Julia Tsymbal. The world through the eyes of Heinrich Böll

Heinrich BÖLL

(21.12.1917-16.07.1985)

Heinrich Böll was born in 1917 in Cologne and was the eighth child in the family.
His father, Viktor Böll, is a hereditary cabinetmaker, and his mother's ancestors are Rhenish peasants and brewers.

The beginning of his life path is similar to the fate of many Germans, whose youth fell on a period of political adversity and the Second World War. After graduating from the public school, Heinrich was assigned to a humanitarian Greco-Roman gymnasium. He was among those few high school students who refused to join the Hitler Youth, and was forced to endure the humiliation and ridicule of those around him.

After graduating from the gymnasium, Heinrich Böll abandoned the idea of volunteering for military service and enrolled as an apprentice in one of the Bonn second-hand bookshops.

The first attempts at writing also belong to this time. However, his attempt to escape from reality and immerse himself in the world of literature was unsuccessful. IN
In 1938, a young man was mobilized to serve his labor service in draining swamps and logging.

In the spring of 1939, Heinrich Böll entered the University of Cologne. However, he failed to learn. In July 1939, he was called up for military training of the Wehrmacht, and in the autumn of 1939 the war began.

Böll ended up in Poland, then in France, and in 1943 part of it was sent to Russia. This was followed by four serious injuries in a row.
The front moved west, and Heinrich Böll roamed the hospitals, full of disgust for war and fascism. In 1945 he surrendered to the Americans.

After captivity, Böll returned to the devastated Cologne. He again entered the university to study German and philology. At the same time he worked as an auxiliary worker in his brother's carpentry workshop. Bell returned to his writing experiences. In the August issue of the magazine "Karusel" for 1947, his first story "Message" ("News") was published. This was followed by the story "The train comes on time" (1949), a collection of short stories "Wanderer, when you come to Spa ..." (1950); novels Where Have You Been, Adam? (1951), “And I didn’t say a single word” (1953), “House without a master” (1954), “Billiards at half past nine” (1959), “Through the eyes of a clown” (1963); the novels "Bread of Early Years" (1955), "Unauthorized Absence" (1964), "The End of a Business Trip"
(1966) and others In 1978, Bell's collected works in 10 volumes were published in Germany.
The writer's works have been translated into 48 languages of the world.

In Russian, Böll's story first appeared in the magazine In Defense of the World in
1952.

Böll is an outstanding realist painter. The war in the image of the writer is a world catastrophe, a disease of mankind that humiliates and destroys the individual. For a small ordinary person, war means injustice, fear, torment, want and death. Fascism, according to the writer, is an inhuman and vile ideology, it provoked the tragedy of the world as a whole and the tragedy of an individual.

Böll's works are characterized by subtle psychologism, revealing the contradictory inner world of his characters. He follows the traditions of the classics of realistic literature, especially F.M. Dostoevsky, who
Böll dedicated the screenplay for the TV movie Dostoevsky and Petersburg.

In his later works, Böll increasingly raises acute moral problems that grow out of a critical understanding of his contemporary society.

The pinnacle of international recognition was his election in 1971 as president
International PEN Club and the Nobel Prize in Literature in
1972 However, these events testified not only to the recognition of Bell's artistic talent. The outstanding writer was perceived in the most
Germany, and in the world as the conscience of the German people, as a person who acutely felt "his involvement with time and contemporaries", deeply perceived other people's pain, injustice, everything that humiliates and destroys the human personality. Conquering humanism permeated every page of Bell's literary work and every step of his social activity.

Heinrich Böll organically does not accept any violence from the authorities, believing that this leads to the destruction and deformation of society. Numerous publications, critical articles and speeches by Böll in the late 70s - early 80s, as well as two of his last great novels, are devoted to this problem.
A Caring Siege (1985) and Women in a River Landscape (published posthumously in 1986).

This position of Böll, his creative manner and commitment to realism has always aroused interest in the Soviet Union. He repeatedly visited the USSR, in no other country in the world did Heinrich Belle enjoy such love as in
Russia. "Valley of thundering hooves", "Billiards at half past nine", "Bread of the early years", "Through the eyes of a clown" - all this was translated into Russian until
1974. In June 1973, Novy Mir completed the publication of a Group Portrait with a Lady. And on February 13, 1974, Bell met the exiled A. Solzhenitsyn at the airport and invited him home. This was the last straw, although Bell had been involved in human rights activities before. In particular, he stood up for I. Brodsky, V. Sinyavsky, Yu. Daniel, was indignant at Russian tanks on the streets of Prague. For the first time after a long break, Heinrich Böll was printed in the USSR on July 3, 1985. And on July 16, he died.

In the biography of Böll as a writer, there are relatively few external events, it consists of literary work, trips, books and speeches. He belongs to those writers who all their lives write one book - a chronicle of their time. He was called "the chronicler of the era", "Balzac of the second German republic", "the conscience of the German people".

LAST TIME IN THE USSR
The story of how Heinrich Böll came to us in 1979
Alexander Birger

This text formed the basis of the German documentary "Heinrich Böll: Under the Red Star", where Alexei Birger acted as a "through" presenter.
The film premiered on German television on November 29, 1999, and in
In Moscow, the film could be seen at the Cinema House on December 13, 1999 - it was presented from Germany at the Stalker Film Festival.

HEINRICH BELL last visited the Soviet Union in 1979, arrived for ten days.

It so happened that I witnessed many events connected with this visit. I turned out to be a witness who had the opportunity to see a lot and remember a lot because my father, the artist Boris Georgievich
Birger, was one of the closest Russian friends of Heinrich Böll.

In order to understand why Bell was not very kindly received in the USSR, one must know some circumstances.

Officially, Belle remained a "progressive" German writer, laureate
Nobel Prize, one of the most significant people in the international PEN club
(where he was president for a long time) - because of this, because of his worldwide fame and the significance of any of his words for the whole world, he was apparently afraid to be denied an entry visa. But by that time, Bell had already managed to “guilty” himself in many respects before the Soviet ideology.

