The Missing Diaries
Brigitte Reimann had kept a diary since the age of fourteen. At the age of twenty-six, newly married and shortly before moving to Hoyerswerda, she made a decisive break: on November 11, 1959, she burned her records from the years 1947 to 1954. Twenty notebooks filled with personal experiences, reflections on political upheavals, newspaper clippings, and photographs. Brigitte Reimann regretted it immediately and wrote on the very same day: „I have just burned my diaries from the years 1947 to 1953 — probably twenty of them — and now my heart aches as though I had destroyed something living, some part of myself.“ /1/The diaries covering the period from December 15, 1970, until Brigitte Reimann's death are also missing. What happened to the diaries from the years 1970 to 1973 can only be a matter of speculation. If we follow Irmgard Weinhofen and Juergen Schulz, these diaries disappeared under mysterious circumstances after Brigitte Reimann's death.
For decades, the prevailing assumption was that these diaries had never existed at all. Yet numerous indications and pieces of evidence, gradually brought to light through meticulous research, increasingly called this claim into question.
Brigitte Reimann had the habit of looking ahead on the final pages of each diary and referring to the next notebook. There is no such look ahead on December 14, 1970. The diary simply ends on that day without any explanation. What is certain is that the final pages of this diary were removed. How exactly this happened will probably never be clarified.
When Brigitte Reimann was in the hospital and had run out of writing paper, she would sometimes tear blank pages from her diary to use as stationery. She had done this before, on February 16, 1970, for a letter to Wolfgang Schreyer. In his reply of April 1, 1970, Wolfgang Schreyer thanked her for the letter: „The day before yesterday, your diary page was lying on the table when I returned from Berlin in the evening, from the Ministry of Culture [Ministerium für Kultur — K.S.] […]“ /2/
Brigitte Reimann sent her letter of March 20, 1971, to Helene and Martin Schmidt—written at a time for which the existence of diaries had until then been disputed—from the Robert Rössle Clinic in Berlin-Buch. This letter, too, was clearly written on a page from a diary, and Brigitte Reimann explicitly mentioned this fact: „[P.S.] I don't have any writing paper left, so I had to tear a page out of my diary—sorry!“ /3/ Blank pages could only have existed in a diary that Brigitte Reimann was currently writing in. She had always filled every completed diary to its final page.
In addition to her personal diary, Brigitte Reimann kept what she called a „chronicle“ from June 1967 until June 1972. In it, she recorded and commented on important political events and supplemented her entries with loosely inserted newspaper articles and other notes. For this chronicle, she used the same black, imitation-leather DIN A5 notebooks that she used for her personal diary. It would have been highly implausible to assume that the terminally ill Brigitte Reimann demonstrably continued keeping a chronicle of political events until June 1972, while lacking the strength, after December 14, 1970, to continue her personal diary.
It can now be regarded as established that these diaries did exist and that the two people closest to her during the final years of her life, Irmgard Weinhofen and Juergen Schulz, were telling the truth.
„Brigitte had a small chest. After her death, it was forced open, and the diaries from the final years of her life were missing. […] I can still see the notebooks covered in black plastic before my mind's eye. I saw her writing in them. Almost every day, including about matters that went beyond the personal: reactions to current political events, reactions to newspaper articles or official statements, conversations with colleagues or friends. An essential part of a personal life, a part of the everyday life of a writer fighting against an inhuman illness, an essential part of her intellectual world surrounding the figure of Franziska Linkerhand, is still missing to this day.“ /4/
Whether Brigitte Reimann's late diaries were in fact destroyed by her final husband and sole heir, Dr. Rudolf Burgartz (1943–2015), must at least be questioned in light of his habit of preserving even the smallest personal memento and carefully keeping it for decades.
The fact that we have only sparse evidence concerning her relationship with her first great love, Klaus, known as Kolja, and her first husband, Günter Domnik, known as Frosch, is due to Brigitte Reimann’s destruction of her diary entries from that period on November 11, 1959.
The ups and downs of what we would today call her „on-again, off-again relationship“ with her second husband, Siegfried Pitschmann, known as Daniel, which began in 1958, are documented by her diary entries and by their correspondence in almost every detail, from beginning to end.
