On a Sentence from "Siblings"
“Ich kann nicht behaupten, dass ich bis dahin eine innige Zuneigung zur Polizei gehabt hätte; ich mochte es nicht, wenn man meinen Ausweis überprüfte, und im Zug machte ich Szenen, wenn mein Gepäck kontrolliert werden sollte. Heute aber, als ich dem Sektorenschild vorüberging, hätte ich mich widerspruchslos anhalten und kontrollieren lassen: Dieser fremde, schwitzende junge Volkspolizist gehörte dazu, und er war mir befreundeter als mein Bruder Konrad.”
“I can’t say that I’d felt a strong affinity with policemen up until them. I didn’t like it when they checked my ID and on the train, I’d always make a scene when my luggage was inspected. But that day when I walked past the sector sign, if he’d stopped and inspected me, I wouldn’t have complained. This stranger, this young sweating policeman, belonged and he was more familiar to me than my brother Konrad.”
The narrator Elisabeth’s ambivalence toward the two states of Germany, and the rift it has caused between families, including her own, forms the spine of Brigitte Reimann’s novel Siblings. On the one hand, Elisabeth defends the tenets of socialism with passion, arguing bitterly with her elder brother Konrad over politics during a meeting in West Berlin after he has defected. On the other, she gets into a quarrel with an old painter and Party member after realizing he’s manipulating the system by forcing the plant to buy his art at inflated prices. Siblings follows this conflict back and forth. Elisabeth’s feelings toward authority figures in the GDR are not always positive. But toward Konrad, who represents the West—a man who has sold himself out for a promotion and to buy his wife expensive shoes—she knows exactly what she thinks. Elisabeth’s fluctuating feelings toward the respective states are refracted in her shifting relationships with these men.
This particular scene takes place right after Konrad’s defection. Their father has angrily ripped up a photo of Konrad and his wife at the transit camp in Marienfelde, chalking up his son’s defection to a debt owed to the East German state, who paid for Konrad’s training as an engineer. But Elisabeth’s tone wavers between grief and criticism; grief at losing Konrad and criticism because he’s sold out to capitalism. On Ku’damm, West Berlin’s main shopping drag that symbolizes everything Konrad has sacrificed his family for—consumerism, West Germany’s booming economy, Lux soap, Virginia tobacco and Borgwand cars—the divided siblings hammer out their conflicts. Elisabeth rushes out of Kempinski’s café, despite it being considered “not done” to make a scene inside such a refined place. Lost and disoriented, she tries to find her way back to the East-West checkpoint. When she finds the border and sees the policeman, her mood is colored by the falling-out she’s just had with her brother. Rather than being a representative of the state, and a figure she’s normally wary of, the guard becomes the embodiment of home. In the German, “Er gehörte dazu” comprises much of Elisabeth’s feelings about belonging, familiarity, and identity. Her attitude toward him suddenly softens because he and she belong to the same state. The word “dazu” is the equivalent of “all this” in English, and for that reason, I added emphasis to the verb “belong,” underscoring another central question here and throughout the novel: what makes us feel that we belong somewhere, or that a place is our home?
