Original subtitles

MY HEART IS MINE ALONE

A Jewish Childhood

That's me, Else.

7 years old.

Hip! Jerusalem is lost! Hip! Jerusalem is lost!

I was born in Elberfeld on the Wupper,

the town with the slate roofs and the blackest river on earth.

We had to hold our breath when we passed by the chemical factories.

All kinds of pharmaceuticals and dyes discolored the water,

a devil's brew.

Tall brick smokestacks rise like pompous red snakes...

against the sky. Their breath poisons the air.

This town is full of the strangest things.

I always daydreamed while crossing the meadow on my way to school,

I was followed by horrifying men with only one eye,

by men who were openly naked.

In fear, I often dropped my books,

or my schoolbag dangled from my shoulder.

My mother, Jeanette Schiller.

Come here.

Buttons!

This one is nice.

This is the chosen one.

Hip! Jerusalem is lost! Hip! Jerusalem is lost!

My brother was devout.

When evening came he did his schoolwork.

He was in his final year at high school.

After finishing, he told me my favorite story about Joseph and his brothers,

and he showed me the picture of Joseph being sold.

Look here...

Israel had many sons.

And Joseph was the youngest brother.

Joseph's brothers hated him, because they envied him.

So they made a plan to kill him. They said to each other,

"Look, there's that dreamer!"

Then tradesmen came by.

They were going to Egypt.

And Joseph's brothers sold him.

And the tradesmen took him to Egypt.

- Here he is in Egypt. -Who's that?

The Pharaoh, the Emperor of Egypt.

And here's Joseph.

He's explaining the Pharaoh's dreams. He had dreamed things.

He had dreamed about seven thick and seven thin pieces of grain.

He's telling the Pharaoh to set up storehouses,

very big houses for storing things.

And they should store away enough grain for seven years of famine.

My father, Aron Schiller.

The Egyptians call Joseph "Yussuf." You are my Yussuf.

Are we in heaven now?

Not yet, not quite yet.

A Protestant Childhood

Me at the age of seven.

Our house in SeHin.

The church where my father preached.

That's enough, Gottfried. Someone else.

I told you to stop reading, Gottfried!

It's mine, because I understand it. If you want me to stop reading, alright!

My father taught me together with the village children.

He gave private lessons to the noblemen's sons.

We are going to be blood brothers.

- Your blood isn't blue. -Yes, it is! lt just looks red!

It's the blood of nobility.

We swear to stand by each other at all times and in every kind of danger.

We swear that you'll stand by me at all times and in every kind of danger.

- You'll stand by me, too. -I will.

- Now you're my brother. -Listen to it...

That's where I grew up, together with the nobility...

of the eastern Elbe region,

the age-old families whose names adorned streets and boulevards in Berlin.

This was where they owned their estates, and I grew up with them.

I was bound to many of them in friendship, as I still am today.

Brandenburg remained my home.

I graduated from a school in Frankfurt on the Oder, fortunately...

one with a classical education.

As a sign of my affection I sent my favorite sister three orange seeds...

which I had kept in my mouth for over an hour.

The Young Girl

When Christmas tree candles were lit behind the windows of Westfalian homes,

my father's father told his 23 children about the appalling tragedy...

that took place on the Christians' Holy Night when he was young.

The candles on the trees were burning when the bloody pogrom occurred.

On the tall Christmas trees in the town hall...

and in school auditoriums...

they had hung up little Jewish children as if they were pieces of candy.

Fragile hands and feet, fallen leaves, lay strewn...

in the ghetto's narrow streets.

You can't shed your Jewish faith as if it were skin, Paul.

You were born with it. You are circumcised.

But the savior himself was a Jew. Christ gives us reconciliation.

But those who pray to him don't want to be reconciled.

That was in an age of darkness. We are now safe and secure.

And your sister with falling sickness?

Stones were once thrown on her account.

On a Sunday during the winter my brother died.

It was just as he had told our dear mother, on a Sunday.

A halo lay around his sun-filled hair. He wore a smile.

His heart had been pure, and he was face to face with God.

When you no longer have a mother in whom heaven and earth are transfigured,

you long for a very good friend.

Three times in my life I longed...

to sit in a parlor with my mother, my father, my brother and sister...

The first time I got married.