Hans Kerschek — Monsieur K., or Jon — her third husband and the great love of Brigitte Reimann’s life, initially appears to fall outside this pattern. The critical remarks about him recorded in Brigitte Reimann’s diary generally reproduce the opinions of others. The assessment, however, that Brigitte Reimann gave her childhood friend Veralore Schwirtz in her characteristically unsparing honesty in 1972 — less than a year before her death — teaches us otherwise:
„I think it was a fabulous time, and I would literally have torn myself to pieces for him. I didn't see that my friends hated him, that he offended everyone with his malicious wit, that he took advantage of me (Good Lord, how many debts I paid for him — he simply couldn’t handle money; but even that sloppiness was something I loved about him—), but he was my best and sharpest critic and—forgive me for being so indiscreet—with him I experienced the highest and most glorious things of physical love.“ /5/
Whether her final husband, Rudolf Burgartz, ten years younger than Brigitte Reimann and at her side until her death, was likewise part of this recurring pattern can only be surmised, since the diaries end shortly after the two had met. From Brigitte Reimann's already mentioned letter to Veralore Schwirtz, however, we know what the physician Rudolf Burgartz meant to Brigitte Reimann, and we can imagine the ways in which he stood by her during the final months of her life:
„I will never forget how kindly and selflessly he cared for me when — although we had only been together for a few months — I became ill again (cancer for the third time, this time in another vertebra, although we did not yet know that at the time) and lay in bed for weeks, howling with pain. […] When it became too bad, he took me back to Buch, and there he learned — something I of course did not know — that my illness was incurable and that I really should have been dead months ago. And despite that, he married me as soon as I was discharged.“ /6/
After Brigitte Reimann’s death, the Ministry for State Security (Ministerium für Staatssicherheit, MfS) sent informants to Burgartz in an attempt to confiscate the diaries of the outspoken writer. Rudolf Burgartz, however, refused to hand them over. Today, Brigitte Reimann’s diaries, ending on December 14, 1970, are preserved in the Brigitte Reimann Archive at the Literaturzentrum Neubrandenburg.
From 1972 onward, the Ministry for State Security (Ministerium für Staatssicherheit, MfS) watched Brigitte Reimann’s state of health with increasing concern. To this end, it deployed an entire network of informants against the writer: the director of the Literaturzentrum Neubrandenburg, Tom Crepon, alias „Klaus Richter“; the fellow writer and assessor of the Franziska Linkerhand manuscript, Günter Ebert, alias IM „Neupeter“; the writers Franz Freitag, alias „Hugo“, and Joachim Wohlgemuth, alias „Paul Fiedler“; as well as Brigitte Reimann’s attorney, Horst Fitzer, alias „Schwalbe“. The focus was on Brigitte Reimann’s diaries and the scandal-ridden Franziska Linkerhand manuscript. Every piece of information gathered by this network of informants, no matter how insignificant, was meticulously recorded and collected in the Stasi files.
Whether Brigitte Reimann's late diaries were in fact destroyed by her final husband and sole heir, Dr. Rudolf Burgartz (1943–2015), must at least be questioned in light of his habit of preserving even the smallest personal memento and carefully keeping it for decades.
Brigitte Reimann's Romantic Relationships as Reflected in Her Diaries
Anyone who knows Brigitte Reimann more closely, whether personally or through engagement with her life and work, knows that the emotional trajectory of her relationships repeatedly followed the same pattern: from the most intense closeness and almost uncritical affection to distance and, at times, even weariness. In many cases, this occurred within only a few weeks or even days.
The fact that we have only sparse evidence concerning her relationship with her first great love, Klaus, known as Kolja, and her first husband, Günter Domnik, known as Frosch, is due to Brigitte Reimann’s destruction of her diary entries from that period on November 11, 1959.
The ups and downs of what we would today call her „on-again, off-again relationship“ with her second husband, Siegfried Pitschmann, known as Daniel, which began in 1958, are documented by her diary entries and by their correspondence in almost every detail, from beginning to end.