The writer spoke sharply in a number of articles and statements against the introduction of Soviet tanks into Czechoslovakia. To judge what happened during the suppression of the "Prague Spring", he could better than anyone, because he managed to be in Prague just at the time of the invasion of the Warsaw Pact troops. Perhaps the humanity of Bell’s position turned out to be an additional insult to our authorities: in one of the essays about what he saw, Bell wrote how sorry he was for the Russian soldiers drawn into this dirty story for no reason at all, cited many facts, what a shock it was for ordinary army personnel to discover at dawn that they were not on “maneuvers”, as they were announced, but in the role of invaders in a foreign country.
Bell also told about cases of suicide among Soviet soldiers known to him.

Among the many reasons why they sharpened their teeth on Bell, one can recall the following fact: when Bell was president of the international PEN club, the authorities
The Writers' Union courted and flattered him in every possible way so that he would agree to accept the Writers' Union as a "collective member" in the Pen Club, that is, that everyone admitted to the Writers' Union would simultaneously receive membership in
Pen Club, and anyone expelled from the Writers' Union would lose this membership.
Belle, not even indignantly, but with great surprise, rejected this nonsense, after which many writers (and, it seems, not only writers) "aces" harbored a fierce anger at him.

Belle hurt the interests of the writer's mafia, not only by refusing to enlist her en masse in the Pen Club. Bell had a rather sharp explanation with the Writers' Union and the VAAP with the participation of Konstantin Bogatyrev, his close friend, a wonderful translator from German and a human rights activist. Bogatyrev was killed under very mysterious circumstances, and
Belle was going to visit his grave. The death of Bogatyrev was associated with his human rights activities. But there was another moment. Shortly before death
Bogatyrev conducted a thorough analysis of Bell's Russian translations (as far as I remember, at the request of Bell himself - but this should be clarified with the people who were directly involved in this story) and only gross distortions and alterations of the author's meaning scored forty pages of short text! So, as a result of these distortions, Through the Eyes of a Clown turned from an anti-clerical novel into an anti-religious, atheistic one, and a number of other works turned out to be turned inside out.

Belle was furious and demanded that his things in this form be more in
The Soviet Union was not published. Naturally, this requirement of the author was not fulfilled, but this explanation with the indignant Bell spoiled a lot of blood for our bureaucrats. Not to mention the fact that the scandal turned out to be international and greatly damaged the reputation of the “Soviet school of translation — the best and most professional school in the world” (which, by the way, was close to the truth when it came to translating classics and “ideologically harmless” things).
Many authors began to look cautiously to see if they were being disfigured too much in Soviet translations.

It should be borne in mind that the Soviet state tried to allow translators in whom it was “confident” to work not only with “ideologically slippery”, but also with living Western authors in general. That is, translators went through the same screening process as all other citizens who, by the nature of their activities, had to communicate with people of the Western world. Exceptions were rare.

By a simple requirement to respect the author's text of Belle and
Bogatyrev encroached on the foundations of the system, which meant a lot, including complete control over communication with Western people and over the form in which Western ideas should reach the Soviet people.

When writers and translators begin to live according to the laws of the secret services (and most importantly
- according to the laws of the “nomenklatura”), then they choose the ways of resolving problems that are characteristic of the special services. And what Bell announced publicly: one of the main goals of his visit to the Soviet Union was to visit the grave
Konstantin Bogatyrev and bow to the ashes of one of his closest friends, could not but cause bitterness.

The above is quite enough to give an idea of the general background against which Heinrich Bell, his wife Annamari, their son Raymond and the wife of their son Gaide got off the plane to the international department of Sheremetyevo airport on Monday, July 23, 1979.

We, who were meeting, could see the customs desk, where the baggage of the Bellei family was checked. It was a real "shmon" with somewhat paradoxical results. They confiscated from Bell the last issue of the Spiegel magazine with a photograph of Brezhnev on the cover, which he read on the road, concluding that if there is a photograph of Brezhnev, then something anti-Soviet must have been printed in the magazine, but they did not notice and missed the book of Lev Kopelev, which had just been published in German, one of the then forbidden authors.

The Bellis stayed in the new building at the National Hotel, and, after a short rest, went to dinner, which was arranged in their honor by Moscow friends. Dinner was hosted by a very nice middle-aged woman whom everyone called Mishka. As far as I understood from the conversations, she was an ethnic German, went through camps, and by that time had become an active participant in the Russian-German cultural bridge, the main architects of which were Bell and Kopelev, both of her great friends.

There was also a conversation that Heinrich Böll, then already a severe diabetic (and not only a diabetic - diabetes was only one, albeit the main, “flower” in a large bouquet of diseases, drugs for which were sometimes mutually exclusive), need to follow a strict diet, as well as an obligatory link in time between food intake and medication, as is the case with diabetics who are on insulin injections. The Bellei family not only doubted, but asked if Heinrich would be able to provide such food at the hotel or should he take care of insurance options?

The very next day, some plans had to be adjusted, because it became obvious that the authorities were trying in every possible way to demonstrate to Bell their dissatisfaction with his arrival and his plans, and the social circle scheduled for this visit, and resorted to quite strong psychological pressure, sometimes more like psychological terror. From the very morning, the Bellei family
“led” openly, frankly trying to make Belli notice the surveillance. Black
"Volga" with antennas sticking out and pointing in their direction (so that there was no doubt that all conversations were being eavesdropped and recorded) constantly spun around. We went to Izmailovo, to my father's workshop, where
Belle scanned the paintings, which he had not yet seen, very carefully. Belle struck with thoughtfulness and concentration when he peered into the next canvas, not even somehow immersing himself in the world of painting, but dissolving in this world, deep penetration into the images of the artist. At such moments, his resemblance to the wise old leader of the elephant herd became even more obvious.

From the workshop we went to have lunch at my father's apartment on Mayakovskaya, deciding after dinner to take a little walk along the Garden Ring, and from there move
Taganka, see Krutitsky Teremok and Andronikov Monastery. Cars accompanied us all the time, they were on duty under the windows when we were having lunch, and when we walked along the Garden Ring to turn towards Presnya at Vosstaniya Square (now Kudrinskaya), a black Volga crawled very slowly along the edge of the sidewalk next to us with antennas extended and directed in our direction. This mockingly impudent surveillance became so unbearable that suddenly
Vladimir Voinovich, who has been with us since the very morning, in general a very reserved person, abruptly cut off his conversation with Bell, jumped up to the Volga, jerked open its door and began to cover those who were sitting in it, shouting that it was a shame for the whole country and how shameful they were. Everyone was a little taken aback, and then my father and I managed to drag Voinovich away from the car. I must say, the people in the car all this time were sitting without moving and not looking in our direction.

