A REVIEW OF P14
AND AN ENCOUNTER WITH ITS AUTHOR, FRIEDRICH KRÖHNKE

The following review of German writer Friedrich Kröhnke’s eighth novel, P14, published by Ammann Verlag in Zürich in 1992, followed by an interview with the author, was published in issue 1 of Koinos Magazine, Amsterdam, Spring 1993, pp. 7-8.

An Encounter with Friedrich Kröhnke … on account of his latest novel
by Drs. M. Maassen

 ‘Once there was a little East German who  asks somebody what time it is, and then one thing led to another... ’ A portrait of Friedrich Kröhnke, author, but no  ‘paedo-activist’. About his interest in the meeting between the man and the boy, about the motives of a restless writer and, of course, his latest novel Pl4.

‘An unusual love story, an urban story too, which successfully grasps the atmosphere of P14 and Klubcola and the fierce poetry of Marzahn and Hohenschönhausen’. The Swiss publisher Ammann Verlag leaves no uncertainty in the press release on Kröhnke’s latest novel. P14 deals with a out-of-the-ordinary love relationship between Heinrich Kautz, thirty-plus, a lyric, casual labourer (and spitting image of the West German author), and fourteen year old David Fröhlich, an Ossi from the desolate East Berlin high-rise blocks Hohenschönhausen. David and Kautz met each other about a year before the fall of the Berlin wall at the Sport- und Erholungszentrum SEZ at the Leninallee, during one of Kautz’ forays through the streets and bars of East Berlin. The intimate chronicle of their relationship begins with David’s asking what time it is, and finally culminates in the building of a pederast love nest in the  ‘miserable housing in the workmen’s “warehouse” of Hohenschonhauser ’, according to the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung in a review of P14. The name P14 refers to a local social club of the Freie Deutsche Jugend (FDjot in popular speech), the former GDR youth movement. It’s the place where Kautz occasionally meets David and other boys from Hohenschönhausen for recreation. The story consists of apparently edited diary notes. It babbles on for long stretches. It seems as if the author wants to take great pains that his emotions don’t get the upper hand. Whereas many of the events he describes carry - or ought to carry - a quite dramatic tension, only in a few fragments can you sense that pent-up tension. A more emotional, more strained interpretation of the relationship between Kautz and David would have been conceivable, given the themes the author carries with him! Although the portrayal of the relationship is easily recognizable, the sexuality is being presented in a distant, almost even clinical way, which the author constantly builds into the story. It seems as if the author - that is, Kautz - observes himself. The frequent use of Berlin dialect and typical GDR expressions somewhat complicates the story for outsiders.

On the other hand this lends the book its enormous charm. Even the relative outsider can easily recognize the specific dimension of (a still divided) Berlin. It seems as if the subject has simply fallen into the writer’s lap: two inhabitants of a divided city meet one another as a gift from heaven and just as the city reunites Kautz and David begin to drift apart! Kautz’ ambivalence about the fall of the Wall comes as no surprise. It’s true that his boy friend is now able to cross the border to visit, but at the same time it’s patently obvious that Kautz’s GDR paradise rapidly loses its charm, which was its inaccessibility.

For the frequent Berlin traveller the  ‘Idyll Im Plattenbau’ (Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, 17 November 1992) is most recognizable. Besides, everybody who has ever had a relationship with a boy of David’s age knows very well that the story of Kautz and David couldn’t have possibly been made up. The storyline of the hunter who relatively settles down in a relationship with the ephebe he has been looking for is true to life. It’s odd how the  ‘bourgeois’ Frankfurter Allgemeine extols P14 because of its  ‘Suggestionskraft’, while the gay magazine MÄNNERaktuell disposes of the theme as an  ‘extreme improbability’ and a  ‘wish fantasy’, though nonetheless  ‘a nice read because of Kröhnke’s pregnant and beautiful style ‘.