But I fell and hurt my knees which have been bleeding since.

l followed my fiancé into his parlor. I sat next to his sister.

My fiance sat next to his mother, and his father drank his afternoon coffee.

AH at once I saw this strange mother...

put some pie with a piece of fruit on my fiancé': plate,

and I was given a small piece of pie without a red cherry.

Suddenly I was very small like at home, and I cried.

His lips were shaped as if they wanted to suck blood.

And when they were married, they felt remorse for tormenting each other.

Once when I was ill in bed he crept into my room.

When he saw how shocked I was, he purred, in order to amuse me.

And at night I shuddered beneath his lips,

because they were cold like cruelty and full of lust.

I ran away from him, out of his life and into my own.

Berlin, the revolving world factory.

For a while he ran after me.

- And she's pregnant, too! -Not by you!

But I didn't even want his money.

My little Paul was born on August 24, 1899 in this hospital.

Students were present for the birth.

It was a demonstration birth, thus free of charge.

And the bed was free, too, for cleaning the floors.

My son is handsome. Pm not saying anything new...

with this truth.

He is so handsome that I often buy my little Paul...

suits or hats that diminish his good looks.

I do it out of precaution or fear that he might one day be stolen.

Was penniless but free.

Paul, my little prince, lived with me in a decrepit cellar...

for a few pennies.

We went to bars to get warm.

Sometimes we had to go to the homeless shelter.

But we also had the fair where we could enjoy ourselves.

That's where I began to write.

A little tick-tack song for little Paul.

My little hammer, Iittle jammer Bam ham, boom boom

Bam ham, boom boom

My little sleeper, little peeper Bam ham, boom boom

Boom boom, ham ham

My little clock ticks My little door tocks...

I had fled. Exhausted I sank down before a huge rock...

and rested for an entire drop of life.

It was deeper than a thousand years.

A voice tore itself from the top of the rock and called out,

“Why so stingy with yourself?“

I raised my eyes and was embraced by a joy...

that had chosen me.

A man climbed down the rock to earth with whiskers stiff and bristly skin,

but his eyes were velvet hillsides,

and we descended to the valley,

and the man with whiskers stiff and bristly skin asked me...

where I came from, but I kept silent.

This is Tino, the Princess of Bagdad,

and this is Plumpasha, her son.

Wine! Red wine!

Moons.

No, these are the pieces of a puzzle I have to form into a poem.

I want to paint.

That's nice.

"A white star sings a song of death On this July night

"Like a death-knell on this July night And on the roof the cloudy hand

"The damp, roaming, shadowy hand ls looking for my mother

"I feel my naked life It breaks away from Motherland

My life was never this naked

Left to the course of time

As if I stood faded behind the day's end

Between the vast nights

Alone"

That's how St. Peter Hille entered my life.

"She has wings that black swan of Israel

"She smiles child-like yet she's utter darkness

"Winter's snow drifts through her hair's night

"Her cheeks, those delicate fruits, burned by her mind"

"The Blue Rider" gives his blue horse to Her Highness.

That's Franz Marc.

It isn't blue.

But I'm blue from drinking so much.

From Munich, like my friend Kandinsky.

The man with the face of a professor?

And this is Chagall, from Vitebsk in Russia.

And you're my half-brother Ruben, because I'm Joseph.

I interpret dreams, and I'm a prophet, and I tell you,

your paintings will be the greatest of this century.

You have to exhibit these paintings, Herwanh.

My name is Georg Levin.

I have nothing to do with exhibits. I never go to them. I'm a composer.

Now your name is Herwanh Walden.

These paintings will cause a storm of protest!

A storm of indignation, of enthusiasm, that will sweep over Berlin, the world!

And the Kaiser won't even know if his moustache is up or down!

The Kaiser curses and leads his parade across the Tempelhof Field,

but it doesn't help him.

The paintings take Berlin...

by storm, like the movies do.

So that's the Kaiser, the German Kaiser...

in Jerusalem.

And we're here.

Oh, Paul.

You have to go to school, to get away from your crazy mother.

If my heart were healthy, Yd jump out of the window first.

Then I'd go to the cinema, and I'd never come out again.

We live in cafés,

in the café of the West or café Romanesque.

That's our home.

St. Peter Hille has returned to the heaven he came from.

Herwarth has fallen in love with me.

My poems appear in his magazine.