The provocations were on the rise, and a typical example is how the troubles with the dietary and regimen nutrition necessary for Bell were exacerbated. On the very first morning, Bellei was marinated at the entrance to the National restaurant for almost an hour, as they say. They had full opportunity to see the empty hall and hear that the tables were not yet ready and therefore they could not be served. It should be noted that before going down to breakfast, Belle took his medication and took an insulin shot. So things could have ended badly on the very first day of Bell's stay in Moscow.

At some point, a man approached Bell and addressed him in German, saying that he was also a guest of the hotel, and asked if he was not mistaken in recognizing the famous writer. Belle replied that his interlocutor was not mistaken, and explained his situation. “Oh, so you still don’t know the local order! answered the German who recognized Bell. “You just need to know that as soon as the head waiter receives ten rubles, a table will appear at the same second.”

Just then Kopelev arrived, understanding the situation at first glance and taking Bellei with him.

Such decomposition in the Intourist system was observed at every turn.
Workers in this area extorted money and bribes in a different form, wherever possible, spitting on the fear of any "authorities", before the possibility of running into a disguised KGB officer - for extortion from foreigners they could heat up so that he would hiccup for a long time.

So, the Bellei family was going to visit Vladimir and Suzdal, and for this it was necessary to obtain special permission. To the lady in charge of issuing these permits,
Belle approached, accompanied by Kopelev. The lady grunted gloomily that permits are issued in two weeks, that they still need to decide who to give them and who not, and that in general it is her birthday today, she is in a hurry and cannot do all this. Kopelev asked her to wait five minutes, quickly dragged Bell to the foreign exchange shop at the hotel and pointed at pantyhose, a bottle of perfume and something else. Belle hinted at the fact that it would be a brazen bribe to the point of indecentness and it was generally inconvenient to give a woman such rubbish from a stranger. Kopelev objected that everything was convenient and for her it was not rubbish. Five minutes later they returned to this lady, and Kopelev said with a charming smile: “Sorry, we didn’t know that it was your birthday. But let me congratulate you." Five minutes later, they had a special permit for the trip of the entire Bellei family to Vladimir and Suzdal.

ON THE GOLDEN RING

The departure for Suzdal was scheduled for the morning of 29 July. Days before departure
Bell fully implemented the planned program. He recorded a conversation with
Kopelev for German television (the text of this conversation was published in
"Spark" of perestroika), attended two dinners in his honor - at
Vasily Aksenov (where literary circles gathered to see Bell and, in particular, the participants in the almanac who had already felt the first lightning discharges
"Metropol") and an employee of the West German embassy Doris Schenk, went to the grave of Bogatyrev (from there he climbed to the grave of Pasternak, and then visited the Pasternak and Ivanov families in the writer's village of Peredelkino), visited Zagorsk and held several more meetings - for example, my father showed him the workshop of the sculptor Sidur ...

All this happened against a monotonously painful and annoying background of the same constant surveillance and petty provocations. What was alarming was that the “direction of the main blow” of these provocations was becoming more and more clear: health
Bell. Several times he was thwarted under various pretexts the opportunity to eat after taking medication and an insulin injection - and in fact this could end as badly as you like, up to a diabetic coma. The trip to Zagorsk was especially indicative. Since the time for taking medicines and food was strictly scheduled, we agreed that on the way back, Belle, having taken the medicines and given an injection, would stop for lunch at Vyacheslav's dacha
Grabar in the village of academicians near Abramtsevo (just approximately in the middle of the road between Zagorsk and Moscow).

When we left Zagorsk, Belle took medicine by the clock and made an injection, and the driver of a special Intourist car was asked to turn to the dacha. The driver categorically refused, explaining his refusal by the fact that Abramtsevo was going beyond
a 50-kilometer zone around Moscow, and therefore foreigners also need a special permit to enter there, while Bellei has a permit only for
Zagorsk... For all formal reasons, there were two glaring oddities in this refusal: firstly, the persons who issued Bell with permission to travel to Zagorsk were warned about the likelihood of stopping in Abramtsevo; secondly, all the dachas of the cooperative villages of scientific and creative workers around the famous Abramtsevo Estate Museum are located in the belt from 52 to
56th kilometer, and never (in cases with other foreign guests) did not pay attention to a slight excess of the 50-kilometer zone.

The end of this trip turned into a complete nightmare. Bell in the car began to get worse and worse, he was in a state close to losing consciousness, he was hardly taken to a place where he could stop and have a bite to eat.

The repetition of such episodes from time to time in itself was alarming and caused the most serious concerns.

Accompanying Bellei in Vladimir and Suzdal were my father, my father's wife
Natasha and me. I say "in Vladimir and Suzdal" and not "in Vladimir and
Suzdal, because we could not go with them. According to the rules, a foreign guest who received permission to visit some place quite far from Moscow, had to, if he did not fly by plane and did not move in a special car, pay for a separate compartment in a fast train back and forth - "Intourist" compartment, according to "Intourist" prices that are completely different from the usual. And - "do not enter into unnecessary contacts" during the journey to the place for which he has been given permission to visit. For all these reasons, the joint road was booked for us. Therefore, we went to Vladimir by train.

It was a Sunday morning, the train was jam-packed with the first shift of "bagmen" leaving Moscow - unfortunate people, it was not clear how they were carrying huge mountains of food supplies, at least for a week.

In Suzdal, we were met by the local archimandrite Father Valentin, who had already arranged everything for us. During the years of Perestroika, he became scandalously famous because of his transfer, along with the entire parish, to the jurisdiction of the Orthodox Church Abroad.
The whole scandal arose because of Father Valentine's refusal to write "reports" to the highest church leadership about meetings with foreigners.

Father Valentin refused to write reports for many years, but for some reason only in the era of mature Perestroika did this issue become so acute that it was put squarely before Father Valentin.

But the "black marks" against the name of Father Valentine have been accumulating, of course, for a long time. And we can certainly say that he owed his behavior to several "black marks" during Bellei's arrival in Suzdal.

We dined with him, waited a bit and, estimating by the hour that Belli should already be there, went to the Intourist hotel complex, where we agreed to meet them.

