‘You know who that is, don't you?’
I smile to myself. That is the usual reaction I get when I show this photo to my German colleagues. They look at me as if they can’t believe what I’m showing them.
I nod. Yes, I know who it is and I can remember him very well even though this happened over forty years ago. Back then he was merely the mayor of West Berlin. Merely? He was the governing mayor and West Berlin was so important at that time.
I'd never met anybody so charismatic. He shook hands with every single one of us and for those few seconds you felt as if you and he were in charge of the whole world. His handshake was friendly and firm. His eyes looked right into you. His hair was silver, not grey and tired. Three years later he became President of the Federal Republic of Germany and later also President of a United Germany.
He didn't ask about the baby, due six weeks from then, but I sensed his respect for her and for me.
It had been a strange week. West Berlin was a political island back then. Police had come from Bavaria to quell riots. Many students came to study in West Berlin as they would then be exempt from military service. There was a shortage of accommodation. Some had squatted in a building that was now being cleared. So there were protests. On the first day of our conference we had to be locked into the building for our own safety and our first speaker had been held up by protesters. After a theatre visit we'd had to walk through crowds of young people who were picking up cobbles from the road and throwing them. It had seemed surreal to me. I'd floated through the scene protected by my pregnancy. It had all been frightening and a little bit exciting too. And definitely sinister.
‘These aren't students,’ hissed Rudi, one of the other delegates. ‘They're career agitators.’ That was later proved to be the case.
The atmosphere was different, though, in the Schöneberg town hall that evening. There was a calm about it. We were all in our finery. The building was elegant and we suspected even then that the wall would soon go and Germany would soon be reunified. The man gave us confidence.
Thank goodness for my beige silk dress. It was sophisticated. The fine pleats made it hang neatly and it was comfortable enough. I'd been torn between that and an Indian cotton dress. I'd asked the advice of another delegate earlier that day.
‘Can you come and help with something?’ I'd said in French. I think I'd alarmed her and her husband a little but she smiled when I explained I couldn't decide which dress to wear.
‘Oh well, that one has more fantasy about it.’ She pointed to the Indian cotton one. ‘Wear that for the party tomorrow. But the silk will be good for the mayor.’
She'd even asked her husband for a second opinion. He was an artist who painted pictures on ceramics, so he had a bit of an eye for such things. He'd agreed with her. So the beige silk it was.
We sat and chatted over coffee and cake. The others had gone into East Berlin for the afternoon. I knew that if I'd walked around for too long my ankles would swell. My two companions couldn't walk so well either. So we were conserving our energy.
‘You know, if men refused to fight there would be no more wars,’ she said.
He'd nodded and sighed. He'd belonged to the Resistance during World War II. The delegates at the conference were half World War II generation and half younger people. Born in 1951 I was just about younger. We were also half German nationals and half other nationalities with the proviso that you must speak German fluently. The title for the conference was ‘Brennpunkte der Weltpolitik’ - Burning Points of World Politics. We'd been discussing tension in the Middle East, the Cold War and the actual situation in Berlin. I was there because a colleague of my husband's, who also happened to be the father of two of the children I used to teach, had recommended me to it and it to me. I had to find someone to attend next year.
‘It's always young men doing politicians' dirty work, isn't it?’ I said.
‘They should put the women in charge,’ she replied.
Her husband just laughed. I had the impression that this was a frequent discussion between them. But she had a point. There was some way to go, though, before women would be in charge or even have that much of a say.
I'd found that out when I'd booked my flights. In those days you had to go to a travel agent. And we didn't have yearlong travel insurance then either so that had to be negotiated as well. I’d had to take along my eighteen-month old son. So, I was on the back foot in three ways: I was female, I was pregnant and I was in charge of a toddler who was approaching the terrible twos. Not quite the sort of person who would book a regular flight to a major European city for a conference.
The man who dealt with my request was a little older than me. There were first a few questions about the state of my pregnancy.
He'd eventually nodded his head. ‘Yes, you can still fly. You'll just have to hope there won't be any delays. You will be coming back just three days before you wouldn't be allowed to travel by plane anymore.’
I shrugged. ‘Well, I guess they have a good maternity hospital in West Berlin. I speak fluent German. It might be a bit of an adventure.’