And Kokoschka...

and Franz Marc and Kandinsky...

and Marc Chagall...

We know what hour art has struck.

- Why don't we get married? -But only bigamously.

Our princess wants to get married.

Tino von Bagdad, Israel's black swan, shall be wed to Goldwanh,

the ruler of the empire of new an.

Strike your glasses just as the smart Tibetans do.

"My soul that loves your spirit

Unfurls with yours in the carpet Tibet

Sheen in sheen, colors like lovers

Stars that timelessly wooed one another

Our feet rest now upon this treasure

Stitch for stitch and beyond measure

You sweet little lama's son on a musk plant throne

How long has your mouth kissed my own

And cheek to cheek time's brightly woven tones?"

Med Student Benn

I was finally able to fulfill my wish to study medicine.

I was accepted at the Kaiser Wilhelm Academy..

for Military Medicine in Berlin.

Officers and civil servants sent their sons there to become medical officers.

It was an excellent institution.

Without burdening our fathers we were admitted to the expensive lectures...

which the non-military students had to attend,

and we received the best seats,

in front.

That is important for the sciences,

those subjects that rely on experiments, demonstrations and real patients...

for imparting knowledge.

lam greatly obliged to you.

We're blood brothers.

I've done 297 autopsies.

I was worn out.

- And suddenly the poems came. -Poems? Are you kidding?

Within a very short time.

Essentially, all at once, as if in a frenzy.

As if in a frenzy? Then show us, Gottfried.

Requiem.

"On every table two, men and ladies

Crosswise.

Near, naked, but without pain

Open the skull, split the chest The bodies

Bear for the very last time

Three bowlfuls each from brain to testicle

And God's temple and the devil's stall

Now chest to chest at the bottom of a pail

Grin at Golgotha and at Man's Fall

The rest in coffins Nothing but rebirths

Men's legs, children's chests and women's hair

Of two I saw in copulative mirth

It lay as if from one womb there"

Dr. Benn, with remarkable talents.

The newspapers praise you as an infernal snob,

a rugged roué, a Jewish half-breed.

I swear to my professor, I have no drop of Jewish blood in me.

You see that as an advantage.

Then you and those coffee-house poets must be kindred spirits.

They're exhibiting those daubs now, those colored animals...

The rabbis with the crooked noses.

Why don't you go there? That seems to be your kind of world.

Dr. Benn.

“He descends into the cellar vaults of his hospital

And cuts up dead bodies

He's insatiable, always cashing in on the secret"

Have you read this, Herwanh? Dreadful artistic miracles.

His name is Gottfried Benn.

I've already talked to him. He might be coming tonight.

You ought to print him in "Sturm."

Where are you going, Herwanh?

To your curly-haired un-lady?

I thought we were living bigamously.

My heart...

is mine alone.

I'm a prince.

I'm Yussuf, the Prince of Thebes.

L sewed under arms as a foot soldier for the 2nd Guards Regiment.

But within my first year...

I had to leave the service.

A military exercise that kept me in the saddle...

an entire day...

brought out a congenital defect that made me unfit for combat...

as well as for the garrison. I took my leave.

I have a floating kidney.

Or a floating drive.

Where are you going, if I may ask?

Else Lasker-Schuler is appearing at "Sturm" tonight.

The queen of the night. When she's through, you won't have a bone left.

She's the only person besides me who can truly write poetry.

"The Pharaoh casts out his radiant wives

Their fragrance is that of Amon's gardens

His royal head rests on my shoulder

It gives off the smell of grain

The Pharaoh is of gold

His eyes come and go like the shimmering waves of the Nile

But his heart is within my blood

Ten wolves came to my trough

The Pharaoh never forgets my brothers who throw me into the pit

Sleeping, his arms become pillars that threaten me

But his wistful heart rushes through my depths

Thus my lips compose this vast sweetness

In the wheat of our morning"

What do you want?

"Now the storm bends the bushes apart

Where all the nests within for sleep and brood"

A pure diamond.

- And Icarus fell at our feet. -Turned over and was finished.

I'll call you Giselheer.

Don't laugh, Dr. Benn. That's the youngest Nibelung,

who burns up with all the others in the great hall.

Doctor...

I'm not supposed to get excited.

Why not?

I'm an epileptic.

I wrote about epilepsy.

When the time comes you should have something with you.

