What does a 14-year-old boy do who has completed elementary school? Michael wanted to be a window dresser at Anny Friede, the best clothing store in Lübeck, even with its own wig department. Here he learned how to dress up dolls and how to fan the longing for summer and bikinis with sandy beaches, giant clams and a blue plastic sea.
Karstadt was directly opposite, also with shop windows, which were decorated by Evelyn. There the two youngsters stood in their shop windows and smiled at each other. Michael ventured over and spoke to her. It was not a head over heels love for Evelyn. Michael was quiet, but he always had ideas about what to do: off to the jazz club, dancing on the “River Boat”, a music ship on the Trave. Once Michael took her to the most expensive restaurant. The waiters sniffed, but let her sit at a small table hidden under a flight of stairs. At least her money was enough for a barley soup.
Michael lived with his mother in a small terraced house. He had two rooms there. “I had never seen anything so stylish,” says Evelyn. One was completely white, there was a flokati on the bed, a beanbag in the corner, and a white record on the white record player. There was an old corner cupboard and a white paper lamp that wasn’t very modern at the time. Two orange earthenware mugs sat on a shelf.
The mother liked Evelyn, but she was proof that her Michael could not be gay. That was her great fear. Like Michael dressed as a child, white open shirt, a clip in his hair. He presents himself coquettishly in the children’s photos.
Not that he ran too hard, got too excited!
Michael contracted encephalitis when he was two and fought for his life in hospital for nine months. Then the doctors discovered a congenital heart disease that was not yet operable at the time. Michael could have died at any time. That’s why the big brother should always make sure that Michael doesn’t run too much, doesn’t get too excited and certainly doesn’t walk on the frozen river. The father died when Michael was five, in a car accident. The mother had changed that, made it hard. Nevertheless, she tried to offer her boys everything, drove with them to Italy or to Sylt. Michael loved her, even if it was difficult with her. When Michael and Evelyn attended a ceramics course at community college, Michael sculpted a Madonna and a vase for his mother.
Evelyn wanted to study ceramics at the University of the Arts in Berlin. Michael also wanted to leave Lübeck. First he decorated at Peek and Cloppenburg, then at Karstadt on Hermannplatz, delivered newspapers at the weekend, did his high school diploma and finally began studying arts and crafts at the HdK. The circle of friends grew, including gay friends who took Evelyn and Michael to their bars and discos. One night, when Michael said he wanted to stay, she replied, “But we always went home together.” She knew then that her time was about to end. They remained friends.
Winter 1979, the snow was blowing outside when Norbert’s doorbell rang. Norbert was a student teacher, he attended a men’s seminar where Peter was too. Michael lived next to Peter. So that evening, Peter took Michael to Norbert. Norbert opened it, saw Michael and was struck by lightning. What a man, handsome, tall and radiant! Norbert was so perplexed that he spontaneously slammed the door again. “What should I do?” he asked his roommate in panic. “Maybe you just open up again.” A week later, Norbert and Michael were a couple. When Norbert neglected his studies, Michael said to him: “Now pull yourself together and get it done.” Michael was a master of clear announcements.
Crafts were in demand. Evelyn, Michael and another artist opened a workshop with a sales room and gallery. Twice a year they went to the fair, exhibited their pieces there, took orders, which they then processed. Michael loved the fragile. Pieces of biscuit porcelain, finely rolled out, that you want to touch immediately, but that would be dangerous. Or vases that were so crooked that you thought they were bound to fall over. At the beginning of 1990, Michael opened “Clay”, his own shop on Bundesallee, with the workshop in the back and the salesroom in the front with white, free-hanging shelves that were lit from below. Norbert helped in the shop whenever he could.
In 1994, Michael’s heart stopped beating. He just fell over at his brother’s silver wedding. Norbert pressed his chest again and again until the ambulance finally arrived. Michael survived and was given a defibrillator. He should take it easy, but life didn’t stop him. He often traveled to Australia with Norbert, they drove to the national parks in campers or jeeps. Once, as a thunderstorm raged overhead, lightning cracking across the sky, Michael said it was perfectly fine if it were over here and now.
Again and again it was almost time, again and again he was brought back by the defibrillator, by Norbert and the doctors. The two married, bought a large apartment in an old building on Adenauer Platz, and Michael furnished it tastefully, with style, as always.
Eventually, Michael realized that all his optimism wouldn’t make his body healthy again. In the hospital, looking back on his life, he said that it was lucky that Norbert existed. When Michael died, Norbert was by his side. When it was over, Norbert got on his bike, imagined Michael sitting on his luggage rack and saying: “Let’s finally go home or something!”
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