What for a hands-on, practical woman! In 1964, Gertrud Schleef from Sangerhausen in the southern Harz Mountains taught her twenty-year-old son Einar the first steps towards independence. He has just started studying painting and stage design at the Kunsthochschule Berlin-Weißensee and has moved into an apartment at Meyerbeerstraße 32. The mother explains the secrets of heating to her “filius”, as she calls him, in detail: newspaper, lighter (drugstore), fine, then thick wood, four coals. In addition, she sends a heat lamp – only “if you have 220 volts” -, she needs four pfennigs of electricity per hour, she can screw an extension cord together for him because it’s cheaper.
Einar thanks him, calls it “touching” and asks if he can occasionally put on a fifth piece of coal. But he doesn’t get rid of his mother’s care that easily. A simple table goes back and forth forever, hardboard or spruce board, 78 by 240 centimeters, two thick, base cabinet according to the sketch to avoid sagging, varnish the surface or cover it with oilcloth. Wouldn’t it be “the very best thing, dad comes over there”? Oh dear, how are you ever supposed to grow up?
Einar tries. Some advice is too much for him, but he enjoys the copious amounts of poppy seeds that are sent instead of the “shitty bakery stuff” that can be bought and the vegetables that he has made himself at home. At first glance, that sounds just like succinct everyday things. But they quickly add up to a dense tableau of life in the GDR and of an unusually close relationship between mother and son, which is then processed in literary form in the successful book “Gertrud” (1980/1984).
The strength lies in the drama
We owe the strong impression to the incredibly vivid and lively reading by a stage duo from Halle and Weimar, who perfectly bring the tongue of the region with them. Both were already involved in a radio feature “Einar Schleef in Sangerhausen” in 2004. Jutta Hoffmann was influenced by Einar Schleef at the Berliner Ensemble. In 1975 she played the leading role in his provocative production of Strindberg’s “Fräulein Julie”. A good year later Schleef did not return to the GDR from a rehearsal at the Burgtheater in Vienna – almost at the same time as Biermann was expelled. And Thomas Thieme, the burly Minister of Culture in the film “The Lives of Others”, gives the often gruff Schleef – “Every one of your letters is a blow against me” – an original, robust tone, the somewhat stuttering Schleef has probably never panted so audibly .
Gertrud Schleef, Einar Schleef: „Briefwechsel I + II“.
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Image: Publisher
The strengths of the spoken letter dialogue become apparent in the tricky phases. For example, when Gertrud complains that Einar should break up with his girlfriend Ursel, with whom he has just had daughter Katja (and don’t show Ursel a letter from her!): “She’ll soon find a man, and you’ll also find a woman, but then be more careful.” Gabriele Gerecke, with whom Schleef had a son Martin two years later, found more approval. Not only does she add “lovely greetings” to the colorful flower envelopes from Christburger Str. 31 in Prenzlauer Berg. On March 25, 1977, she tried to follow Einar Schleef to the West, was arrested in Helmstedt from the trunk of a car and sentenced to three years in prison.
A mix of fantasy and reality
When Gertrud Schleef wants to pick up some things from the shared apartment, she has to let Gabriele’s family insult her as “greedy” and Einar as “Erprääääßer”. Their applications to travel to the west are consistently and without justification rejected. Infinite desperation, Jutta Hoffmann’s voice literally cuts through your heart: “A mother who is almost seventy years old and who is legally cut off from her children” can “that still have something to do with humanity”? Einar implores her to write directly to “Erich, Staatsrat, Marx-Engels-Platz”, mother, he begs, “Don’t let them get you down! Heads up! Wuffel!” With “Kittifix” they want to protect the letters from the postal control, but then the anger is so great that the Stasi should read everything.
When Gabriele Gereke was released early from prison in October 1978 and allowed to leave the country, the two moved from the Stubenrauchstraße in Friedenau to the Nußbaumallee in Charlottenburg. The main work on the biographical project “Gertrud” also plays an increasing role in the correspondence. Einar Schleef sends lists of questions, his mother collects photos and documents. Einar gave the first part of the book to Gertrud’s birthday in 1980 and explained: “Many details are correct, others again with imagination and spit, sometimes you don’t recognize it, others are completely original from you.” Warning: “Be careful, there is a mix of fiction and true stories”. A good two months later, an excerpt proudly follows that is placed on a bestseller list.
But the son waits a long time in vain for reading and reaction. Instead, the mother sends more notes and sketches for the second volume, which Einar calls “really very good!!!!”. The correspondence has progressed from an early practical exchange of canned tomato puree and the preparation of rag dolls for costume making to a literary production cooperative. Gertrud supplies set pieces, Einar combines and invents. “Write it!” became the constant formula of the last letters to Gertrud Schleef, who died in Sangerhausen on August 23, 1993, just eight years before her son.
Gertrud Schleef, Einar Schleef: „Briefwechsel I + II“.
Reading with Jutta Hoffmann and Thomas Thieme. Audio Verlag, Berlin 2021,
1 MP3-CD, 288 Min.,
10,– €.