I have something with me.

Marl'!!-

Me?

My marriages have exhausted me.

- Draw the consequences. -From what?

From what...

Again he felt the need to travel. Egypt had caught his interest.

Asia was dawning.

Harbors, seagulls, brown cutters were there.

White oleander mounted the shore.

“What then?“ he asked himself.

Then? Everywhere there would be cities...

where she wouldn 't be.

He could travel the seas, but she remained lost.

The tower of the blue horses.

My dear Franz.

Dr. Benn dedicated his latest poems to me.

They're moon-red, earthen-hard, wild-pounding.

Why isn't he with you anymore?

He's gone to New York as a ship's doctor.

Oh, Franz. Why can't I fall in love with myself?

I'm so close to myself.

"L love a whore

Her name is To

She is the brownest As brown as barges all summer long

Her walk penetrates my blood

She's an abyss of dark wild flowers

No angel is so pure

With a mother's eyes

I love a whore

Her name is To"

He says "whore." That poem isn't meant for you.

Everything the minister's son enjoys is a "whore!"

To is Tino, Tino von Bagdad.

He also says, "No angel is so pure."

And "Madonna."

"Don't give me back yet

I'm so steepened in you

So drunk on you

oh. joy!

The world is dead Heaven sings

Stretched out along the streams of stars

Bright and ripe

Everything resounds in my heart

Heavily redeemed and beautiful

My blood, that preying pack, sings

Hallelujah!"

- He wants to have you back. -I won't think of it.

I want to answer him.

And now go away, Franz.

Giselheer!

The Tiger.

"Jungles creep across your face

Oh, how you are!

Your tiger's eyes have sweetened in the sun

I carry you around between my teeth

You, my Indian book Wild West, Sioux chief

I languish in the twilight bound to the box-tree trunk

I can't get along anymore without the scalping game

Your knives paint red kisses on my breast

Until my hair is fluttering on your belt"

Threats...

"Know this

"I live animal days

"lam a water-hour

"Come evening my eyelids close on wood and sky

"There are but few words for my love

"Your blood is so beautiful

"My royal cup My wandering hyena

"Come into my cave Let's be pale skin

"Until the shadow of the cedar tree falls over the tiny lizard

"You... happiness

"lam Adam Ape

"Roses blossom in my hair

"My frontal fins are long and hairy Tree-branch lustful

"On my strong thumbs You can hang for days

"I pursue animal love

"The first night everything is decided

"You grab what you long for with your teeth

"Hyenas, tigers and vultures are my coats of arms"

To my boy, Giselheer.

"A star hangs from my eyelash

"It is so bright

"How should I sleep?

"And I'd like to play with you

"I have no homeland

"We're playing... king...

"...and prince"

He's a Lutheran heathen, a Christian with an idol': head.

When I've danced the wrong way and don't know where to go,

then I wish I were a grey-velvet mole,

I'd throw open his armpit and bury myself in it.

Fm a mosquito,

and I play in front of his face.

No consolation.

"No one shall be the brink of my abyss

Leave your blossoms to wither

My path flows and runs alone

Two hands are much too small a vessel

A heart too small a hill To rest on"

Listen.

"L steal at night The roses of your mouth

"So no she-woman will find drink

"She that embraces you robs me of my shuddering

"Which I painted around your limbs

"I am the brink of your abyss That brushes against you

"Plunges downward

"Do you feel my aliveness

"Everywhere

"Like a distant edge?"

"Distant edge?"

"Aliveness?" What is it?

There is Germaneness, and there is "aliveness."

Prince Yussuf.

Where's Dr. Benn?

He can't be here. He's at his wedding.

- But he married Edith Osterloh. -She comes from Dresden.

This is you, Else.

This is your big bleeding heart, and this is your black swan.

Franz, you've caught me being faithful.

Since I lost Giselheer I'm no longer able to cry and laugh.

He drilled a hole in my heart,

that's as open as the bottom of your drained eye.

If he saw me like this he'd love me. He loves everything that's dead.

There's going to be a war.

Don't go.

Don't go! It will be a disaster.

We need a disaster. After that the world will be good.

Don't go.

I, Yussuf, say to you: Don't go to that war!

Don't go to that war!

Let the Kaiser rattle his saber, but all of you, stay here!

Don't go, Franz!

You won't return, if you go to war!

