I Didn’t Want to Leave Any Questions Unasked

In Concomitants, Johnson's account of his experiences as a writer in both East and West, Uwe Johnson describes the failure of a book he had set out to write in 1963 and in which he wanted to document the work of Fluchthelfer (»escape helpers«), who aided people in fleeing the GDR. For that purpose, he conducted interviews about the Why and How of their work with members of the Girrmann Group (who helped almost 1,000 people leave the GDR after the Berlin Wall had been built). These conversations were recorded on tape, but Johnson eventually abandoned the project. In Concomitants he explains tersely: »Yes – the tapes have been erased.«

But this is where Uwe Johnson was wrong: The five hours of interviews with Detlef Girrmann and Dieter Thieme have survived, because Johnson returned the tapes to them. And now the transcripts of those interviews have been published for the first time. They show in an exemplary way how Johnson, with insane precision, compiles the facts that he transfers into his writings; we can read about what fascinates him about the work of the Fluchthelfer. But beyond that, the actions of those people are described from an internal perspective for the first time. They describe how the group was formed, talk about their intentions, their methods of smuggling people out of the GDR, about their opinions on the GDR and West Germany, about their victories and defeats – guided by the questions of the curious reporter/author.