The news of the death of the great writer, poet and collector Hans Magnus Enzensberger triggered spontaneous memories of an old business trip in me. I was once traveling with some younger colleagues from the Czech Foreign Ministry who, out of pure curiosity, I asked if they had some kind of guru. My colleagues seemed embarrassed and embarrassed. Finally, one of them admitted that the question was too personal.
This again made me embarrassed. To ease the atmosphere, I said that when asked about my guru, I would name Hans Magnus Enzensberger. I don’t know whether my answer would have pleased Enzensberger himself or whether it would have been a little embarrassing. However, I believe that he would have been pleased that on the said business trip one of my colleagues finally admitted that his guru was “Pooh the Bear”.
I know that Enzensberger himself had another role model – namely Heinrich Hoffmann’s “Flying Robert”. But the way from “Flying Robert” to “Pu the Bear” is not far. Especially not for someone who had such a carefree and playful spirit as Hans Magnus Enzensberger.
My private experience with Enzensberger was to some extent my father’s legacy. Vladimir Kafka had been a friend and colleague of Enze in the 1960s; both tried to connect the Czech and German literary scenes more closely in the wake of the Prague Spring and the student revolts. The main advocate on the Czech side was another friend of my father’s: Josef Hirsal. The exceptional translator translated Enzensberger into Czech.
After the death of my father and the death of Josef Hirsal, I partially stepped into the breach and translated a selection of Enzensberger poems in the noughties. I liked doing it because it gave me access to Enzensberger himself. For a while we planned an interview together, originally in Prague, but after a few missed dates we turned the tables; now I should go to Munich. Before the trip, I asked Enzensberger if he missed anything from the Czech Republic that I could bring him.
At first he politely declined, but then, with audible relief in his voice, he came up with a wish: American cigarettes are said to be cheaper in the Czech Republic than in Germany, and if I couldn’t bring him a few packs. I admit that when I asked my question, I had originally thought more about literature. But I quickly realized that cigarettes were actually an even better choice. Because only friends would allow something as mundane and everyday as cigarettes, while official gifts from work visits are often desperate to give the impression of something sophisticated, I felt ennobled as an Enzensberger friend because of the simplicity of his request.
I am not aware of an official or working version by Enzensberger. It’s quite possible that he didn’t even have one. Because every official, formal side must have remained foreign to his playful, open-minded and inventive nature, which claimed that a secret of its timelessness lay in the fact that it was never quite serious. Hardly anyone was as diligent as Enzensberger, and hardly anyone did as much for the image of the official Federal Republic as Enzensberger. But all of that was more of a by-product.
Enzensberger himself did not really want to programmatically change Germany. Rather, he changed it because it wanted to change itself, given its peculiarity. Enzensberger’s peculiarity was so fascinating that Germany and Germans were happy to identify with her. Thus, over time, everyday German culture adopted at least some traits of Enzensberger’s ability to be non-formal and made them part of its own.
In other words: Thanks to someone like Enzensberger, Germany was also able to feel more open-minded, playful and inventive, at least in its own perception. This circumstance may seem a bit magical at first glance, but that doesn’t matter. On the one hand Enzensberger himself was a bit magical, on the other hand he wasn’t the only restless, playful and inventive spirit who managed something like this. In my country, former President Vaclav Havel succeeded. He was obviously just as typical for the Czech Republic and us Czechs as Enzensberger was for Germany and Germans. Nevertheless, the Czech Republic was not only inseparably associated with Havel, but especially with its playfulness. She made the country and its people better and more interesting for partners. As a Czech observer and friend of Germany, I can put it this way: it’s great to have your own Havel, the Enzensberger. I know what I’m talking about!
Tomáš Kafka is the Czech ambassador in Berlin and works as a writer and translator. Among other things, he has translated Enzensberger volumes of poetry into Czech.