I recall a story in the Talmud.

God stood with humans before the ravaged heavens and cried.

So many birds are flying through the night.

They can still play wind and breath, but down here we're oblivious to that.

We can only hack each other to pieces.

Amidst this soberness a blood-mill threateningly arises.

And soon all peoples will be ground to bits.

The “blue rider“ fell in battle. He was the one who heard the animals talking.

And he transfigured their misunderstood souls.

He is dead, and large angels carry his huge body to God.

No money.

Thank you, Robert.

No!

Franz Marc used to sit there when he was in Berlin,

when he was alive.

I DIDN'T WANT THIS TO HAPPEN

Nevertheless I kept on carrying out the orders that had to be carried out.

I tapped with a finger of my right hand on a finger of my left hand...

under which there was a lung.

I walked up to beds, "Good morning. How's your body?"

But sometimes I went through the ward without talking to every patient.

It seriously occupied me.

I also had two eyes once that looked backwards. Yes, sir!

I was present, unquestionably and completely.

My dear sweet Giselheer. I don't think we'll ever see each other again.

But I'm always thinking of you, and paradise is growing within me again...

and a bush with blossoming wings.

Doctor... Officer...

Prince... Prince Yussuf.

Wouldn't you like to buy one of Yussuf's pictures?

Of him playing with Giselheer's maiden?

I need money for Paul.

I have to pay for a sanatorium in Switzerland.

How is your wife doing?

Very poorly. I ought to go see her.

The one who brushes against you plunges downward.

Alaska-cold. I'd feel warmer if I could touch the aliveness.

We want to fly far, far away.

I found an apartment leading to a bustling open area.

I worked during the day, but at five in the afternoon I stood...

at the window of my dark apartment and inhaled everything...

down into my blood as long as the streaming light...

of snow and coolness remained in this city where there was nothing,

where I, a nothing against nothings, fought to get bread, clothing,

onto the streetcar.

For the first time in years I felt it again on my neck,

in my eyes, in my nostrils widening,

feeling the light begin.

- How is your new girlfriend doing? -My girlfriend...

who I essentially loved as I always had,

deeply loved,

willingly departed her life on February 1st.

In a most terrible way.

She plunged down to the street below from my apartment on the 6th floor...

and was dead on arrival.

She called to say she would.

Of course she died because of me, or "of me," as they say.

She was no match for me...

on the whole.

What I mean is...

She wanted to be superior to me or a match for me...

in things she wasn't able to be or she didn't need to be as a woman.

The one who brushes against you plunges downward.

Late autumn, start of the season, opening-night shimmer,

l'heure bleue from gas coke and the Spree': fog,

dusk,

when the cars make their run,

a magnificent beginning for this fashionable neurosis,

one more whiff of life, the night is mild.

The doorbell's ringing.

It's the front door, downstairs.

It's already locked.

Get undressed.

Paul has come back. He's very ill.

- Do you have any painkillers? -Yes, I'm coming.

Come on! Come on!

"The Sons"

"You will always die for me, my child When the year wanes

When the leaves dissolve And the twigs grow thin

You tasted a bitter death with those red roses

Not one single wilting throb were you spared

My love for you is the picture of God that I imagine

I saw the angels in tears In the wind and in the sleet

When the moon is in blossom, my child It resembles your life

And I don't want to see

The luminescent moth gliding away carefree

I never sensed death's presence

So aware of you, my child

And I love the room's walls

Which I paint with your little boy's face

The stars, so many this month Fall spraying their way into life

As heavy as drops on my heart"

Wherever rats appear...

they cause destruction, they devastate man's goods and foodstuffs,

thus spreading diseases:

plague, leprosy, typhoid, cholera, dysentery and so on.

They are deceitful, cowardly and cruel and usually appear in large groups.

ln the animal world they symbolize malicious underground destruction,

just like the Jews in the world of man.

BEWARE OF THE JEWS

By preventing weeds from growing you promote what is valuable.

A large percentage of the mentally ill are Jewish.

Healthy German national comrades have to work for them, too.

lf we artificially restore the law of natural selection...

by using humane methods then we will restore our respect...

for the law of our Creator and bow down to his system of order.

Ladies and gentlemen, the Kleist Prize is the highest award...

bestowed by Germany's literary world.

In full awareness of this responsibility the award has been divided this year.

