Ronald Hayman
In Search of Fassbinder
Munich, Thursday 7 July 83
The BBC has booked rooms for us in the Hotel Bundesbahn, which is virtually part of the main railway station. You don’t hear the trains, and it’s quite comfortable, but in this city there must be places with more character. I’ve arranged to see Fassbinder’s composer, Peer Raben, when he gets back to Munich on Wednesday, but that’s the only appointment, and after lunch we sit down with a local telephone directory and a list of names culled from cast lists. At first we make a lot of mistakes. The Gunther Kaufmann who sounds so willing to record an interview about Fassbinder turns out to be an insurance clerk who never met him; the Armin Meier who asks: What made you pick me? is not the Armin Meier who worked with Fassbinder. That one committed suicide in 1978. I speak to Fassbinder’s mother, who works during the week but agrees to meet us on Sunday. Meanwhile, she says, it’s important we should see some of his real friends, such as Thomas Schühly, and not just the people who have been creating scandals. Presumably she means Kurt Raab and Harry Baer.
Even in an exhausting heatwave, Piers (Plowright) and I feel oddly at home in this beautiful city, with its fine variety of characteristically Bavarian baroque buildings. There are traffic-less shopping precincts, an old food market, pleasant cafés and plenty of places where you can drink Weissbier in the open air.
20.00
Sign Up to our newsletter
Receive free articles, highlights from the archive, news, details of prizes, and much more.@Lit_Review
Follow Literary Review on Twitter
'As we examined more and more data from the Chernobyl and Fukushima disasters ... we were amazed to find that there is almost never a case for permanently moving people out of the contaminated area after a big nuclear accident.'
https://literaryreview.co.uk/how-i-learned-to-stop-worrying
'This problem has dogged Labour’s efforts to become the "natural party of government", a sobriquet which the Conservatives have acquired over decades, despite their far less compelling record of achievement.'
Charles Clarke on Labour's civil wars.
https://literaryreview.co.uk/comrade-versus-comrade
'Lamb has always attracted admirers ... Yet, as Eric G Wilson observes, "Dream-Child" is the first full-scale biography in over a century.'
Edward Weech on the life and work of Charles Lamb.
https://literaryreview.co.uk/the-man-with-the-golden-pun