Hans Kerschek — Monsieur K., or Jon — her third husband and the great love of Brigitte Reimann’s life, initially appears to fall outside this pattern. The critical remarks about him recorded in Brigitte Reimann’s diary generally reproduce the opinions of others. The assessment, however, that Brigitte Reimann gave her childhood friend Veralore Schwirtz in her characteristically unsparing honesty in 1972 — less than a year before her death — teaches us otherwise:
„I think it was a fabulous time, and I would literally have torn myself to pieces for him. I didn't see that my friends hated him, that he offended everyone with his malicious wit, that he took advantage of me (Good Lord, how many debts I paid for him — he simply couldn’t handle money; but even that sloppiness was something I loved about him—), but he was my best and sharpest critic and—forgive me for being so indiscreet—with him I experienced the highest and most glorious things of physical love.“ /5/
Whether her final husband, Rudolf Burgartz, ten years younger than Brigitte Reimann and at her side until her death, was likewise part of this recurring pattern can only be surmised, since the diaries end shortly after the two had met. From Brigitte Reimann's already mentioned letter to Veralore Schwirtz, however, we know what the physician Rudolf Burgartz meant to Brigitte Reimann, and we can imagine the ways in which he stood by her during the final months of her life:
„I will never forget how kindly and selflessly he cared for me when — although we had only been together for a few months — I became ill again (cancer for the third time, this time in another vertebra, although we did not yet know that at the time) and lay in bed for weeks, howling with pain. […] When it became too bad, he took me back to Buch, and there he learned — something I of course did not know — that my illness was incurable and that I really should have been dead months ago. And despite that, he married me as soon as I was discharged.“ /6/
After Brigitte Reimann’s death, the Ministry for State Security (Ministerium für Staatssicherheit, MfS) sent informants to Burgartz in an attempt to confiscate the diaries of the outspoken writer. Rudolf Burgartz, however, refused to hand them over. Today, Brigitte Reimann’s diaries, ending on December 14, 1970, are preserved in the Brigitte Reimann Archive at the Literaturzentrum Neubrandenburg.
In the Sights of the Ministry for State Security
„Neupeter“ in particular was anything but restrained in his assessment of his fellow writer, while consistently pretending to maintain a friendly relationship with her. On May 5, 1972, he reported to his Stasi officer:
„I have little desire to continue dealing with her. She is a nuisance to me. I have now assessed Chapter 13 of her novel ‚Franziska Linkerhand‘ and had to tell her that the part of the novel described there constitutes an open attack on our state. In this section, she has presented, in disguised form, a case from Leipzig in which the writer Loest was imprisoned because he had organized a collection of lists for the wife of a counterrevolutionary. Her protagonist is now doing something similar. He supports the wife of a person who has fled the Republic and is sentenced to four years in prison for it.“ /7/
The „worst-case scenario“ feared by the East German secret service was that, after Brigitte Reimann's death, both her diaries and the Franziska Linkerhand manuscript might end up in the Federal Republic of Germany and subsequently be published there. This was to be prevented at all costs. For this reason, all of Brigitte Reimann's contacts in the West were closely monitored: from her friend Irmgard Weinhofen, who lived in Amsterdam, to the adventure writer Wolfgang Schreyer, who supplied Brigitte Reimann with a considerable amount of Western literature, and her brother Ludwig in Hamburg. The Stasi kept watch over all possible channels through which the documents might reach the West.
The MfS feared the political explosive power that both texts might possess, particularly if they were published in the West. In the case of Franziska Linkerhand, they already knew what to expect, since the loyal „Neupeter“, under perfect cover, served as an assessor of the novel manuscript.
