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My Latest Encounter with Bernhard

from Bernhard's Social Worlds

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  28 April 2017

Mark M. Anderson
Affiliation:
Professor in the Department of Germanic Languages and Literatures, Columbia University, New York, NY
Paola Bozzi
Affiliation:
Assistant Professor of German University of Milano, Italy
Stephen D. Dowden
Affiliation:
Professor of Germanic Languages, Chair at Brandeis University, Boston
Ruediger Goerner
Affiliation:
Professor of German LiteratureSchool of Languages and European Studies, Aston University, Birmingham, UK
Gitta Honegger
Affiliation:
Professor of German, Arizona State University
Jonathan Long
Affiliation:
Lecturer in German, University of Durham, UK.
Dagmar C. G. Lorenz
Affiliation:
Professor of German at the University of Illinois, Chicago
Willy Riemer
Affiliation:
Associate Professor of German Literature and Film, University of Delaware
Wendelin Schmidt-Dengler
Affiliation:
Professor of German Literature, Chair at the University of Vienna, Austria
Andrew J. Webber
Affiliation:
Senior Lecturer in German, Fellow of Churchill College Cambridge
Matthias Konzett
Affiliation:
Associate professor of German at Yale University
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Summary

Ifought with a police officer. Once again after a long time. Like in the demonstrations from the 1970s, I felt the heavy, rough cloth of the police uniform. And the arms underneath it. The arms that kept pressing my companion against the wall.

My companion had said to the police officer, “you're not going to talk with me in this manner,” since the officer had kicked him in the ass and yelled at him “Get up” in the tone of a military boot camp. Instead of replying to his “you're not going to talk with me in this manner,” the police officer had immediately grabbed my companion and pressed him against the wall. Instantly. Without a word. I began pulling at the officer. I threw myself over the arms of the officer so that he would let go of my companion. It looked like a real fight. The two men were already heavily entangled with one another. I was hungry. I wanted to go out and eat. I didn't fell like spending the night at the police station. Statements and the like. And how they inflate themselves in front of you, making it clear to you that you are all alone with them. I wanted to leave. Leave the police officer behind who, as anyone could tell, was trying to make out what type of people we were. And whether he should really lunge at us. Or not. After long indecision. The police officer couldn't make up his mind. We finally got away. I pulled my companion away. Dragged him down the stairs from the balcony on the left in the Akademietheater. My companion is from Frankfurt. He does not know the power of the civil servant's oath here. The police officer had a lot of gold on his uniform. There were no witnesses. The man in the coat check area had immediately disappeared. Escape was the best solution. Particularly because of dinner.

This whole incident happened after a performance of Thomas Bernhard's Claus Peymann kauft sich eine Hose und geht mit mir essen at the Akademietheater. Recently. It must have been a so-called Theaterpolizist who responded to the sentence “you're not going to talk with me in this manner” with violence.

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Publisher: Boydell & Brewer
Print publication year: 2002

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