One half is bestowed on Richard Billinger,

the deserving storyteller with his strong national loyalty.

The other half is the result of an unusual decision...

to honor Elly Lasker-Schuler, excuse me, Else Lasker-Schuler,

who is not only in a racial sense but also in a religious sense...

committed to Judaism. We are well aware that this decision...

will meet with protest, as opposed to the decision for Richard Billinger.

- May I present you with this award. -Thank you.

Here you are.

Oh, am I ugly!

Now that you're famous, why do you want to be beautiful?

Where is Dr. Benn?

Mrs. Schiller, he sent this.

"The Kleist Prize, so often dishonored,

once again ennobled through you.

Congratulations to German poetry. Gottfried Benn."

They're only 30 percent.

Listen, you and I, we're 70 percent. We didn't elect them.

Soon people like you won't even be able to vote!

Dr. Benn said he'd be at an Academy meeting, if any ladies should come by.

An Academy meeting? This late?

The doctor says, the Academy should support the new government.

Support the new government? But not Dr. Benn!

Why not? The German people are finally on their way up!

A poet like him can't just stand by and watch.

If only we could get rid of that Jewish riff-raff!

German people, free yourselves from Jewish tyranny!

Germans! Don't buy from Jews!

“There is a weeping in the world as if the good Lord now lay dead

And, heavy as the grave, the weight of the shadow falls like lead"

German national comrades...

The die was cast in Germany on January 30th.

But I don't believe that our opponents who laughed at us to begin with...

are still laughing now!

THE NEW STATE AND THE INTELLECTUALS

This new, seditious spirit of transformation...

which is, at the same time, unifying, reveals itself in the Fuhrer concept.

The fuhrer is not the embodiment of power.

He was not at all conceived as a principle of terror.

He is to be seen as the ultimate intellectual principle.

The Furhrer is the creative spirit.

He incorporates the responsibility, the danger and the decision...

as well as the irrationality...

of the historical will which he makes visible.

Furthermore, he is the terrible danger, without which he is inconceivable,

because he comes to us as an exception and not as a model.

He summons himself. Of course, you can also say, he is summoned.

He is the voice calling from the flaming bush.

He follows, he has to go...

and see that big face.

In our case, the masses have gradually surrendered to him.

In a ten-year public battle they have conquered the Empire together.

No power was able to stop them. No resistance could hold them back.

There was no other power present at all.

The inevitable reveals itself in this spirit, as well,

the spreading immensity of the historical transformation.

Go out and beat those Jewish sluts wherever they show up!

L consign everything that's anti-German to the flames!

We are against class struggle and materialism!

I consign to the flames...

the writings of Karl Marx and Kautsky!

I consign to the flames the writings of Heinrich Mann,

Ernst Gliser, Erich Kistner!

I consign to the flames the writings of the school...

of Sigmund Freud!

I consign to the flames the writings of Erich Maria Remarque!

I consign to the flames the writings of Alfred Kerr.

We are against impertinence and arrogance!

We rever and respect the immortal German people!

Oh, flames! Engulf the writings...

of Tucholsky and Ossietsky!

I consign to the flames the writings of Else Lasker-Schulerl!

My fellow students! German men and women!

The era of pushy Jewish intellectualism is over!

The revolution's breakthrough paved the way again for the German lifestyle!

"Police Directive for Aliens."

"Work as a poet is not permitted."

Your papers.

- What is your occupation? -l'm a poet.

You can't work as a poet here.

"The day is completely enveloped in fog

Lifeless, all the worlds encounter one another

As if on a picture, vacantly drawn

How long has no heart been kind to mine?

The world grew cold man faded away

Come and pray with me for God soothes me

Where is the odem that seeped from my life?

I wander homelessly with wild animals dreaming my way through pale times

Yes, I loved you

Soon the raging tears will have washed away all the flowers

Where poets quench their thirst So did you and I

And your lip which resembled mine

ls blindly aimed like an arrow at me

And everything I felt for you has died"

Only those who have passed through the tensions of these months,

from hour to hour, from newspaper to newspaper,

from parade to parade, from radio broadcast to radio broadcast,

those who have experienced all that at close range,

who struggled with it day and night,

even those who did not jubilantly hail all this,

but suffered it rather...

They can all be talked to.

But the refugees who went abroad cannot.