PERFORMANCE FOR A WRITER

It is impossible not to mention the strong and indestructible feeling of something wrong, which somehow immediately wafted from the dull, echoing and deserted corridors of a dull color, more like petrified intestines, from the general concrete atmosphere in which we plunged. We walked along these corridors, it seemed to infinity, turned one way, the other, finally found a number
Bellei and learned that they arrived almost two hours ago and immediately went to dinner. We were embarrassed by such a long lunch, and we rushed into the restaurant hall.

The scene we found there is difficult to describe. Empty restaurant hall. A dull light above him. The Bellei family sits at an empty table.
The writer is pale, but tries not to show how bad he is. (His expressive wrinkled face often seemed to me to radiate the light that emanates from the old, wise by experience and cultivated calm understanding of the leader of the elephant herd: how he looked, how he listened attentively to his interlocutor, slightly sticking out his lower lip and sometimes freezing, without reaching his lips with a cigarette. In difficult moments, this expression - an expression of respectful inner concentration for others - became sharper and more distinct). The faces of the rest of the family reflected a wide variety of feelings. Even Bell's wife, who knew how to seem serene and smiling, looked alarmed.

Nearby, at a neighboring table, cluttered with dishes and bottles, sat two young men, already quite (in appearance, in any case) betrayed, with the head waiter leaning over them and talking to them in a friendly manner. The young people were Soviet, which surprised us a little. (Whoever remembers those times knows that an ordinary Soviet person was ordered to enter the Intourist restaurant). A little later, we learned that the young people appeared almost simultaneously with Belley and the head waiter immediately rushed to serve them, not paying any attention to Belley.

When my father ran up to him furiously, demanding that he explain what was going on and immediately serve dinner to foreign guests, he turned his back, so we never saw his face again. He also kept silent so that we did not hear a single word. Then he began sideways to get out of the hall.
Then his father caught up with him and said: “Listen! You don't really know who you're playing this show against! Here is Heinrich Belle, the famous writer, Nobel Prize winner, president of the PEN Club.

It must be said that during those days we all had to repeat this phrase countless times, in various circumstances, and if it worked in an ordinary restaurant, museum, and so on, then this made little impression on the Intourist officials.

The maitre d' did not answer and did not turn his face, but it seemed to me, who was standing a little to one side, that he had turned a little pale. He even faster began to get out of the room. Father asked me not to lose sight of him while he tried to calm Bellei and decide with them whether it was worth immediately moving to Father Valentine's to eat there normally. I set off after the maître d', not really understanding what I could do if he began to flee to the office premises, but deciding, as far as possible, to be his uncomfortable and relentless shadow. But the head waiter didn't go far. He dived into what looked like a glassed-in booth at the hall, a sort of nook with a table, chairs, and a telephone. When I caught up with him, he was fiddling with the telephone receiver. I don’t know if I already called somewhere, or I wanted to call, but changed my mind. Seeing me, he hung up, left the cubbyhole and returned to the hall. A waiter had already appeared at the door of the restaurant, to whom the head waiter quietly gave orders, after which
Bellei was served quickly and efficiently (and, judging by Bell, who had turned completely pale by that time, very on time).

We took Bellei for an evening walk and agreed with them that for the rest of their time in Suzdal they would eat at Father Valentin's, and appear at the hotel as little as possible, only spend the night.

A DAY WITH FATHER VALENTINE

We spent the next day with Father Valentin. With him, Bellami and I had breakfast, lunch and dinner, he also took us around Suzdal, showing us the whole city wonderfully.

Belle was interested in father Valentin, what is the life of the population of Suzdal.

“And borage,” answered Father Valentin, “whatever they can, they grow in gardens for sale and for themselves.” There was a slight dispute about how to translate the word into German
"cucumbers". Finally, in a surge of inspiration, the father blurted out: “Gyurkisten!” - and the Belley family cheered, perfectly understanding everything.

In general, Bell was interested in talking with Father Valentine about many things, he asked him about church affairs, about how Father Valentine himself, being a priest, relates to certain problems. I remember his question about how, in the conditions of Soviet reality, the church understands the words “all power is from God”, and a very interesting answer from Father Valentin. I am not quoting this part of the conversation, because, it seems to me, only Father Valentin himself should talk about this, here it is impossible to reproduce even half a word inaccurately.

Unfortunately, these conversations were constantly interrupted by numerous intrusions.
The most diverse and strange people appeared at the door and argued that they needed to sit with Father Valentine for an hour in order to talk heart to heart with him. He politely but firmly exposed them all, inwardly heating himself up more and more. When he went to open the door to the next call, somewhere in the afternoon, he was already quite angry. We heard that this time he spoke quite sharply.
He returned gloomy, sighed and said: “I put out the informer,” then repentantly crossed himself and added in a different voice, “Forgive me, Lord, for these words ...”

It turned out that this time one of the representatives of the Russian
The Orthodox Church at the UN - a man with whom Father Valentine was somehow friends only many years ago, before he left for America for a permanent job. And now this man was desperately trying to convince Father Valentin that, unexpectedly being in the Soviet Union for a few days, he really wanted to spend the whole day with dear Father Valentin, so the first thing he did was come to him...

Considering all the circumstances, I can firmly say: Father Valentin turned himself into that shield that tightly covered the Bellei family from many troubles during their stay in Suzdal.

The next day, Tuesday July 31, we took the family from early morning
Bellei from the hotel and brought them to Father Valentine's house. Two taxis have already been ordered to get to Vladimir, see the city and take the train.
Father Valentin proudly told us that he got up at five in the morning to make his incomparable meat balls in the Russian oven - in general, Father Valentin was a fantastic cook (he still remains like that, having risen to the rank of archbishop).

When we had breakfast and a taxi arrived, Father Valentin's eyes widened: they were "special order" cars, without checkers and with counters drawn by blinds. Although Father Valentin ordered a taxi to his address and in his name and did not expect any special cars.

We drove to Vladimir through the Church of the Intercession on the Nerl. About two kilometers from the church there was something like a barrier blocking the road - a long clumsy beam, guarded by an aunt so wrapped in scarves and shawls that it was impossible to determine her age. As it turned out, the chairman of the collective farm ordered to block the road: he believed that numerous tourist cars and buses spoil the fields. From here you had to walk. No persuasion worked for the aunt. When they explained to her that Heinrich Böll had sore legs and he simply wouldn’t go such a distance off-road (on his return from the USSR, Bell had to amputate both feet), she knew her own: “The chairman ordered, and I don’t know anything else.”
Suddenly, one of the drivers came to the rescue, saying: “Look at yourself! All untidy, the muzzle is skewed, and I have foreigners in the car, and foreigners have cameras. Now they will click you - it will be pleasant for you if your photograph appears in such a form in a Western magazine? The aunt thought a little, but the feminine element in her clearly leapt up. She drew herself up, raised the barrier and said: "Go."