It’s the Kröhnke paradox: renowned critics praise his P14 for its literary depth, while gays and pederasts are in their own way astonished or indignant. As Kröhnke put it in the Berlin monthly Siegessäule after the publication of P14:  ‘They (the pederast readers - MM) want to read the love story of a man and a boy over and over again, that has never been served to their satisfaction. For the reader, who wants very much to idealise, it is all too close to the so-called scene. The men in my novels, for instance, meet with their boys at the station, which is real life, but they do not want to read that. I want many people to read my books, indeed not just gays - who would like to learn something about their poor cousin, the pederast - but other people as well. The condition for reading my books is not so much a certain erotic orientation, but more the willingness to enjoy reading the literary portrayal of today’s reality.’

It’s time for a short but intense meeting with Kröhnke, who eagerly accepts my proposition to meet at Zoological Garden Station on New Year’s Eve.

After having first shown me that he is well acquainted with the local scene, he insists on taking the S-Bahn to my place in Marzahn. Marzahn is just as desolate an East Berlin highrise neighbourhood as Hohenschönhausen, though from a slightly earlier date. As yet nothing much came of my intentions to interview him. In between Tiergarten Station and the illustrious Alexanderplatz Kröhnke makes a frantic attempt to get to the bottom of my meeting with a boy from (indeed) Hohenschönhausen just after Die Wende (the turning point). During his questioning he jumps from left to right without allowing himself a moment’s rest. In the next couple of hours he paces up and down and changes couches and chairs every few minutes. Kröhnke’s restlessness resembles the way in which Kautz in P14 yo-yoes himself through Italy when he is insecure about what the near future will bring him.

Why this, in my eyes, highly voyeuristic interest in the meeting between man and adolescent?

Kröhnke:  ‘In every respect that is the exiting part of the story, much more so than the description of sexual details. Officially such relationships can’t exist, but nonetheless these  contacts happen everywhere in the world. I want to reflect in the greatest detail on how this seduction works’.

Do you call yourself a pederast?

 ‘I have no other option. After all it is the most appropriate term for a man who feels erotically attracted to adolescent boys. I don’t want to be depicted as a paedo-activist. In the first place I’m an artist, a writer. Though I do feel that I am the only pederast author who produces literature. The others are closeted, they lead a double life. ’ Hurriedly he adds:  ‘I am ten percent paedo and ninety percent somebody who writes in the coherence of German literature.’

Kröhnke detests the sort of paedos that write readers’ letters in their little club bulletins.  ‘Even when they defend themselves they are so helpless and stupid, mostly even more naive than the kids are, at least that’s how they behave.’ Infuriated, he snatches an issue of the defunct German magazine Jimmy ( ‘Jungen in Wort und Bild - Das Kultur-Magazin’). He holds up two pages with washed out black and white photographs of boys (mostly nude), headed with the words  ‘Knaben-Kunst’. He gets all worked up about the designation  ‘boy art’ over pictures from such third rate snapshot photographers - not to be compared with the true art that Kröhnke produces himself. He also gets angry at those pathetic gays who have the nerve to suggest during a lecture that Kröhnke’s work shows that he has never spent time with Strichjungen (boy prostitutes),  ‘...and that at a time when I was putting just about every free minute into this’. The arrival of Jens (12 years old, 7th floor) interrupts our dialogue. Kröhnke is fascinated. Within half an hour his common-or-garden camera with built-in flash has done its job. Like a hunted animal, he meticulously sets down the most beautiful moment, the meeting. The restlessness increases. The food doesn’t come to table quickly enough. The bar where the boys are calls. Would I like to come along to this special place? When I don’t jump at his proposal Krbhnke quotes from the Tagesspiegel ‘There is no risk in predicting a great future for this talent’. I have no reply to such a display of vanity. With P14 and the miraculous meeting the restless hunter has gotten himself a different kind of prey. Anyway, paradise can also turn into its opposite. P14 is now a meeting place of ultra-right youth...

By Friedrich Kröhnke (Darmstadt, 1956): Ratten-Roman (1986), KnabenKönig mit halber Stelle (1988), Leporello (1989) (all three Rosa Winkel Verlag, Berlin), Was gibt es heute bei der Polizei (1989), Grundeis (1990) and P14 (1992) (the last three by Ammann Verlag, Zürich).