„The novel will comprise 16 chapters and approximately 600 pages. Several weeks ago, the IMS was given Chapter 13 for evaluation. In doing so, he had to establish that the material presented there is directed against the judicial system of our state.“ /8/
No one but Brigitte Reimann herself, however, knew the contents of the diaries, and the speculation circulating within the MfS caused the imagined threat to grow beyond all measure. „Neupeter“ intensified these fears in his report of September 6, 1972:
„There is a rumor that she is not leaving her husband any intellectual property (diaries, correspondence, etc.) but probably her brother, who lives in Hamburg (probably a shipbuilding engineer). The closer and more concrete details of these relationships are unknown. There is said to be a will in which this is regulated. The diaries and letters are entirely unknown. They are more important than the novel.“ /9/
A will left by Brigitte Reimann would have been the key to the documents. In a report by an unnamed IM dated September 12, 1972, the MfS found an indication that seemed to confirm what had been said before: „[…] [redacted] then returned to the subject of the will, which he alone knows exactly and in which B. comes off very badly. He would be careful not to tell B. anything about it.“ /10/
The director of the Literaturzentrum Neubrandenburg, Tom Crepon, alias „Klaus Richter“, was assigned to Brigitte Reimann's husband, Rudolf Burgartz. On October 13, 1972, he reported orally that the assignment had been carried out, and Captain Jung recorded the following:
„As instructed, he visited the husband of the writer Brigitte Reimann — Dr. Burgartz — under the pretext that he had written a personal letter to his wife and asked whether Burgartz would take it with him on his next visit. During the conversation, Dr. B. informed the IMS that his wife was still in Berlin-Buch and that it was currently impossible to foresee when she might be able to return home. Her personal condition was very changeable and unstable. During the conversation, the IM was able to learn that she had taken her diaries with her to Berlin. He himself [Burgartz — K.S.] had not yet been allowed to see them.“ /11/
At the subsequent meeting with Captain Jung, „Klaus Richter“ reported on the further course of events on November 21, 1972:
„As instructed, the IM wrote two letters to Brig. Reimann in Berlin-Buch. He received neither a reply nor any reaction from her husband or from her personally. According to information from Comrade Bentzien, First Secretary of the Kulturbund, Brig. Reimann was said to be feeling somewhat better again. Bentzien had taken her a tape recorder so that she could finish her novel.“ /12/
„Klaus Richter“ was now instructed to maintain „contact with Brig. Reimann’s husband“ and to „continually extract information from him.“ /13/ In addition, he was to:
„Influence the poet Lindemann, strengthen his contact with Burgartz, and induce him to hand over the diaries, letters, and similar materials to him for safekeeping and evaluation. Once Lindemann has received the documents, we [the MfS — K.S.] are to be informed immediately.“ /14/
On February 20, 1973, Brigitte Reimann died in the hospital in Berlin-Buch.
On March 6, „Neupeter“ gave a detailed account of his train journey with Rudolf Burgartz to Berlin for Brigitte Reimann’s funeral. His „record of the conversation“ contains the three decisive subjects: the will, the diaries, and Franziska Linkerhand. It also provides proof that Brigitte Reimann continued keeping her diary after December 14, 1970. Brigitte Reimann and Rudolf Burgartz were married on May 14, 1971. „Four weeks after the wedding“ therefore means that the diary entry mentioned dates from approximately June 1971 — the very period for which the existence of diaries had been questioned.
„As far as I know from conversations and discussions with Günter Ebert, B. Reimann’s diaries are supposed to be at the publishing house ‚Neues Leben‘ in Berlin. The person responsible for such matters is the Referent [sic] Walter Lewerenz, who, after B.’s death, also conducted the negotiations with Burgartz concerning the acquisition of the intellectual estate. According to information provided by G. Ebert, Burgartz received a one-time settlement of [redacted] marks for the diaries and thereby lost the rights to the diaries. This does not, however, apply to publications. Here, B.’s consent must be obtained. The situation is different if persons wish to consult the diaries for the preparation of a scholarly study or similar work.“ /17/
The ten surviving diaries of Brigitte Reimann, covering the period from August 31, 1955, to December 14, 1970, are now preserved in the Brigitte Reimann Archive at the Literaturzentrum Neubrandenburg. The final pages of the tenth diary were removed, possibly in great haste and rather roughly. The pages that were cut out, together with the following two diary volumes that had „not been released for further use“, remain missing to this day.
As the adventurous discovery of a box containing original Reimann documents in the basement of an apartment building in Hoyerswerda demonstrates — or the discovery of the literary estate of Brigitte Reimann’s mentor and fellow writer Otto Bernhard Wendler in a Berlin basement, which contains previously presumed lost Reimann manuscripts from Wendler’s personal collection, now held by the Literaturhaus Magdeburg — there is every possibility that Brigitte Reimann’s missing diaries may one day reappear. The time would be ripe.
Notes
Unless otherwise indicated, all translations from German-language sources are my own.