Near the church, Bell himself got into the camera lens. At the same time we were approached by a group of German-speaking tourists (from the GDR, as it turned out).
One of them saw Bell, froze, then timidly approached and asked uncertainly if he could take a photo of his favorite writer. Belle smiled and said, "You can." He stepped back so that he could take a picture of Bell in front of the church, and pressed the button several times. Seeing this, the rest of the tourists rushed to us, pulling out the devices on the go. For a while, Bell found himself surrounded by continuous clicks and flashes.

From there we went to Vladimir, looked around the city and moved to the station square, where Bellei was supposed to be met with a return ticket by a lady from
"Intourist" to put them in the compartment of a fast train passing through Vladimir. There we were in for the most amazing surprise. The lady who met Bellei said that Intourist was unable to take compartment tickets, so four tickets were bought for a regular train, which she hands over to Bell. With that, she instantly fled.

All this did not climb into any gates. Traveling by train was strictly forbidden by all the rules governing the movement of foreigners outside the fifty-kilometer zone around Moscow. For such
"amateur" employees of "Intourist" could easily lose their jobs (at least, if not worse). And if during the trip to Zagorsk these rules were observed so strictly that Bell was not allowed to dine, then why were they so grossly violated this time? In addition, tickets were ordered and paid for in advance, back in Moscow - how could they evaporate? And they were paid in dollars - and the dollar "reservation" for tickets always operated without fail, and there were an excess of tickets for this "reservation".

To top it off, when Belle stood, perplexedly fiddling with train tickets, Father Valentin appeared from the ticket office of the station, calmly and without any queue taking compartment tickets for all of us, so that we at least travel in one with
Bellami train, if not in the same carriage! Here we are even more stunned.

(It must be said that, having returned to Moscow, Bell exacted $50 from Intourist for unprovided tickets; even though this was not the entire amount, Bell still considered this a terrible revenge and was very pleased with himself.)

... We went to the platform to the train. What we saw there shocked everyone.
Even Belle's eyes widened for the first time. The platform, albeit on a weekday, was packed with people rushing to Moscow for food. As soon as the train was given, this whole crowd, knocking each other down, rushed through the opened doors, instantly filling even the vestibules. It became clear that the next train would be the same. And that a sick person cannot ride in such an electric train, even if they manage to put him on it.

While we were stuck on the platform, not knowing what to do, Father Valentine took the most active steps. First, he asked the control booth at the taxi stand if it was possible to place an urgent order for two cars for a trip to Moscow. The woman dispatcher simply yelled at Father Valentin, regardless of his rank: they say that an order for trips outside the Vladimir region must be issued at least a day in advance, and let him not try to circumvent the existing rules! Then Father Valentin called the Commissioner for Religious Affairs of the Vladimir Region (a very important position in Soviet times) from the nearest payphone. Valentin's father got the impression that he was waiting for his call in advance. At the very first words about troubles with the famous writer Bell and the need to organize a car for him, the commissioner replied that he would now try to think of something.

And I figured it out surprisingly quickly. Literally five minutes later, one of the black
The Volg that brought us from Suzdal to Vladimir was standing on the forecourt, near the platform itself. The second, as the driver (the same merry fellow who shamed the aunt at the barrier) explained, had already set off to perform another task ... Imagine our amazement when, at the moment of our greatest confusion, one of the drivers who brought us to Suzdal appeared
"special" machines. “What, you couldn’t get on the train? So let me take our guests straight to Moscow!” We explained to him that there was only one car, we couldn’t all fit in it, and we would only go together. The driver objected that this was a solvable problem - you need to take one of those taxis that stand at the station parking lot. Father Valentin approached him and reminded him that the trip would be outside the Vladimir region ... The driver replied that this was not a problem either, he approached the first of the drivers waiting in the parking lot. "Are you going to Moscow?" “Yes, I would love to,” he answered (still not happy, because the trip would cost at least 50 rubles). Our driver took the taxi driver to the control booth, and they got out of there in just a few seconds: the dumbfounded taxi driver held in his hand permission to travel outside
Vladimir region, which, to his amazement, was given to him without a single question and without swearing. We sailed off safely and reached Moscow without further adventures.

PARTING

In Moscow, Bell spent two more days, filled with the same myriad of cases, gala lunches and dinners, and constant "accompaniment" as before leaving for Suzdal. But now Belle was constantly in sight. Kopelev, either my father or one of his friends, was always with him, Belle ate mainly from friends who had adjusted everything by that time, so there was no space left for all sorts of unpleasant episodes and provocations, large and small.

On August 3, we saw Belley off at Sheremetyevo Airport. Behind the next counter, a woman was being searched, flying out with a tourist group to
Hungary. She was escorted by a stocky middle-aged man who looked rather solid and self-confident. On his chest was a card of a journalist accredited to the Spartakiad of the Peoples of the USSR.

The customs officer, with a rather squeamish look, took out a loaf of sausage and a pack of buckwheat from the woman's suitcase: “You can't. Not allowed". The woman tried to protest, to find out why it was impossible, and her escort - her husband or close friend - went behind the barrier at which he was standing, went to the counter and also tried to explain himself to the customs officer. She did not listen to him, but immediately screamed in a piercing voice something similar to Bulgakov's famous
"Palosich!"

“Palosich” (we will call him that) appeared - a very tall and very flat man, so flat and thin that his profile seemed roughly cut out of a piece of brownish cardboard sticking out of a bluish uniform with more stars and stripes than a customs officer. .
Only after looking at the situation and not going into details, he immediately yelled at the man: “What are you doing here? Well, get out!”

And the man obediently hurried to get out, taking sausage and buckwheat with him.

This episode with the humiliation of a person made an almost shock impression on Bell and added a lot to his understanding of what and how our country lived and breathed.

