For dinner there’s eel soup, a Hamburg specialty. Piping hot and fatty, it’s prepared only in the summer, unfortunately. Served with Rhine wine. Conversation wanders from one topic to another—that is, everything that comes up here or there is taken up by Witte and dispensed with apodictically. The Economic Miracle, for example: Rönnekamp (cynically) voices the opinion that it could be attributed to the Allies’ stupidity. “What did you expect? If you bomb a country flat and then equip” (he says “eekvip”) “its rebuilt industries with the most modern machinery, it’ll outstrip other countries with their out-of-date paraphernalia.” Witte sends a shot across his bow, “But without our German work ethic it wouldn’t be possible. Machinery isn’t everything. What counts is human material. I’d like to see if others could do what we’ve done if we’d ironed them flat.” Once, Witte’s sister Wilma joins the conversation. They’re talking about the revival of horse shows. Count Lentzau-Wilmersbüttel describes with indignant giggles the outfits of the farmers’ sons who jump the course these days (and admittedly, perform equestrian miracles) instead of the gentlemen jockeys of bygone days. All the more shocking are their violations of etiquette, especially when one is trying to rebuild social life. “Instead of a riding stock, these people wear white bow ties as if they were going to a farmer’s wedding. And then, you don’t see any properly made boots anymore. These people wear rubber boots with their red coats!” Lying in wait, his giggle breaks forth with a highly indignant snort. One of Witte’s younger nieces, obviously emancipated, declares that boots are a Freudian symbol. “Boots? A Freudian zymbol? How zo?” asks Rönnekamp incredulously. Aunt Wilma’s stern warning can be heard from the lower end: “Not at the table, if you please!”

(Attention! Abel!)

Vergangenheitsbewältigung—coming to terms with the past—is also brought up. Now Rönnekamp gets on his soapbox, frequently seconded and supported by Witte. For all his affected Sherlock-Holmesian coldness, even Rönne can’t completely conceal his indignation. It is directed at the falsification of history now under way with the apparently universal assent “of every Tom, Dick, and Harry.” It’s not a question of the fact that every single German claims never to have been a Nazi, although the number of former Party members stands in “appzolutely appaling contradiction” to that claim; that, says Rönne, is all too transparently an act of cowardice and lack of character, in a word, of opportunism, and nobody believes it anyway. It is indeed a historically misleading falsification. What caused it—and, if one will, what even excuses it—was the depiction of National Socialism as being from the beginning the embodiment of everything evil and inhuman. At first, National Socialism did not appear to be a criminal movement at all. On the contrary, it was full of promise. (Witte: “Absolutely right!”) The violent acts of the early years were just part of the times. The whole epoch was a priori inclined to violence. So bands of marauding SA men beating up opponents were the excesses of a rowdiness potentially lurking in any human community and especially virulent at that time. If their violence took place with the overtly malicious assent of many people, that was attributable to a population generally coarsened and embittered by the aftereffects of the First World War; the collapse after 1918 was much more harrowing than after 1945. “Back then, after the shock of the first genocide, the old order was destroyed from the ground up.” (Interjection by Witte: “Very true! The citizenry was completely disoriented!”) “In the meantime, from 1919 to 1939” (Note: John says those years were just a ceasefire in the same conflict), “no stability was created. On the contrary: every damaged institution that continued to exist was robbed of its last shred of”—shrett off—“credibility.” Again, Witte agrees: “Totally congruent with what I’ve always said.” “It’s patently obvious,” Rönne continues, “that in such an epoch of uncertainty and the re- and devaluation of all values, the promise of order had to strike a spark, no matter who claimed to produce that order. Of course, the Reds didn’t do that. On the contrary: their program was to continue the destruction of the old capitalistic system. So only the conservative forces remained.” (Witte: “Just like today!”) With the diabolical element at the heart of every political manipulation, Rönne says, the National Socialists understood just how to present even the excesses of their goon squads as a service to the restoration of order.