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Zeichnung (19) aus DIE BASIS DES MAKE-UP

"Am ersten Schultag, 1954 in Niedersachsen, mit meinem Stiefopa vor einer Hecke und einer Edeltanne in unserem Vorgarten am frisch angelegten Steinbeet. Er erzählte mir von einem Eisernen Vorhang quer durch Deutschland. Dessen Konstruktion dachte ich mir als verschraubtes Stahlgerüst. Ich fragte mich, wie es im Himmel aufgehängt sein könnte. Auf der anderen Seite war es sicherlich tief im Boden verankert. "EV" = Eiserner Vorhang = e.V. = eingeschriebener Verein = ev. = evangelisch. "2" ist die Zahl, die eine Lehrerin meistens in die rechte untere Ecke meiner Zeichnungen schrieb. 1 = sehr gut, 2 = gut, 3 = befriedigend, 4 = ausreichend, 5 = mangelhaft, 6 = ungenügend. "4" war unsere Hausnummer an der Straße Am Bahndamm hinter der Hecke. "22" ist schon immer meine Lieblingszahl gewesen. Vom Tornister auf meinem Rücken hängt der Wischlappen für die Schreibtafel aus Schiefer. Das transparente Brotauto ist ein Symbol für die dicklich süße, hellbraune Suppe aus Brotresten, die meine Großmutter damals oft für uns kochte." (Aus: arsenal, dezember 10).

(1977) 

In RAW 1/1980 wurde zu der Zeichnung unter dem Titel ONE PANEL FROM THE BASIS OF MAKE-UP folgender Text veröffentlicht: "Peaceful gathering in front of hedge and silver fir at the newly planned stone-bed, 1955. My grandpa and me, just back from the inaugural ceremony for the rebuilt bridge across the river Weser...

... He called me 'Quälgeist' ('torment-ghost', nuisance, pest, plague) whenever I tried to caress his smooth, bald head. The former bridge probably had been blown up by his friends in the last days of the war to prevent the English soldiers from capturing our village. The new one, later, around 1967, served as a shooting location for the film How I Won the War, and one actor in it, dressed like a German soldier, carried a huge and framed reproduction of a Picasso painting across it, so queer. My grandpa told me about an iron curtain straight through the middle of Germany. I pictured its steel construction in the style of the Weserbridge but wondered where it could hang from in the sky. On the other hand it most likely reached very deep into the ground. EV = Eiserner Vorhang (Iron Curtain) = e.V. = eingeschriebener Verein (non-profit society) = ev. = evangelisch (to be of Protestant religion). 2 is a  number a schoolmistress very often wrote into the right corner of my drawings – it means: good. (Scale: 1 = very good, 2 = good, 3 = satisfactory, 4 = sufficient, 5 = faulty, 6 = insufficient). 4 was the number of the house I lived in on the street Am Bahndamm (At the railroad embankment).  In the satchel seen on my back were the following six drawings: DIE AMERIKANISCHE KÜSTE (The American Coast) with steamship 'Bremen'. Big quarrel about the sharkfin with my sister. She insisted on the impossibility of sharks before the  American shore. I in turn stated I had seen such a fin in an illustration showing Manhattan in the Bertelsmann Volkslexikon (a 'People's Dictionary', my one and only book). Despite weeklong searches I could not find the illustration again in that infinite book. I loved everything from 'Amerika' especially the CARE-parcels. I thought they were sent by a distant cousin who in my imagination worked as a house detective at the New York branch of Woolworth's. The most enchanting parcel was filled with one package of Maxwell House coffee and nothing else but 22 broad and bright silken ties which probably had been worn by my cousin on duty. The grown-ups preferred something to eat. The ties, anyhow, were too indecent to wear. So, my grandma cooked that thickish, sweet, light brown soup made out of bread leftovers, in whose memory I placed a bread-car in this drawing; KINDERGARTEN, one wish, a playground on a meadow, and the result: antlike, guarded children behind a tremendous gate; DEUTSCHLAND, SOWJETUNION, ENGLAND, three different tank models from three competing nations. The one from the Soviet Union naturally had the most progressive design; GERMANY, a castle constrained with jagged wall, outside the gates: Nothing."

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