There were also wonderful meetings that showed the Bellams that the attitude of the authorities and the adherents of the authorities towards them had nothing to do with the attitude towards them of that majority, which is Russia. On the day before Bellei's departure, my father and I took Raymond and Hayde to the Donskoy Monastery. I remember we were watching the Gonzago exhibition open at that time in the wing, when a young restorer approached us, interested after hearing the German speech. And having learned that Bell's son was in front of him and that Bell himself was now in Moscow, the restorer could not restrain his emotions. Belle is his favorite writer, he explained, and he always carries and rereads one of Belle's books. Pulling out the book he had with him at the time (Valley of Thundering Hooves or Billiards at half past nine, I don't remember exactly), he asked if Belle could inscribe it.
Raymond took the book, and my father left his phone number with the restorer.

Already after Bell's departure, the restorer called, drove to his father and took the inscribed copy. And at that moment, the restorer began to offer to show all the storerooms of the museum, where he could take us, and we saw a lot of interesting things. Raymond, himself a sculptor and architect, and very talented (he was already terminally ill and, it seems, knew this; he did not live very long after that, and his death was a severe blow for Heinrich Böll), began to enthusiastically discuss professional problems with the restorer. After that, we went to have lunch on the terrace of the Praga restaurant at the so-called winter garden, where we managed to somewhat correct the unfavorable impression made on Bellei by the Intourist service. Oddly enough, the head waiter, the waiters, and even, it seems, the Prague doorman knew who Heinrich Belle was, and we were served just fine.

That, perhaps, is all that I wanted to tell - it is better to tell other people about many other things.

But one thing I know for sure: Belle never doubted that all the troubles that happened to him have nothing to do with Russia and its people.
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© Lucky http://vlad.webm.ru

The work of the German writer Heinrich Böll is almost entirely devoted to the theme of the war and post-war life in Germany. His works immediately gained fame, began to be published in many countries of the world, and in 1972 the writer was awarded the Nobel Prize "for his work, which combines a wide coverage of reality with the high art of creating characters and which has become a significant contribution to the revival of German literature."
The first collection of the author, consisting of novels and stories, "Wanderer, when you come to Spa ..." is dedicated to the tragic fate of young German guys who had to go to the front right from school. This theme continues to develop in the later cycles of prose "When the war began" and "When the war ended." Moving on to larger epic forms, Heinrich creates his first novels about the war: "The train came on time" and "Where have you been, Adam?".
From 1939 to 1945, Heinrich Bell was a soldier in the Nazi army. His testimonies as a front-line writer have a high degree of reliability. When the question arose of publishing his novel Where Have You Been, Adam? in Russia, the writer approved the publication of his work under one cover with the story of Viktor Nekrasov "In the trenches of Stalingrad", in which the war is shown through the eyes of a young Russian lieutenant.
The action of the novel "Where have you been, Adam?" takes place in 1945, when it was already clear to the Germans that the war was lost. German troops are retreating, the wounded are being evacuated. Belle shows the broken, exhausted people whom the "damned war" has made indifferent to the point of apathy. The war brought them only grief, longing and hatred for those who sent them to fight. The heroes of the work already understand the senselessness of the war, they internally saw the light and do not want to die for Hitler. These deceived and unfortunate victims are contrasted in the novel with the "masters of death", for whom war is a profit and satisfaction of a manic thirst for power over the whole world.
The narrative flows slowly, even sluggishly - this creates a sense of hopelessness. The final episode of the novel shocks the reader with its tragedy. The hero of the novel Fainhals, finally finding himself in his native city, smiling with happiness, goes to his parents' house, on which a huge white flag is hung. The soldier recognizes in him a festive tablecloth that his mother once laid on the table. At this time, gunfire begins. Making his way to the house, Feinhals repeats: "Madness, what madness!" Before his eyes, “the sixth shell hit the pediment of the house - bricks flew down, plaster fell on the sidewalk, and he heard his mother scream in the basement. He quickly crawled to the porch, heard the approaching whistle of the seventh shell and screamed in mortal anguish. He screamed for several seconds, suddenly feeling that dying was not so easy at all, shouting loudly until the shell overtook him and, dead, threw him on the threshold of his home.
Heinrich Belle, one of the first German writers, raised the problem of the guilt of both the rulers and the people of Germany for the unleashed world war. The writer argued that war could not be an excuse for anyone.
In subsequent work, Bell spoke about the attitude towards fascism, described the post-war devastation in Germany and the times when new fascists began to raise their heads, trying to revive the cult of Hitler. One of the issues of concern to the writer is the question of the future of the country.
Although the action of Bell's novels "And He Didn't Say a Single Word", "House Without a Master", "Billiards at half past nine", "Group Portrait with a Lady" takes place in post-war Germany, the war is invisibly present in them, its curse weighs on the heroes. The war cannot be forgotten by the Germans, whose fathers, brothers, husbands died somewhere in distant Russia. The former boys, whose youth was spent under bullets in the trenches, cannot forget her, such as the wonderful writer, courageous and honest German Heinrich Belle.

The story of how Heinrich Böll came to us in 1979

Alexander Birger

This text formed the basis of the German documentary "Heinrich Böll: Under the Red Star", where Alexei Birger acted as a "through" presenter. The film premiered on German television on November 29, 1999, and in Moscow the film could be seen at the Cinema House on December 13, 1999 - it was presented from Germany at the Stalker Film Festival.

HEINRICH BELL last visited the Soviet Union in 1979, arrived for ten days.

It so happened that I witnessed many events connected with this visit. I turned out to be a witness who had the opportunity to see a lot and remember a lot because my father, the artist Boris Georgievich Birger, was one of Heinrich Böll's closest Russian friends.

DON'T WAIT

In order to understand why Bell was not very kindly received in the USSR, one must know some circumstances.

Officially, Bell remained a "progressive" German writer, Nobel Prize winner, one of the most significant people in the international PEN club (where he was president for a long time) - because of this, because of his worldwide fame and the significance of any of his words for everything Peace be upon him, apparently, and they were afraid to refuse an entry visa. But by that time, Bell had already managed to “guilty” himself in many respects before the Soviet ideology.

The writer spoke sharply in a number of articles and statements against the introduction of Soviet tanks into Czechoslovakia. To judge what happened during the suppression of the "Prague Spring", he could better than anyone, because he managed to be in Prague just at the time of the invasion of the Warsaw Pact troops. Perhaps the humanity of Bell’s position turned out to be an additional insult to our authorities: in one of the essays about what he saw, Bell wrote how sorry he was for the Russian soldiers drawn into this dirty story for no reason at all, cited many facts, what a shock it was for ordinary army personnel to discover at dawn that they were not on “maneuvers”, as they were announced, but in the role of invaders in a foreign country. Bell also told about cases of suicide among Soviet soldiers known to him.

