Translated material
Police
Kurt Tukholsky is a famous journalist at the time of the Weimar Republic in Germany. There are still no books in Russian
Kurt Tukholsky is a famous journalist at the time of the Weimar Republic in Germany, in the twenties and thirties. Hundreds of his texts were published in the weekly Die Weltbühne - a democratic publication, which fiercely, consistently and desperately defended the values of freedom, law, humanism, pacifism and human life. For Die Weltbühne and Tukholsky there were no forbidden topics: they criticized politicians, regardless of their party affiliation, dragged the scenes of power and the backstage affairs of the government. They were sued for “insulting religious feelings” and for “state treason”. But Tukholsky could not be stopped: this tireless man with disheveled hair and eternal tube in his mouth wrote a lot, quickly, easily, sharply and fun.
There are still no Tukholsky books in Russian. He was not translated or published in the USSR - an antimilitarist, an anti -fascist, a democrat and pacifist Tukholsky did not fit into Soviet dogmas. Now he, too, does not fit into the new official program, or the stupefying mainstream of show and paralyter. But it should be read, from chaos and the collapse of the first German republic, he also addresses us. When Hitler came to power, Tukholsky emigrated to Sweden. In 1935, he committed suicide. Its texts did not die out and did not go into history, as is often the case with current journalism associated with its time. They are still alive. Let Kurt Tukholsky have his own personal section in this subscription. Tukholsky
This is what the police look like on our continent.
In a large gray building with untidy corridors, people in the uniform are sitting and incredibly dusty clerks. All, without exception, police officers in the Middle European countries passed an impolite exam against the service. A police official with an unmistakable instinct speaks and does what he creates difficulties for people, which they do not expect, that violates their plans. Its tongue is harsh and harsh; If he does not pounce on you immediately, then only because he does not have time. The father of the family, a citizen and taxpayer crosses the threshold of a police station and immediately understands that there, outside, he led illegal, not quite permitted, too free life - the student’s life at a break. Only here, in these walls, does he understand what order is. It decreases in size, he no longer has rights, he does not mean anything, he simply does not exist anymore. Unprecedented crimes are in the air; The painful feeling that he did not commit them and thereby contradicts the hopes of officials, overwhelms the visitor. But first he must wait.
The police canceled the very concept of time. Do not say how many hours are wasted in the police areas of Europe. The poor subject needs the state - or it is better to say this: the state needs him for childish games - and therefore, for starters, he falls into arrest and hatches his papers in the corridors.
Days all over the civilized world are stupidly and irritably await hundreds and thousands of people who need to get into the office of the Grand Police-Police. Everything seems to be taken into account when erecting buildings for the police, but not that people will come here.
How they break through all these rooms, transitions, passport control points, passing - their personal business. Yes, this disrespect is fraught with deep educational significance: the visitor must feel that he is a thief, a miserable creature, an empty place. And the fact that he is not planted immediately behind bars is the best that can happen to him.
Two lost in anticipation of the hour - for which one could write one hundred lines of the Odyssey, make money on the exchange, make a child, go to nature. Nothing is done. We must wait. Then - beat, heart! - The powerful appears.
The powerful spreads the atmosphere of rudeness and poorly washed body around itself. The warlike spirit and unwashed legs give this person an inexplicable aroma.
Light, immediately captured by the careful eyes of the visitor nod, mean: "What do you need?" The answer sounds. The first law of the police: "No." From the room out. The second police law: “No. You should first ... ”From the room. New corridor. New expectations. New papers.
Because without police papers there is no pleasure in being a police. The number of certificates, passports, personality certificates, tolerance permits, certificates, visas, inheritance certificates, documents for living and for the dead invented in our patriotic country in recent years shows that the company is working for itself. It is foolish to look for any other meaning in such a pile of stupidity and cunning, except that they need to cross out thousands of people from lists of unemployment benefits in one way or another. And for this we have a police.
But God have mercy, if a foreigner comes behind the paper! It is difficult to portray what will happen in this case. Foreigner? The policeman's eye with a threat rests on the unfortunate. Foreigner! Why a foreigner? What does he need here? Spy? Spy. Pocket thief? All foreigners are pocket thieves. Why did he not stay at home and honestly does not make money there for bread? Now we will find out - you can’t hide anything from us! And went and went.
Registration, extract, permission, permission, refusal to permit, the term of permission is in short, the good old statement of one Viennese district commissar is operating to this day: “The vein resident has nothing to do abroad!”
Cross this threshold - and you are gone. Here all the laws of reason, politeness, all formed in humanity form cease to operate here. You are bewitched. You ask, and no one answers you; They all have a special illness: police deafness. You ask for a questionnaire, but they do not have it. You present documents, they do not look. You shake your head; You think you are a person. This is a mistake. You are not at all.
In people, rich deeds go better. Young officials in forages sheathed with galunas are facing them, they are waiting for Mr. Baron, they receive a catch up because of the mistress of the adviser’s wife, the bosses arrange a thug of them because of Mr. General Director. Everything that remains after that is fried in hellish fire.
In our dear Fatherland, the police are a menagerie only to some extent. If there is no need for the Leo-Police, then maybe he will not devour you. But a foreigner silently faces all this pile of stupidity, malice, rudeness, before an excess of meanness and pedantry. Without understanding anything, he searches for his local friends and asks them: "But ... how is this possible?"
And look, those very people who are good about him who have just courageously and frankly spoke with him about deeds, politics, women and books - they suddenly look at him with a drooping look. The feeling of unclean conscience masters them.
They lower their eyes. "Yes ..." shake shoulders. In most cases, they do not know at all what the police do with foreigners. They cannot help. Good students who will be stained with when the teacher grabs someone from the last desk.
If someone stole the clock, then this is not scary-everyone will agree with it. But if he steals my time with me, then my very time in which I could work, earn money, rejoice in life is still terrible, especially when the thief wears a variegated cap, a saber on his side or sits in a police room at a written table in a form buttons fastened or in a ridiculous civilian one.
The subject curses at the higher - at the policeman; There are a whole literature in the newspapers, in ornate expressions and with arrogant irony, the scolding “high authorities” is always with a stifled throat of fear: “As soon as it appears, everything is hidden under the bench!” Police state? But this is pleonasm ( see footnote 1 ).
For as long as humanity wants to fulfill its false dreams into reality with the help of violence, through capitalism and supporting family happiness, sacrificing imprisoned in prisons and settled, hoping for barbed wire and echelons of prisoners of war, as if there are still border slagbaums, individual lands and old considerable cities. The Middle Ages, who could behave as if they were alone on Earth and who retained their internal economic order with the help of guard dogs, whose good mood was achieved by the legitimization of their relict rudeness and whose service is not worth a penny and pay high -
As long as the states in external affairs will behave as if there is still a single people behind them, while in fact they have long broken up into giving and taking, working, not sweating, and working in their sweat, the police will exist until then.
“Well, dear colleague, I read this, he doesn’t call names, apparently he has in mind the Prussian police or Weissman, or I don’t know who else ... I think we have no chance here!”
"You believe here Dolus eventalis ( see footnote 2 ) ...?"
"No. The Chairman of the Court told me just the other day: “I would like to once attract this one day ( see footnote 3 )!” I said, we'll see. You know, he is a very objective person, he can congratulate himself with this. This time it will not work. But I will keep the case. ”
“Yes, right! Well, everything! "
"Best wishes!"
Goodbye.
Kurt Tukholsky
Published in Die Weltbühne on September 4, 1924
Translated from German: Alexey Polikovsky