When you go voluntarily, it’s harder to get in than to get out.1 After the brutal atmosphere of high grates, iron gates, cold red walls, bars, and cobblestones had merged anxiety with my curiosity, I rang thirteen times at the prison gate, each time more forcefully and longer, before a somewhat pasty-looking individual wearing a cap and uniform opened the guard’s gate and ushered me inside the prison. Then someone with a sabre stamped my intake form and said quietly, since it was also meant for me to hear: it's two o’clock. It was only ten to two, but seeing as officials are never wrong, I tried to convince myself that I was mistaken.
The intake cell that I was then permitted to see was one metre wide by two and a half metres long. It was intended to hold one person and held, at the time of my arrival, no fewer than – six! But I viewed that as a sign of the good nature of the authorities since the stay in the cell, which can often last five hours, is for many the last chance to smoke the rest of their tobacco or have a final casual conversation – a pressing need for all civilised people.
Next to me sat an attentive man who graciously advised that my attempt to smuggle in tobacco and matches was pointless since I didn’t know how it needed to be done. It’s probably an official secret because he didn’t tell me the right way to do it. He then told me that he was serving a sentence of four years, had already been there for three, and was just now returning from an eight-day furlough. Judging by his good mood, he didn’t seem to mind. I showed due admiration and mentioned casually, quietly, that I had the sad misfortune of only being able to stay for a single day. “Then you won’t even get a spoon,” he replied disparagingly, and I felt obliged to feel ashamed of myself.
More detailed information was interrupted by the arrival of new guests: two Poles who had received 16 days for food theft and passport fraud and had been mistaken by the patrolman for Italians. Perhaps for this reason they received a portion of lentils at such a late hour. It was from them that I learned how Taylorism was applied to eating. They scooped the lentils into their throat at a frenzied pace without once touching their lips to the spoon. Using their eyes as guides, the food was flung with great haste and skill from the pot straight down into their stomachs. It soon became clear that removing them from the streets had been necessary; seconds later, they demanded a second portion. I imagined them on the street, utensils in hand, attacking a horse and devouring it alive, harness and all. Had they been vegetarians during the summer, they surely would have overgrazed the entire greenbelt.
I turned my attention to a chinless young man whose predatory gaze indicated intense German nationalist sentiments. He fit into the new situation easily, as a man-of-the-world who would only be there a few days, as it were, addressing us immediately in a familiar manner. He made an effort to entertain us with a few jokes and passed around mediocre-quality cigarettes. When he ran out of those, everyone ignored him, and he withdrew sullenly into himself. He stared at the tips of his boots and sighed, which was supposed to convey that he felt abandoned and longed to be in a cell with merrier companions. I wished it for him; the poor guy was so deflated that he would have cried otherwise.
In the bathroom, located in the basement, you could simultaneously follow the circulation path of the warm water. You sat at the source, so to speak, at a lucky combination of a steam room and bath. People saved their soap for this. While I blocked the powerful jet spray from a defective showerhead with both hands to avoid being hit, two guards inspected the quality of my clothing. They felt and pulled at the fabric, stitching, and pant cuffs. In doing so, they happened to find a few grams of tobacco and some cigarette papers that I had absent-mindedly misplaced in my shirt. Except for a handkerchief, all pockets were emptied and the contents logged and locked away.
Objects share the same fate as the individuals who possess them. Somewhat relieved, I was hauled into the inspector’s office and made to present part of my life story. I lied so convincingly that the inspector was fascinated with me. Afterwards, I was shown the four wings of the building, which all looked alike, and encountered four guards who I mixed up as well. Each in turn took an interest in my name, background, and arrival. In one of the guard rooms, a note over the desk seemed to shout at whoever was sitting there and immediately caught my eye: “Attention – Cell 69 – Life Sentence!” About as specific and impersonal as “Danger – High Voltage – Risk of Death!” Such splendid signs are the lifeblood of all anxious citizens. After my personal data had been recorded in seven different places for what seemed like an eternity, I sat in a cell on an upper floor.
As a nonviolent offender, I had the benefit of being in a cell with eight beds and six occupants. Apparently, there were no living quarters exempt from confiscation here either. I naturally found this very funny since I’m not a loner and hate silence above all. I’d like to take a stab at describing the furnishings of the room, which was built according to the laws of extreme frugality.