Among the many things that sharpened their teeth on Bell, one can also recall the following fact: when Bell was president of the international PEN club, the authorities of the Writers' Union in every possible way courted and flattered him so that he agreed to accept the Writers' Union into the PEN Club as a "collective member", that is, so that everyone admitted to the Writers' Union would simultaneously receive membership in the PEN club, and anyone expelled from the Writers' Union would lose this membership. Belle, not even indignantly, but with great surprise, rejected this nonsense, after which many writers (and, it seems, not only writers) "aces" harbored a fierce anger at him.

Belle hurt the interests of the writer's mafia, not only by refusing to enlist her en masse in the Pen Club. Bell had a rather sharp explanation with the Writers' Union and the VAAP with the participation of Konstantin Bogatyrev, his close friend, a wonderful translator from German and a human rights activist. Bogatyrev was killed under very mysterious circumstances, and Belle was going to visit his grave. The death of Bogatyrev was associated with his human rights activities. But there was another moment. Shortly before his death, Bogatyrev conducted a thorough analysis of Bell's Russian translations (as far as I remember, at the request of Bell himself - but this should be clarified with the people who were directly involved in this story) and only gross distortions and alterations of the author's meaning scored forty pages of short text! So, as a result of these distortions, "Through the Eyes of a Clown" turned from an anti-clerical novel into an anti-religious, atheistic one, and a number of other works turned out to be turned inside out.

Bell was furious and demanded that his works in this form should no longer be published in the Soviet Union. Naturally, this requirement of the author was not fulfilled, but this explanation with the indignant Bell spoiled a lot of blood for our bureaucrats. Not to mention the fact that the scandal turned out to be international and greatly damaged the reputation of "the Soviet school of translation - the best and most professional school in the world" (which, by the way, was close to the truth when it came to translating classics and "ideologically harmless" things). Many authors began to look cautiously to see if they were being disfigured too much in Soviet translations.

It should be borne in mind that the Soviet state tried to allow translators in whom it was "confident" to work not only with "ideologically slippery", but also with living Western authors in general. That is, translators went through the same screening process as all other citizens who, by the nature of their activities, had to communicate with people of the Western world. Exceptions were rare.

With a simple requirement to respect the author's text, Belle and Bogatyrev encroached on the foundations of the system, which meant a lot, including complete control over communication with Western people and over the form in which Western ideas should reach Soviet people.

When writers and translators begin to live according to the laws of the secret services (and most importantly, according to the laws of the "nomenklatura"), then they choose the ways of solving problems that are characteristic of the special services. And the fact that Bell announced publicly: one of the main goals of his arrival in the Soviet Union - to visit the grave of Konstantin Bogatyrev and bow to the ashes of one of his closest friends, could not but cause bitterness.

The above is quite enough to give an idea of the general background against which Heinrich Belle, his wife Annamari, their son Raymond and the wife of their son Gaide got off the plane to the international department of Sheremetyevo airport on Monday, July 23, 1979.

We, who were meeting, could see the customs desk, where the baggage of the Bellei family was checked. It was a real "shmon" with somewhat paradoxical results. Bell was seized from the last issue of the Spiegel magazine, which he read on the road, with a photograph of Brezhnev on the cover, concluding that if there is a photograph of Brezhnev, then something anti-Soviet must have been printed in the journal, but they did not notice and missed the book of Lev Kopelev, which had just been published in German, one of the then forbidden authors.

There was also a conversation that Heinrich Böll, then already a severe diabetic (and not only a diabetic - diabetes was only one, albeit the main, “flower” in a large bouquet of diseases, drugs for which sometimes mutually excluded each other), need to follow a strict diet, as well as a mandatory link in time between food intake and medication, as is the case with diabetics who are on insulin injections. The Bellei family not only doubted, but asked if Heinrich would be able to provide such food at the hotel or should he take care of insurance options?

The very next day, some plans had to be adjusted, because it became obvious that the authorities were trying in every possible way to demonstrate to Bell their dissatisfaction with his arrival and his plans, and the social circle scheduled for this visit, and resorted to quite strong psychological pressure, sometimes more like psychological terror. From the very morning, the Belley family was "led" openly, frankly trying to make Belli notice the surveillance. Black "Volgas" with antennas sticking out and pointing in their direction (so that there was no doubt that all conversations were being eavesdropped and recorded) constantly spun around. We went to Izmailovo, to my father's workshop, where Belle looked very carefully at the paintings that he had not yet seen. Belle struck with thoughtfulness and concentration when he peered into the next canvas, not even somehow immersing himself in the world of painting, but dissolving in this world, deep penetration into the images of the artist. At such moments, his resemblance to the wise old leader of the elephant herd became even more obvious.

From the workshop we went to have lunch at my father's apartment on Mayakovskaya, deciding after dinner to take a little walk along the Garden Ring, and from there move beyond the Taganka, see the Krutitsky Teremok and the Andronikov Monastery. Cars accompanied us all the time, they were on duty under the windows when we were having lunch, and when we walked along the Garden Ring to turn towards Presnya near Vosstaniya Square (now Kudrinskaya), a black Volga crawled very slowly along the edge of the sidewalk next to us with antennas extended and directed in our direction. This mockingly impudent surveillance became so unbearable that suddenly Vladimir Voinovich, who had been with us since the very morning, generally a very restrained person, abruptly cut off his conversation with Bell, jumped up to the Volga, jerked open its door and began to cover those who were sitting in it at all costs, shouting that it was a shame for the whole country and how shameful they were. Everyone was a little taken aback, and then my father and I managed to drag Voinovich away from the car. I must say, the people in the car all this time were sitting without moving and not looking in our direction.

The provocations were on the rise, and a typical example is how the troubles with the dietary and regimen nutrition necessary for Bell were exacerbated. On the very first morning, Bellei was “marinated” at the entrance to the National restaurant for almost an hour, as they say. They had full opportunity to see the empty hall and hear that the tables were not yet ready and therefore they could not be served. It should be noted that before going down to breakfast, Belle took his medication and took an insulin shot. So things could have ended badly on the very first day of Bell's stay in Moscow.

