It is not the Leipzig of Bach and Goethe that Clemens Meyer shows the reader in his debut novel Als wir träumten (2006) ("While We Were Dreaming"). Rather Meyer takes us into brothels, seedy sex clubs, heroin shooting galleries, illegal techno clubs, skinhead bars, and juvenile detention centers. This is a Leipzig unseen by tourists. It was not a place I particularly wanted to visit for 500 pages, but Meyer pulled me in with his writing: the characters are vividly drawn and the dialogue is pitch-perfect. In the end, I was almost sorry to leave.
Als wir träumten takes place from just before Die Wende of 1989 into post re-unification 1990s. Meyer stitches together self-contained scenes - stories - that jump around in time but loosely follow a group of boys on their descent into drug addiction and crime. The boys enter manhood just as their world is changing - the GDR has collapsed - and they end up dead or in prison. All except the first-person narrator, Daniel Lenz, an honor student and exemplary Pioneer who chucks it all to become part of this ragtag gang of losers.
The collapse of the GDR - Die Wende - doesn't bring much change to the Leipzig of Als wir träumten, except that one can now buy western schnaps (Jaegermeister) and cigarettes. If anything, the decay has accelerated. The action takes place in crumbling, abandoned factories and decrepit tenements. No one appears to have a real job here except for "die Bullen" - law enforcement. Those adult figure that haven't been locked up are all alcoholics or sexual deviants. The world is divided into different tribes - skinheads, Zecken (punks), Chemie soccer fans, Turks, etc. - all out to destroy each other, and all united in their hatred of "die Bullen". The boys are only dimly aware of the changes taking taking place in the world; they join the Montagsdemos - the Monday Demonstrations that eventually brought down the GDR - not out of any political understanding but as an opportunity to fight "die Bullen" and demonstrate their courage.
As a narrator Daniel is unreliable. He'll describe a scene in detail and then a few sentences later say it never happened. Or he'll write three variations on how one the boys was killed. Daniel writes about his crush on a classmate, Katja, who tells him that she and her family are fleeing to the west. In a tearful farewell they kiss and she gives Daniel her red Pioneer scarf as a keepsake:
Aber es gab keinen Abschied. Und auch irh Halstuch hatte sie mir night geschenkt, auch wenn ich es mir oft vorstelle und davon träumte. Sie war einfach weg und kam nicht wieder. Sie hatte vor mir gesessen, und ihr Platz eines Morgens war leer.
(But there was no farewell. And she never gave me her scarf, even though I imagined it often and dreamed about it. She was simply gone and never came back. She sat in front of me in class and one morning her seat was empty.)
Daniel's dreams of love are thwarted more than once but in the end it is the loyalty to the group that matters most. His true love interest is his friend Rico, the boxer. Daniel observes Rico intensely and describes his every move. But all the dreams go up in smoke in Als wir träumten: dreams of boxing ring glory are ruined by corrupt referees, dreams of commercial success with a techno club are destroyed by the skinheads. Even the beloved soccer team BSG Chemie Leipzig is taken away after Die Wende. The boys/men have only themselves, but they are bent on self-destruction. One by one they are taken away by drugs or by Die Bullen. Only Daniel is left to tell what was and what might have been.
Insightful review, David. I genuinely love the book and especially the confusing and unreliable narration.
Posted by: Katy | May 29, 2010 at 02:54 AM