DIARY
There are certain things one says over and over again, tiresome little truisms or formulations that you see coming towards you in the middle of otherwise interesting conversations. One of my own is that travelling in Western Europe has lost much of its glamour because of the general homogenisation of modern life. Street signs, high-rise buildings, the goods in shops, clothes and cars look exactly the same everywhere. You only know where you are because of minor differences in, say, the police, uniforms, or the words, not the pictures on advertising hoardings. Last weekend my wife and I flew to Berlin to visit the huge exhibition of 20th-century art at the Martin Gropius Bau. in fact, my little platitude about Europe losing its glamour is less true of Berlin than of anywhere else I have visited in Western Europe. It may appear to be just another Eurocity, but actually it is different. When I was a child, the very word Berlin was so inextricably associated with war that it sounded like a single throb of a bomber's engine. The city was the dark and sinister stronghold of the enemy. I found such deep associations constantly shifting and stirring within me during the time we spent there; and nowadays there is the bleak menace of the Wall to feed them. The further east one goes in Europe, the closer one gets to the past, where citizens live cheek by jowl with politics and recent history in a way we don't in England. If you go far enough east, you can cross into the Soviet bloc and see the nightmare still going on. Much of this history can be discovered on such visits, by conversations with survivors, and by reading, but there is a gap I want filled. I want to read something that deals with European his- tory from 1945 to 1948. I want to know how the. Allies set about dealing with the chaos that followed the surrender of the Third Reich. It was not like the end of the Great War when the guns fell silent and the armies went home. In 1945 much of Europe was wrecked, and what was left swarmed with hungry refugees, disposses- sed and displaced persons and prisoners of war. The task, was so immense. I also want to understand more about how the Allies set about comprehending just what it was they had been fighting. They had heard propaganda against the enemy, and even believed most of it, but the reality was unimaginably worse. It must have been a new idea that progress, science, the huma- nities — civilisation itself — were no security at all against such barbarity.
The exhibition Stationen der Moderne at the Gropius Bau is colossal and superb. In it a number of significant German exhibitions from 1906 to 1969 have as far as NICHOLAS GARLAND
possible been recreated. There is the Briicke exhibition of 1906, the Neue Sach- lichkeit (New Objectivity) exhibition of 1925, as well as that of so-called Degener- ate Art organised by Goebbels in 1938, and its accompanying collection of art approved by the Nazis. To see these pictures in sequence, followed by the work of post-war German artists struggling to refind their way in the aftermath of the war is deeply moving and distressing. It is hard not to believe that the Nazis were more or less completely successful in destroying German art for a very long time. Many of the artists whose work is labelled 'degener- ate' survived the war, but only Max Beck- mann went on to paint masterpiece after masterpiece, first in exile in Holland dur- ing the war and later in the United States. None of his great contemporaries — Kir- chner, Heckel, Schmidt-Rottluff or Grosz — fulfilled in later years the apparently limitless promise of their youth. It was as if the fire had been doused by exile or persecution: the colour went flat and the drawing became shaky. The overwhelming passion of the young pre-1914 Expression- ists was in most cases replaced in the 1930s by a joyless sentimentality. It is not un- heard of for artists to do their best work as young men. It may be these artists lost their way, rather as I suspect did Derain and Vlaminck once they broke from Matis- se after the Fauvist explosion finished in `It's a deliberate snub to the Prince.' 1908. They too had done their best paint- ings before the first world war. I would like to think something similar happened to the German group because I don't want the Nazis to claim over them a posthumous victory. But the bitter truth is that I think they can.
About a year ago I broke a shoelace on one of my favourite pairs of shoes. Every single time I've worn them since then I have experienced a burst of frustra- tion as I've attempted to knot the frayed ends that are left. I make a mental note to buy some new laces and immediately forget it. Such small tasks left undone have a disproportionate effect on the quality of life. A common one is an unreplaced bulb that leaves you either stumbling in the dark every night or moronically changing red hot bulbs from one place to another. I have found myself trying to fill an empty ink cartridge from a bottle, changing the fifth three-pin plug in a row with a pointed kitchen knife because the screwdriver is too big, and shaving with a disposable razor that has got so blunt that it doesn't even scrape off the lather — that is when there is lather and not the disgusting slime you get when you try to use ordinary soap.
Some months ago I wrote in The Specta- tor about the pleasure, excitement and general fun of riding a large powerful motor-bike around London. Since then, I've fallen off it, twice, and I would like to add a brief postscript to my original piece. The first time I fell, the road was icy and my concentration went for a moment. I had often wondered what it would be like. Well, it all happens very fast and I had no time to turn cat-like in the air and land on my feet. I thought, 'Hell, I'm off,' and the next second was sprawling on the road. My mind seemed to work very clearly on several tracks at once. I was aware of the bike slithering and bouncing down the road and lodging under a van. I realised I was going to be late for work. I was angry and embarrassed. I could hear my helmet scraping along the road and I thought how terrifically well it was protecting my head and face. I felt no fear and no pain. I was in fact quite badly bruised and had a few cuts and grazes, and later I felt very, very shaky indeed. The second time.I was not going so fast and I felt less to blame. I think I hit a patch of oil or something. I fell less heavily and my bike was not much damaged. The point is that such mishaps can happen at any time and without warning. I just wanted to set the record straight by saying to anyone who might have been encour- aged by my first article to buy a bike, take it easy, be careful.
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