At some point, a man approached Bell and addressed him in German, saying that he was also a guest of the hotel, and asked if he was not mistaken in recognizing the famous writer. Belle replied that his interlocutor was not mistaken, and explained his situation. “Oh, so you don’t know the local rules yet!” replied the German, who recognized Belle. “You just need to know that as soon as the head waiter receives ten rubles, a table will appear at that very second.”

Just then Kopelev arrived, understanding the situation at first glance and taking Bellei with him.

Such decomposition in the Intourist system was observed at every turn. Workers in this area extorted money and bribes in a different form, wherever possible, spitting on the fear of any "authorities", before the possibility of running into a disguised KGB officer - for extortion from foreigners, they could heat up someone who got caught so that he would hiccup for a long time.

So, the Bellei family was going to visit Vladimir and Suzdal, and for this it was necessary to obtain special permission. Belle approached the lady in charge of issuing these permits, accompanied by Kopelev. The lady grunted gloomily that permits are issued in two weeks, that they still need to decide who to give them and who not, and that in general it is her birthday today, she is in a hurry and cannot do all this. Kopelev asked her to wait five minutes, quickly dragged Bell to the foreign exchange shop at the hotel and pointed at pantyhose, a bottle of perfume and something else. Belle hinted at the fact that it would be a brazen bribe to the point of indecentness and it was generally inconvenient to give a woman such rubbish from a stranger. Kopelev objected that everything was convenient and for her it was not rubbish. Five minutes later they returned to this lady, and Kopelev said with a charming smile: “Sorry, we didn’t know that it was your birthday. But let me congratulate you.” Five minutes later, they had a special permit for the trip of the entire Bellei family to Vladimir and Suzdal.

(Heinrich Ball)

(21.12.1917-16.07.1985)

Heinrich Böll was born in 1917 in Cologne and was the eighth child in the family. His father, Victor Böll, is a hereditary cabinetmaker, and his mother's ancestors are Rhenish peasants and brewers.

After graduating from the gymnasium, Heinrich Böll abandoned the idea of volunteering for military service and enrolled as an apprentice in one of the Bonn second-hand bookshops.

The first attempts at writing also belong to this time. However, his attempt to escape from reality and immerse himself in the world of literature was unsuccessful. In 1938, a young man was mobilized to serve his labor service in draining swamps and logging.

Böll ended up in Poland, then in France, and in 1943 part of it was sent to Russia. This was followed by four serious injuries in a row. The front moved west, and Heinrich Böll roamed the hospitals, full of disgust for war and fascism. In 1945 he surrendered to the Americans.

After captivity, Böll returned to the devastated Cologne. He again entered the university to study German and philology. At the same time he worked as an auxiliary worker in his brother's carpentry workshop. Bell returned to his writing experiences. In the August issue of the magazine "Karusel" for 1947, his first story "Message" ("News") was published. This was followed by the story "The train comes on time" (1949), a collection of short stories "Wanderer, when you come to Spa ..." (1950); novels "Where have you been, Adam?" (1951), "And I didn't say a single word" (1953), "A house without a master" (1954), "Billiards at half past ten" (1959), "Through the eyes of a clown" (1963); the novels Bread of the Early Years (1955), Unauthorized Absence (1964), End of a Business Trip (1966) and others. In 1978, Bell's collected works in 10 volumes were published in Germany. The writer's works have been translated into 48 languages of the world.

In Russian, Böll's story first appeared in the magazine In Defense of the World in 1952.

Böll is an outstanding realist painter. The war in the image of the writer is a world catastrophe, a disease of humanity that humiliates and destroys the individual. For a small ordinary person, war means injustice, fear, torment, want and death. Fascism, according to the writer, is an inhuman and vile ideology, it provoked the tragedy of the world as a whole and the tragedy of an individual.

Böll's works are characterized by subtle psychologism, revealing the contradictory inner world of his characters. He follows the traditions of the classics of realistic literature, especially F. M. Dostoevsky, to whom Böll dedicated the script for the TV movie Dostoevsky and Petersburg.

In his later works, Böll increasingly raises acute moral problems that grow out of a critical understanding of his contemporary society.

The pinnacle of international recognition was his election in 1971 as president of the International PEN Club and the awarding of the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1972. However, these events testified not only to the recognition of Bell's artistic talent. The outstanding writer was perceived both in Germany and in the world as the conscience of the German people, as a person who acutely felt "his involvement with time and his contemporaries", deeply perceived other people's pain, injustice, everything that humiliates and destroys the human person. Conquering humanism permeated every page of Bell's literary work and every step of his social activity.

Heinrich Böll organically does not accept any violence from the authorities, believing that this leads to the destruction and deformation of society. Numerous publications, critical articles and speeches by Böll of the late 70s and early 80s are devoted to this problem, as well as his two last major novels, The Caring Siege (1985) and Women Against the Background of a River Landscape (published posthumously in 1986).

This position of Böll, his creative manner and commitment to realism has always aroused interest in the Soviet Union. He repeatedly visited the USSR, in no other country in the world did Heinrich Belle enjoy such love as in Russia. "Valley of thundering hooves", "Billiards at half past nine", "Bread of early years", "Through the eyes of a clown" - all this was translated into Russian until 1974. In June 1973, Novy Mir completed the publication of a Group Portrait with a Lady. And on February 13, 1974, Bell met the exiled A. Solzhenitsyn at the airport and invited him home. This was the last straw, although Bell had been involved in human rights activities before. In particular, he stood up for I. Brodsky, V. Sinyavsky, Yu. Daniel, was indignant at Russian tanks on the streets of Prague. For the first time after a long break, Heinrich Böll was printed in the USSR on July 3, 1985. And on July 16, he died.

In the biography of Böll as a writer, there are relatively few external events, it consists of literary work, trips, books and speeches. He belongs to those writers who write one book all their lives - a chronicle of their time. He was called "the chronicler of the era", "Balzac of the second German republic", "the conscience of the German people".

LAST TIME IN THE USSR

The story of how Heinrich Böll came to us in 1979

Alexander Birger

This text formed the basis of the German documentary "Heinrich Böll: Under the Red Star", where Alexei Birger acted as a "through" presenter. The film premiered on German television on November 29, 1999, and in Moscow the film could be seen at the Cinema House on December 13, 1999 - it was presented from Germany at the Stalker Film Festival .