/1/ Reimann, Brigitte: Ich bedaure nichts: Tagebücher 1955–1963. 1997. p. 123.
/2/ Ich möchte so gern ein Held sein: Brigitte Reimann und Wolfgang Schreyer; der Briefwechsel. 2018. p. 213.
/3/ Brigitte Reimann to Helene and Martin Schmidt. March 20, 1971. Private collection of Kristina Stella.
/4/ Schulz, Juergen. In: Was ich auf dem Herzen habe. 2008. p. 199.
/5/ Reimann, Brigitte: Aber wir schaffen es, verlaß Dich drauf! Briefe an eine Freundin im Westen. 1995. p. 174.
/6/ Ibid., p. 179.
/7/ BArch, MfS, BV Neubrandenburg, AIM, no. 1329/80, vol. II, fols. 150–151.
/8/ BArch, MfS, BV Neubrandenburg, AIM, no. 1329/80, vol. II, fol. 156.
/9/ BArch, MfS, BV Neubrandenburg, AIM, no. 1329/80, vol. II, fol. 166.
/10/ BArch, MfS, BV Neubrandenburg, AOP, no. 632/74, vol. II, fol. 180.
/11/ BArch, MfS, BV Neubrandenburg, AIM, no. 1071/87, vol. II, fol. 7; and BArch, MfS, BV Neubrandenburg, AOPK, no. 259/73, vol. I, fol. 164.
/12/ BArch, MfS, BV Neubrandenburg, AIM, no. 1071/87, vol. II, fol. 8.
/13/ BArch, MfS, BV Neubrandenburg, AIM, no. 1071/87, vol. II, fol. 8.
/14/ BArch, MfS, BV Neubrandenburg, AIM, no. 1071/87, vol. II, fol. 21.
/15/ BArch, MfS, BV Neubrandenburg, AIM, no. 1329/80, vol. II, fols. 173–174.
/16/ BArch, MfS, BV Neubrandenburg, AOP, no. 632/74, vol. II, fol. 226.
/17/ BArch, MfS, BV Neubrandenburg, AIM, no. 1071/87, vol. II, fol. 101.
/1/ Reimann, Brigitte: Ich bedaure nichts: Tagebücher 1955–1963. 1997. p. 123.
/2/ Ich möchte so gern ein Held sein: Brigitte Reimann und Wolfgang Schreyer; der Briefwechsel. 2018. p. 213.
/3/ Brigitte Reimann to Helene and Martin Schmidt. March 20, 1971. Private collection of Kristina Stella.
/4/ Schulz, Juergen. In: Was ich auf dem Herzen habe. 2008. p. 199.
/5/ Reimann, Brigitte: Aber wir schaffen es, verlaß Dich drauf! Briefe an eine Freundin im Westen. 1995. p. 174.
/6/ Ibid., p. 179.
/7/ BArch, MfS, BV Neubrandenburg, AIM, no. 1329/80, vol. II, fols. 150–151.
/8/ BArch, MfS, BV Neubrandenburg, AIM, no. 1329/80, vol. II, fol. 156.
/9/ BArch, MfS, BV Neubrandenburg, AIM, no. 1329/80, vol. II, fol. 166.
/10/ BArch, MfS, BV Neubrandenburg, AOP, no. 632/74, vol. II, fol. 180.
/11/ BArch, MfS, BV Neubrandenburg, AIM, no. 1071/87, vol. II, fol. 7; and BArch, MfS, BV Neubrandenburg, AOPK, no. 259/73, vol. I, fol. 164.
/12/ BArch, MfS, BV Neubrandenburg, AIM, no. 1071/87, vol. II, fol. 8.
/13/ BArch, MfS, BV Neubrandenburg, AIM, no. 1071/87, vol. II, fol. 8.
/14/ BArch, MfS, BV Neubrandenburg, AIM, no. 1071/87, vol. II, fol. 21.
/15/ BArch, MfS, BV Neubrandenburg, AIM, no. 1329/80, vol. II, fols. 173–174.
/16/ BArch, MfS, BV Neubrandenburg, AOP, no. 632/74, vol. II, fol. 226.
/17/ BArch, MfS, BV Neubrandenburg, AIM, no. 1071/87, vol. II, fol. 101.
