We are in the year 1968. Roland was not yet eighteen and went to school at Augsburg Jakob-Fugger Grammar School. There were still 9 years of grammar school (G9),which means I was still in the year preceding graduation, which was basically the 8th year but called 12th form. And we did not yet have “Kollegstufe”, even though you were already allowed to “drop” some subjects at the end of this year.
Those were the days when yours truly and his friends saw to it that they were – if possible – never seen without a cigarette in public. And in the evening, the beer from “Evi” at the Rehak (that is the pub on Augsburg Bahnhofstrasse), or – if you decided you wanted to be an intellectual – the red wine in the Republican club were a “must do”.
During the summer days, we spent our time in the “family public swimming pool” and always got quite a nice sun tan. At night, however, we tried by all means to go and see the US GI-s in their clubs (Hank’s at Oberhausen, Playboy at Pfersee). They were mostly African-American, because in our region, the US army was stationed. The army was basically “black”.
Early in the morning, when we stepped out of the smoky pubs as the sun rose and were greeted by the fresh air, we looked rather pale, regardless of all the nice sun tan.
At school, we had presentation days. Today, they would probably be called project days. In the 12th form, one of the spring presentation days was in German and/or history. It was about literature.
I was not particularly interested in the “German”. Kleist and Schiller remained something I did not know what to do about. We were impressed by Günter Grass as a personality, but I kept my distance from “Blechtrommel”, “Katz und Maus” and “Hundejahre”. I felt that the teachers did not understand me, because they gave me the impression of grading my essays without ever having understood them.
Well, history was a little more to my liking. I also read a lot, because I very much enjoyed literature. However, my taste was restricted to American and Russian Science Fiction on the one side and Bertrand Russell, Albert Camus and many French authors on the other side. I very much loved those.
So here we were in the 12th form, doing a presentation day on “history and literature”. Even at the time, I liked to give presentations. But I was in no mood to do any research. Theoretical interpretations of ideas written down by very clever third parties were something I was fed up with. Besides, I was not sure if I was going to find an exciting topic worth talking about. Consequently, I decided to make up a story. My entire presentation was a fiction of mine from A to Z.
I created a Jewish-Arabian author named Tnuat Ben Dati. He was a great artist in the history of the Middle East. In my concept, he had written desert poems and prose during the 19th century. Unfortunately, like many myths, the works Tnuat Ben Dati had slipped into obscurity. But he would soon enjoy a re-awakening. My reasoning was that a collection of all his works was going to be published in the “Verlag 2001” (I think that is what it was called).
It was a time when nonsense lay heavy in the air.
My friend, our history spook Harald Wunderle, also had to give a presentation. As a general rule, his presentations were always the best. So he was an undisputed expert. Later, Harald went on to become the youngest SPD Augsburg City Council member ever elected. He specialized in the urban redevelopment of Augsburg. Today, he lives “Im Sack” and is a famous medical practitioner in the Fugger Town. His opinion was that my essay was not going to go down well. The source citation alone was enough to give him doubts.
But since you can make those up just as easily as all the rest, I offered him a bet. We agreed on the then maximum and ultimate wager – one crate of Riegele.
During my preparations, Roland Dürre became the hero of Arabian literature: Tnuat Ben Dati. I felt the dryness of the desert, the cold at night and the heat in the day. I enjoyed the solitude in the tent and the love of the desert. After all, when I had been young I had read all the Karl May books. So it was not really difficult. I even managed to come up with a few impressive texts and two short poems. Unfortunately, they got lost. Poet’s luck.
I still remember how my presentation began:
On a , the , the young Tnuat Ben Dati, son of and was born under the starry heaven of the desert …
I also remember that it was quite hard to find the right weekday for the day I had chosen. These were the particulars I was not going to let others find me mistaken about. Finding the current events taking place at the time in Europe, however, was trivial, even though at the time we had neither Wikipedia nor computers.
Well, the presentation went quite well. Only Harald kept asking uncomfortable questions, thus making me perspire. Consequently, we got deep into an inconvenient discussion. In the end, our teacher interfered, contributing with his own knowledge (or rather: lack of knowledge).
He announced that details I had mentioned were correct, which, actually, surprised and confused me. …
🙂 Apparently, Tnuat Ben Dati actually existed! And my teacher knew about him!!!!
Again, a teacher had lost some of his standing with me. Telling me I was technically correct with a story I had totally made up as literature and history seemed rather amoral to me. Well, as time went by in my – as I see it: rather long – life, I, however, made experiences that were far worse.
Thus, I learned a lot of evil (or good?) things at school that served me in life. Among other things, I learned that you can actually make quite a bit of headway with a little bluffing and fake. And I am not denying that there were times when I made good use of this knowledge.
The crate of beer was consumed by the hard core classmates during the Feast of Corpus Christi night at the Kissinger Bagger Lake. Along with a few others crates of beer. We were no longer able to walk in the procession on the next morning. This is how our atheist existence began.
RMD
(Translated by EG)
P.S.
I looked up Tnuat Ben Dati in Wikipedia – and did not find him! Otherwise, there is not very much I made up about this story.
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