His eyebrows rose somewhat. ‘And you realise that if you have to cancel because something goes wrong with your pregnancy or something happens in the family you will get no money back?’ He looked pointedly at my son.
‘Of course. But isn't that what the insurance’s for?’
‘Well, yes.’
That wasn't easy either. The facts that I was pregnant and I'd had high blood pressure during the previous pregnancy were big obstacles. We got there in the end but I can confirm that this encounter in a travel agent's on Fareham High Street was the complete opposite of the one in the Schöneberg town hall. That man had no charisma.
We came back from Schöneberg inspired; the mayor's speech had been amazing though I now can't remember what he said. But it was right for the time. And we'd all felt individually most significant when we'd shaken hands with him.
We were ordered down to the bar when we arrived back at the conference centre. Our conference leader tapped a glass and cleared his throat. ‘A certain sum of money has proved to be surplus and this certain amount has been put behind the bar. All drinks are free until that amount has been spent.’
Enjoy it they did. I had to limit myself to one glass of weak porter and thereafter water. There was now a deterioration of tone. Bets were taken. Would it be a boy or a girl? One delegate instructed me to take off my wedding-ring and pulled a hair out of my head. Ouch. My hair was quite short then. He then used the hair to dangle the wedding ring over my bump. It went round in a circle.
‘A boy. It will definitely be a boy.’
Many of the delegates believed the ‘science’. But quite a lot thought it was mumbo-jumbo and so voted for it being a girl. In the end fifty-two said boy and forty-eight said girl. Our daughter was born just four weeks later complete with long fingernails and hair. Mr Travel Agent take note. And since then I've been wary of votes that are fifty-two / forty-eight split.
The merriment continued and even I stayed up until after our host said ‘I'm afraid, ladies and gentleman, we have now reached that certain sum and you are welcome to stay on in the bar but you must now pay for your own drinks.’
We did for a while.
Eventually Christina and I made our way up the stairs to our rooms. ‘So what did you make of the Mayor of Berlin? Do you think he's the right man to become President of Germany?’ said the young German woman.
‘I sincerely hope so,’ I said.
‘So what were you doing shaking hands with Richard von Weizsäcker?’ says my German colleague. ‘And you're pregnant here as well?’
What difference that should make, I don’t know. But I say nothing about that. ‘I was at an international conference. You had to be fluent in German to be allowed to attend.’
My colleague nods. ‘Well you're certainly that. Where was this?’
‘Berlin 1981. The conference was about politics anyway. Of course, he was only the mayor of Berlin then.’
Nevertheless my colleague's eyes are growing wider. That's right. Know who you are dealing with. Working mother. Less common in the 1990s than it is today. And daring to travel to a politically isolated town whilst heavily pregnant? Important enough to meet your president? You have a woman to reckon with here.
‘You know about the speech he made in 1984? On Remembrance Day?’
I nod. That one I do remember. ‘We must not separate 8 May 1945 from 30 January 1933 ... Perhaps the biggest burden was borne by the women of all nations. Their suffering, renunciation and silent strength are all too easily forgotten by history. .... The genocide of the Jews is unparalleled in history.’ And so much more. Every bit of that speech makes sense. Charisma again.
‘Wow,’ says my colleague. ‘I didn't know you were so well connected.’
Well there you have it. I can see that the rest of this exchange week will run smoothly. That's why I've shown him the photo.
It's now also over twenty years since I had that conversation with that colleague. Yet I can quite honestly say I have never again met anyone with as much charisma as Richard Von Weizsäcker. Some might say it was down to hormones. You overreact when you're eight months pregnant. I'm not so sure.
The photo anyway is one of the best that has ever been taken of me and it confirms the story. It was taken by a professional photographer. It's monochrome. There is something very elegant about black and white photos. It is sharp and our features are clearly defined. You can see the spark that I felt travel between us.
It's only today as I've done a little more research on Weizsäcker that I realise he was born in Stuttgart. Does that explain it? I've come to know Stuttgart people as special and for me Stuttgart is an exceptional town. But that's for another article on another day.
About the author
Gill James is published by The Red Telephone, Butterfly and Chapeltown.
She edits CafeLit and writes for the online community news magazine: Talking About My Generation
She is a Lecturer in Creative Writing and has an MA in Writing for Children and PhD in Creative and Critical Writing
http://www.gilljameswriter.com
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