The mattresses atop the iron bunk beds measure an entire one centimetre thick. What’s more, they are supremely hard. Some businesses tout hard mattresses as having health benefits. If this is true, then the mattresses in Klingelpütz are surely capable of raising the dead. The blankets are old and shabby, as are the people they are meant to warm. I guess that’s the way it has to be. Stools and tables, whose splinters are easily broken off, provide the perfect place to clean your fingernails. That’s everything the state provides in the way of interior design skills. Yet the people here are content to recall the redemptive slogan: Work More – Use Less! Here, the saying, “Everyman His Own Football” is overused. Rather, everyman his own toilet. With seven of us in the cell, we considered ourselves fortunate to have two of the essential tin bowls, both with a wide rim and poorly closing lid, to take care of the business which eventually must be taken care of. The unpleasant smell could, with all good intentions, be swapped for a splendid bout of pneumonia by opening the window. Our meal came at six in the evening. Describing this is worthwhile and easy when you consult a prison cookbook: “Slowly boil a hectoliter of water and add approximately a quarter pound of the lowest quality grits. Stir and mix thoroughly, and don’t bother adding any seasoning or fat.”
Among us was a man who called himself Browers, a specialist (carnival barker) by trade, who was ill. According to the medical regulations, he received the best treatment. He had earned it too; his uniqueness in retrospect consisted of a thirteen-year stretch served in a wide variety of German prisons. He was the subject of a great many stories. At one time he had been a spirited and shrewd person who had had too much of everything, raked in the money, grew cocky, and soon got into trouble with the law. Now he was emaciated, his feet had shrunk, yet he had not lost his sense of humour. He’s one of a kind.
My “übermensch” (who had the bed above mine) told me the following story about him: one time, Browers badly wanted to be hospitalised. Out of pure compassion, the doctor refused, and Browers, upset, made a bet with him that he would achieve his goal regardless. They wagered ten cigarettes. The next morning, as he was drinking his coffee, Browers scalded his bare feet with the boiling coffee kettle and burned both legs. Admitted into the hospital immediately, he had won the bet. The doctor lost no time sending him the ten cigarettes.
Now that he was ill again, he received, as I’ve already mentioned, the “first form.” To prepare for this, the recipe described above was used, this time with only half a hectoliter of water in the kettle. Browers tested it and strangely enough was disgusted. “Inspector, Inspector,” he called into the long hallway, “bring me the doctor, bring me that clown, he told me he wants to put me back on my feet and look what he’s done, bring him over here so I can smack him upside the head with the treatment form.” But his shouts grew quieter, the door slammed shut, the cell went dark, and Browers breathed vengeance.
I remembered the piece of dry bread that I’d shoved under my pillow, an excellent means to quell my inordinate hunger. It certainly beats callisthenics. My eyes focused on what had to be the most precious inscription of the twentieth century: Klingelpütz’s “Institute for Soul Searching and Staying Slim.” I was slowly losing my grip on reality, and not until I heard Browers’ voice in the middle of the night was I pulled out of my trance. “Children, I’ve just thought of a wonderful joke,” he exclaimed in a manner we found refreshing and appeasing. As he told it, we doubled up with laughter, and then he again began to moan and groan: “Guard, this is the end for me. Guard, I’m dying, you can’t just leave me here to croak like a dog.” He began gasping for breath for minutes on end, “I’m dy-y-y-y-y-ing!” Alarmed, the guard ran to the keyhole: “What’s wrong with you, be quiet!” But Browers kept on wheezing: “I’m dy-y-y-y-ing!” He really seemed to be getting weaker and weaker. You could hear the guard’s concern through the cell door. God damn, what should he do? He wasn’t permitted to enter the cell alone, certainly not one that housed seven men. That was too risky and against regulations. But the guard was good-natured at heart. We were beside ourselves with laughter. One of us let out a snort, but Browers drowned it out with his loud, fevered voice: “Guard, get me away from these pigs; they think my misery is funny. Aren’t you ashamed of yourselves, what kind of people are you!” But the guard had already realised that we’d been pulling his leg and went away cursing.
The next morning, after we’d enjoyed the coffee which nonetheless tasted like diluted ink, I was put into the discharge cell for my remaining hours. Here I met a Mr. Müller, who was also waiting to be discharged and with whom I struck up a friendship while he shared his prison experiences with me. I’ll let him speak for himself: “This Browers is admired precisely because of his utter nonsense. A newcomer would never be so bold as to do such a thing; he would immediately be thrown into a padded cell. This is a horrible room without anything in it and so narrow that you cannot move. The cell is so bitterly cold that it is impossible to avoid getting sick. Beatings take place at night, and a complaint is out of the question since it all happens without any witnesses. Three days without any nourishment makes this torture even worse, so much so that the greatest rebel is made small and pathetic.”
