2023-06-15 12:00:45
The hero of Berlin
by Maxim Leo
Translated from German by Olivier Mannoni
Actes Sud, 304 p., €22.70
In the jargon of journalists, this is called a chestnut tree. A subject that comes up regularly, on which we no longer know what to write new. A few weeks before the 30th anniversary of the fall of the Berlin Wall, the editorial staff of the magazine Fact scratches his head. And now a member of the team brings up an unexpected subject. While exploring the police archives of the East German communist regime, Alexander Landmann discovered the case of a man named Michael Hartung. In 1983, this railwayman directed a suburban train towards West Berlin, allowing the escape of 127 people. Landmann collected his testimony. The article is published without delay.
The echo is immense. All media rush to the unknown hero. A book then a film are started. The darling of television shows, Michael Hartung also signs a contract with a large, very inexpensive retailer. The Federal President even asked the railway worker to give a speech during the official celebration of the 30th anniversary in the company of Mikhail Gorbachev…
The problem is that Michael Hartung is not a hero. And doesn’t pretend to be. Simply, when Alexander Landmann landed in his near-bankrupt video club, against the promise of compensation, he agreed to tell his story. Yes, he played a part in this escape but in reality very accidental. The journalist wanted to believe that Hartung was minimizing his role out of modesty and wrote an article that extrapolated the facts a great deal. They are both locked in a lie. How will they get out?
Media and political frenzy
Maxim Leo knows his subject well. He was born in East Berlin in 1970 and is a journalist. His novel is a delight of intelligence and humor. This book sheds a lot of light on the contemporary mechanism of media and political excitement. And he also digs into this need that we feel to admire heroes, even if it means creating them if there is a lack of them. “The Poles had the shipyard worker Lech Walesa, the Czechs the writer Vaclav Havel. The East Germans had nobody. »
Already the author of a remarkable story, Story of an East GermanMaxim Leo also analyzes with acuity the resentment that persists between the two halves of the country. “It’s not enough to have paved pedestrian streets to make citizens happysays Michael Hartung to the German president. Especially when they are constantly being told how grateful they should be for all of this. »
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