STANLEY KAUFFMA
91
arrived at each of our hotels, he sent us a telex addressed to Herr Professor
and Frau Professor Kauffmann . The message was irrelevant, the salutation
was all. When we walked up to the desk of our Frankfurt place, the desk
clerk bowed and beamed, the bellman was waiting. Our room had flowers.
Frankfurt was holding its fourth biennial festival of experimental the–
ater and film. That evening we went to a midnight screening and got there
early so that we could see the audience. They were mostly young people.
As
they floated in, chattering in clumps, Laura murmured, "For heaven's
sake." 1 knew what she meant. Except fi)r the language, we might have
been in New York. This could have been a Village film house. At that time,
1971 ,
the term "youth revolution" was still used a lot, and everyone knew
that it was largely a matter of style. Now] saw that the style was interna–
tional, was not only in clothes but in ballet - the casual walk, the overdone
hug, the seat-slump, the floor-sprawl.
I
felt again what] had often felt at
home. Jealous.
I
felt that it must have been fun to dress and behave like that.
If old-line revolutionaries had devised styles of dress and movement that at–
tracted young people, they might have got further. But the old revolutionar–
ies had only programs, which needed debate and, between countries,
translation . Nowadays youth-style was what the fish symbol had been to
early Christians.
On my first German visit, I had dealt mostly with older people. Sitting
here now in this film theater, I felt that I had slipped closer. It was faintly
discomfiting, like being embraced by someone I hardly knew and wasn't sure
I
liked.
"Well, here
I
am in Germany," said Laura again. "I guess."
2.
Hamburg is my favorite German city. It has a large lake in its
center, as Manhattan has Central Park. It has a tetchy climate, it has
mercantile arrogance and the culture of wealth. A New Yorker feels at
home.
In Hamburg I got the first benefit of the writing I had been doing for
Die Zeit,
which is published there. I had written about fifteen "letters from
New York" and had corresponded often with the editors. Now they wel–
comed us. Messages and gifts were waiting at our hotel, and the next day
we were taken to lunch at a club on the banks of the Alster, the lake in the
middle of the city. Our hosts' English shamed my German. Laura considered
me fluent in German because I could say "Kellner, ein Pils," but I made sure
to speak only English around the
Zeit
people.
The chief arts editor had been a Luftwaffe pilot. After the war he had
taught German literature at Oxford. In one person, he embodied my
