RIP Fritz Teufel

[Kai Frederik Lorentzen]

Uwe Johnson wouldn't have needed Günter "Waffen-SS" Grass to kick out
people from his apartment. Actually Johnson was notorious for his alcoholic
outbursts of violence ... However, simple fact is that he was already in
New York City, working on his opus magnum "Jahrestage" (1891 pages) and
read about the whole thing in the New York Times ("die alte Tante", the
old aunt, as it is called in the novel) which also left a trace in the great
book - together with Hubert Fichte's "Die Geschichte der Empfindlichkeit"
the most important prosework in German in the 20th century's second half -
itself:
 
"Einmal nach Mitternacht ging sie, vorsichtig und den Blick geradeaus, durch
die heißen Nebenstraßen, vorbei an flüsternden Gruppen und einer Schlägerei
um eine betrunkene oder bewusstlose Frau, auf den Broadway, der jetzt dicht
mit Polizisten, Prostituierten, Rauschkranken bestanden war, und kaufte die
früheste Ausgabe der New York Times und schlug sie auf unter der Acetylenlampe
am Giebel des Kiosks und fand die Nachricht, die nun wahrer war als die 
reißerische Überschrift, die sie den Nachmittagsblättern nicht hatte glauben
mögen (das war, als Frau Enzensberger in Berlin den Stellvertreter des
Präsidenten mit Bomben aus Puddingpulver erledigen wollte)."
 
Uwe Johnson: Jahrestage. Aus dem Leben von Gesine Cresspahl [Four volumes, 
1970/83]. Frankfurt am Main 1988: edition suhrkamp, p. 15.
 
http://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Uwe_Johnson
 
 
Apart from that: Möge ihnen beiden, Fritz und Uwe, die Erde leicht sein!
 
Kai       

----------------------------------------
> Date: Wed, 7 Jul 2010 10:51:14 +0200
> Subject: RIP Fritz Teufel
> From: ottosell at googlemail.com
> To: pynchon-l at waste.org
>
> Fritz Teufel (17. Juni 1943 in Ludwigsburg - 6. Juli 2010 in Berlin)
> http://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fritz_Teufel
>
> the guy who threw pudding-bags at Hubert H. Humphrey....
>
> - - - - -
>
> The "Pudding Assassination"
>
> As the domestic commune life was too boring, the communards decided to
> turn their internal experience into actions.
>
> The first of these was the "pudding assassination" of US
> Vice-President Hubert Humphrey who was scheduled to visit Berlin. On
> the evening of April 2, 1967, the communards met in Johnson's
> apartment with about 20 other people whom they knew from
> demonstrations. Kunzelmann presented his plan of throwing smoke bombs
> in the direction of the Vice President on the occasion of the state
> visit. None of the others besides Langhans wanted to participate.[3]
>
> Police files indicate that the planned attack was revealed by a secret
> service agent, since eleven students were arrested by officials of
> Division I (Political Police) on April 5, 1967. They were supposed to
> have met under conspiratorial conditions and planned attacks against
> the life or health of the American Vice President, Hubert Horatio
> Humphrey, by means of bombs, plastic bags filled with unknown
> chemicals or with other dangerous tools, such as stones.
>
> Those arrested were Ulrich Enzensberger, Volker Gebbert, Klaus
> Gilgenmann, Hans-Joachim Hameister, Wulf Krause, Dieter Kunzelmann,
> Rainer Langhans and Fritz Teufel.[4] The tabloid Bild's headline was
> "Humphrey to be assassinated", the weekly Zeit spoke of "Eleven little
> Oswalds". Even the New York Times featured a report on the dangerous
> plan of eight communards to attack the Vice-President with pudding,
> yoghurt, and flour. Because of this negative publicity, Uwe Johnson
> hastily asked his friend and neighbor Günter Grass to evict the
> students from his apartment. The next day, the communards were
> released and gave their first press conference – they had become
> celebrities, while the press and police officials had lost face in the
> public eye. The publisher Axel Springer henceforth called the members
> of Kommune 1 "communards of horror".
>
> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kommune_1
>
>
> http://taz.de/1/leben/koepfe/artikel/1/der-humorist-der-68er-ist-tot/
>