t be my fault, I can’t be killed.” For Bert Papenfuß. From companions, friends. Information at www.volksbuehne.berlin
On October 7th Bert Papenfuß’s funeral will take place at 10 a.m. in the Georgen Parochial Cemetery I at Greifswalder Straße 229.
#hurts #farewell #letter #Bert #Papenfuß