I first met Kurt’s wife IMV “Julia” in Altrosenthal, a country village near Frankfurt an der Oder where three writers (Plenzdorf, Schlesinger, Stade) and their physician friend (Stefan Schnitzler, son of the infamous SED-propagandist Karl-Eduard von Schnitzler) had purchased a cluster of four farm houses they used mainly as weekend and vacation retreats. Not far from this settlement, Kurt and Julia had a dilapidated farm house that they were in the process of renovating. Their apartment in Berlin, also in a state of disrepair, was located in the Prenzlauer Berg district, not far from the apartments occupied by the Plenzdorfs, Klaus Schlesinger, and his wife Bettina Wegner, the dissident songwriter/singer and political activist. On the weekends, which they liked to spend in the country, they would all gather for coffee and cake or a cookout, usually at the Plenzdorfs’ house, which was the largest and nicest. On one such occasion, on my first visit to Altrosenthal, I got together with Kurt and Julia along with their friends from West Berlin, Brigitte and Hellfried Kellner. The Hotel Berolina, where I stayed in November 1975, was located not far from Prenzlauer Berg. Kurt and Julia invited me to their apartment for dinner now and then, and I occasionally would meet Kurt at a nearby pub for a bite to eat and a beer in the evening. Perhaps I should have suspected, since both were evasive about their line of work and alluded vaguely to SED Party connections, that they might somehow be involved with the Stasi.
Remembering East Germany 