In any case, the name "Benn" has nothing at all to do with the Hebrew "ben."

But "ben" means "son" in Hebrew.

Wasn't Rose of Lebanon your girlfriend?

To my boy, Giselheer.

"A star hangs from my eyelash

It is so bright

How should I sleep?

And I'd like to play with you

I have no homeland"

Didn't you dedicate a volume of poetry to her called "Sons?"

I asked the professor of oriental languages for his opinion.

And his expert opinion tends toward the following conclusion:

It is not only difficult to derive "Benn" from the Hebrew "ben."

It is impossible.

No Jews on earth are named "Benn."

The Hebrew "ben" has never appeared in any kind of oriental literature...

without being followed by a name.

Calling a Jew "ben" would be the same...

as calling someone Mr. "Von"...

without a last name.

- So you're an Aryan? -I have...

Recently you did your service for the government of the Reich.

But you are known as a homosexual, as a morphine addict.

Your friends were Jews.

Didn't your mother,

Jecquier like Jacob,

come from French Switzerland?

What do you mean by that?

I don't need to ask how you're doing. I know. You've been put out of action.

The Medical Board no longer allows me to practice medicine.

That's incredible, considering all I've done for this country,

not to mention my literary work!

A very bad group of people is gaining influence.

Okay... What do you think I can do for you?

I want to leave Berlin and the duties of my literary position.

And there's only one possibility, the army.

Hanover?

Close enough?

And far enough away?

The aristocratic way of emigrating.

Come on, don't.

The meal has been sewed. The tender angel wings are burning.

Father devil and his sons practice their fire powers,

and they go up in blazes like sawdust.

It's obvious that politics have failed.

We have to do it differently.

Like the Indians.

The ones with the large feather headbands.

We have to hold each other's hand, like this.

And then act like this: Voombavoomba...

Now everybody think of Hitler!

Until he enters the synagogue and blows the shofar.

The Third Reich will then be over, and the world will laugh itself silly.

It's the only thing that could help.

Mr. Adolph's black star is sinking.

Mr. Adolph's black star is sinking.

"To be like we used to be

Irresponsible not knowing how it will end

Feeling the flesh

Thirst, tenderness conquering, losing

Reaching over into that otherness

Into what?

Sitting there at night looking into the throat of the night

It grows narrow but there are flowers on the ground

Their fragrance rises brief and trembling

And behind it, of course, decay

Then it is very dark

You know your pan again you throw down your money and go

You've loved so many lies believed so many words

Which only came from the curve of your lip, and your own heart

So changeable, bottomless and momentary

You've loved so many lies sought so many lips

Take that rouge from your mouth and give me it pale

And the questions more and more"

My dear striped Tiger...

She called me Giselheer or the Nibelung...

or the barbarian.

One poem from the cycle "Dr. Benn"...

is one of the most beautiful and passionate poems she ever wrote.

Above it she wrote, "The Last Song to Giselheer."

"I steal at night The roses of your mouth

So no she-woman will find drink

She that embraces you Robs me of my shuddering

which I painted around your limbs

lam the brink of your abyss That brushes against you

Plunges downward

Do you feel my aliveness

Everywhere

Like a distant edge?"

I've always felt this aliveness as a distant edge,

for all those years,

no matter how different the mistakes I made, the paths I took.

That's why I'm standing here today, seven years after her death.

I don't know if the graves in Israel have mounds,

or if they're flat like in some other countries.

But whenever I think of her grave...

I hope that a Lebanese cedar is standing nearby,

but also...

that the scent of Jaffa oranges...

gives native relief to the glowing air above this German grave and cools it.

Lebanese cedars, Giselheer?

They dug up my bones to build a freeway to Jaffa...

so the oranges will reach the sea much faster.

Now I have a grave in the sky above the holy city...

and all the way to you.

PARTING

"I'm looking for a town everywhere

With an angel at the gate

I carry its big wing

Badly broken at the shoulder blade

And in its brow its star as a seal

And I always walk into the night

I brought the world love so every heart could make blue blossom

And I tired myself out my life long

My dark breath wrapped in God

Oh, God, bundle me up inside your coat

I know I'm what's left in the round glass

And when the last person spills the earth

You won't release me from that omnipotence again

And a new world will enclose me

I look forward to it so I look forward to it so"