I interjected that the guards who dealt out such punishments must be excessively brutish and bestial creatures, to which he replied that that wasn’t it. I let him go on: “Most of the guards already have ten years of service behind them and as a result have become indifferent towards everything. They deal out blows without getting worked up, as something natural, something necessary. This is customary, as long as you don’t cause them trouble, that is, if you don’t forget your place, you won’t be ill-treated, perhaps even get ahead and become a trusty, freed from the stupefying cell and soul-crushing work that the prisoners are forced to do in all kinds of trades and workshops for mere pennies. Being a trusty is pleasant, making sure each day that the building remains spotless. You can roam freely within the building and start a brisk trade based on the prisoners’ needs and desires. This involves nothing more than having a face that the guard likes. The ones who have it best are the barbers, who shave, or rather flay the prisoners, at the state’s expense (prison institutions are self-supporting, sometimes with a profit). They are very skilled, but always in a hurry. The prisoners are mostly overweight, something that creeps up on them. First off, they become emaciated, like skeletons, then they bloat up from all the strange food. Because they don’t get any exercise, they breezily ask for another pair of pants every month without giving it any thought.”
“Sad, sad,” I remarked, inexperienced as I was. “It could be lousier,” my cellmate replied, attempting to cheer me up. “A few weeks ago, an older man was released from here who was completely unable to get his bearings on the outside and came back asking for an extended sentence. When that didn’t work, he left feeling sad and dejected. These are strange folks; some can’t even bring themselves to panhandle, but what else can you do on the outside?”
“Do some actually escape?” I asked. He explained how difficult that would be: “Every morning after the banging on the bars has woken us, the cells are searched. At night we have to put our clothes out in the hall, along with the footstool. These security measures are a joke, seeing as you can’t escape without outside help, and in that case you could flee in just your nightshirt since your friends on the outside will certainly have clothing for you.”
My cellmate rolled a cigarette from chewing tobacco that had been used by at least three other people, while I retrieved the matches I’d hidden in my boot. Unfortunately I’d broken the heads off all of them and not one would ignite. An overly eager trusty, to whom I promised the tobacco that had been confiscated upon arrival, passed us a light through the hole in the door.
At nine o’clock, I viewed through the open window the prisoners’ “twenty-minute walk.” They were freezing: it was a cold morning and their prison garb thin. They tried to warm themselves by walking quickly around and around, as if on a carousel, happy and lost in thought. Now and then they’d glance at us, a stare full of contempt for this whole senseless form of punishment. They looked ridiculous with their arms folded behind their backs, like wooden horses walking silently in circles. Because this had been forced on them, society’s attempt at reform seemed all the more laughable. They expressed this in the only possible way. While I continued to look into these mocking, disdainful, tormented and defiant, and often grotesque faces, trying to suss out their secrets, the guard’s voice shook me out of my reverie. He ordered me to stop looking at the prisoners. Another of their incomprehensible regulations.
The final hours crept by. At midday I received a litre of food: sauerkraut with peas and tasteless bacon, small cubes of which surfaced from time to time. It tasted like sodium bicarbonate; it was impossible to even eat half of it. Afterwards, the guard led me to the basement bathing area. I had to completely disrobe, and my clothes were searched a second time. For the final half hour before my release, I was made to wait in a private cell.
The most interesting thing about the cells are the windows. Oxygen equipment would render the same service. Iron bars block them from opening more than a tiny bit. A narrow sliver of sky beckons through the crack, like the blue hair ribbon that little girls wear. It’s inevitable that this sliver does nothing but arouse longings and create new anxieties.
Under the cot I found a box that had been addressed to a prisoner by either very close friends or an extremely understanding bride and was decorated with pictures of would-be beautiful movie stars who displayed a decent amount of cleavage. The box had a double bottom that had been cut through and now lay open. It had probably hidden cigarettes that presumably ended up in the hands of whoever the pictures were meant to please – in order to envelop his dreams in smoke. His was evidently the hand that had scratched out the philosophical poem in the corner of the cell, representative of prison poetry, as follows:
Here lies a pale lad on the cot
Through his mind runs the following thought
You are lost and impoverished
Shunned and grown lonely
Your friends avoid contact
Your family’s home is all you have left
Yet bear all this bravely, with patience
For everything are women exclusively blamed.
In the other corner I discovered an exceptionally primitive calendar. Someone had drawn boxes in pencil that divided the two years left to serve into months, weeks, days, hours, and minutes. And underneath, in giant, joyful lettering: “Just another hour and fifty-two minutes, then finally freedom!!” – a cry that must have roused all the desire, longing, and joy within him.
The guard let me out. I once again walked down the cold path between the walls and left, without so much as a farewell, this place that was meant to be “correctional.” The door shut behind me with a thud.
Correctional? – The question forces its way into my brain.
Correctional? – Written on my certificate of release in bold letters are the words: “Prison!”
Serialised in Kampfruf, February 1930; this essay may have also appeared in Kölner Tageblatt, 1925