The History of History - By Ida Hattemer-Higgins Page 0,100
once again. And then in the early seventies, I don’t know what—something in the mood of the times, perhaps, moved him to make the second highly peculiar swerve of his life.
“He was invited to lecture at the film school at the University of California in Los Angeles. I believe the first lecture was there. When he came on the stage, the kids booed him because of the type of thoughtless films he made in Hollywood; he was considered very retrograde—but that’s an aside. In any case, my brother, he thought back on his life and what he could show the young people, what he was truly proud of—to teach them about filmmaking. And do you know what he pulled out? The old scraggly footage from the HJ. That is, the one hundred and thirteen seconds of Albert’s death.
“The film of this, the ever-so-silent film, my dear”—and she inclined her head toward Margaret—“had survived, of course. My brother saved it carefully, hiding it in a metal box at the back of his closet, with his pornography collection actually, as he told me once, not without some of his old bravado,” the doctor said, in a tone of great detachment. “He showed this film, still somehow proud of his creation—with its brazen swarms of light, the fire in the lake and, moving liquidly, in the center, the young Albert himself, floating up out of the lake and across the screen in a black-and-white haze. That’s how my brother described it—how it stood in such contrast of purity with the coed bunch in their modern lecture hall. That there was a pristine, Wagnerian horror-beauty to the sight of the boy in his medieval costume, his sword clutched tightly in his long-fingered hand, rising up from the fire below. The flickering of the flames twisting like lightning across the shimmering lake—” The doctor turned her head. She looked at where she could see Margaret as a dark shadow.
“Now finally, at this late date, in the seventies, my brother talked openly about the boy’s Jewish background, his strange position in the HJ, that he died instantly when he fell. But of course, he neglected to mention his own part in the boy’s death.
“But still, after he gave his introduction, there would come a hush in the hall, an expectancy—a feeling of suspense and concentration. During the screening, the students’ faces were flushed and their eyes bright and slightly wet—one could not help but gain the impression that they were, well—that they were achieving release from it—from watching the boy die.
“In the months after these screenings in the U.S. there was a change in my brother. He didn’t laugh all the time as he had before; he completely lost touch with his son, who was still in the GDR with his mother. He confessed as much to me on the phone, and oddly enough, he seemed to listen when I spoke, which he had never done before. Or maybe he was merely distracted, so it seemed as if he were listening.” The doctor drummed her fingers on the desk, her blank eyes fixed straight ahead.
“Then he moved back to Germany without warning, breaking a film contract. He showed the footage to a German audience, this time at the Freie Universität here in West Berlin, and I attended this screening, and I saw the hungry, excited look in the eyes of the young people here too, just as my brother had described it. What I remember most vividly is that he brought his cigarettes into the lecture hall with him. Even then, this was against regulations. He smoked them uninterruptedly during the screening and discussion afterward, dragging long and hard at each contact with the lips, his eyes protruding out of his well-formed skull with intense concentration. As we left the hall he continued to smoke and afterward in the car. He was deeply elated. He told me excitedly he thought the film was possibly the greatest thing he had ever done. He gave a little laugh. Then he added: ‘Perhaps it’s the greatest thing anyone has ever done.’ He continued to show the film all around the country for a few more years, usually under the aegis of ‘anti-fascism’—my understanding is that the film was read by the young people as an extraordinary artifact. I believe the idea was that they watched the film with analytical minds, taking apart the symbolism, considering it as a little piece of flotsam in the debate over the links between