Two weeks ago my dad and I jumped the waist-high fence of a public park to kick a ball around. It was a beautiful Sunday afternoon, Mother’s Day, during the first streak of fine weather after a particularly vile spring. The gate was locked because we’d arrived after closing time, which a sign said was noon. Noon! This was in Jena, where I was born, in a part of the country formerly known as the East. Something from that era must have carried over, a certain entitlement to play sports on property paid for by the people. What did not carry over, evidently, was obedience to signage. What can I say? It was a beautiful Sunday afternoon.
As we approached the park, a passerby asked whether we could read the opening times. We said that we could. He told us the park was closed, which I considered redundant. OK, I said, turning back to jump the barrier. This emboldened him to offer a lecture on rules and signs. I asked him what it matters and why he should care, we’re just going to kick a ball around, it’s a beautiful Sunday afternoon. He made it clear that it mattered a lot and he cared very much, so I invited him to call the police. He muttered his intention to do so and we made our way into the enclosure.
Not a minute later, we heard a woman say “Hallo” from across the street. This is almost never good. Again we were lectured about the sign and the rules, and again we politely stated our position. Just here for some victimless recreation, ma’am. But the rules—do we know the rules? Could we read the sign? I assured her that we do and that we could. What we could not assure her was that everything was going to be OK, that our defiance of the sign and the rules would have absolutely no bearing on her life. This beautiful Sunday afternoon was big enough for all, I argued. But she was relentless: the sign, the rules, what about the children? (There were none). I felt in me a piercing, wordless scream.
As I pleaded with the woman, pinching my fingers in Italian, what difference it made whether we were there or not, it became obvious that I was not appealing to reason but to the unpliable fabric of German society itself. I braced for what was coming and then it came, as it always does: If I break the rule, she told me, everyone will break the rule; there are rules in Germany, I must understand, and if I don’t like them, I can leave (we were speaking in German). Finally, she said she’d call the police.
A familiar thought developed: How far can this go? I recalled the story of a woman, Sieglinde Baumert, who was jailed for not paying her broadcasting tax. In Germany, every household has to pay 20 euros a month for programs deemed to be in the public interest. It doesn’t matter whether the programs interest anyone, let alone reach them. Even those without a TV or radio have to pay (€220 euros per year). Frau Baumert withheld for so long that it escalated into a jail sentence. I consider her an inspiration, the type of small and specific hero every society needs.
I saw parallels. What if I went to trial? I’d refuse a lawyer and make my point straight, like Allen Iverson talking about practice, and I’d say, what are we talking about? We’re not talking about a crime. We’re talking about kicking a ball, man. I’d invoke the principle of Live and Let Live and everyone in the courtroom would rise to applaud. My closing statement would be a shallow bow toward the witness stand – farewell, fascists, it’s been a sheer sensation and I hope to never see any of you again – before being jailed as a freedom fighter, just like Frau Baumert. They’ll name a square after me as they did for Liebknecht and Rosa-Luxembourg. I’d sit in my cell, condemned for civil disobedience, and read my Kafka books, where I’d find the perfect articulation of my plight:
“One must lie low, no matter how much it went against the grain, and try to understand that this great organization remained, so to speak, in a state of delicate balance, and that if someone took it upon himself to alter the dispositions of things around him, he ran the risk of losing his footing and falling to destruction, while the organization would simply right itself by some compensating reaction in another part of its machinery – since everything interlocked – and remain unchanged, unless, indeed, which was very probable, it became still more rigid, more vigilant, severer, and more ruthless.”
So like I said, it was a beautiful day for football. It was a beautiful day for pretty well anything. There are certain conditions that call for an exception to the social order, and jubilant weather, I felt, was one of them. Also, I only see my dad once a year. Both of us had sensed a specialness in the occasion. We ignored the woman and walked to the other side of the park with our ball. About 20 minutes later, another man arrived on the scene. He wore an official-looking shirt with “SOS” on the back and let himself through the gate with a key. Almost immediately we found ourselves in the same circular argument, like three George Costanzas each desperately upholding the notion of a society.
I felt bad the man had to come all the way out to this park. He might have been taking out the recycling for all the care he displayed. But a call was made and his hands were tied, he was very clear about that—“I’m just following orders” were the words he used. I will not make an obvious remark here but I will say that I empathized with his predicament. Perhaps he, too, got a sense of the Kafkaesque. Nevertheless, he said our presence was about to get very expensive and, in turn, threatened to call the police.
What was our crime, exactly? Burglary, I suppose. But the real violation was more fundamental. Germans worship order. The country’s most famous proverb is Ordnung muss sein, which roughly translates to "there must be order,” and there’s even a public office called the Ordnungsamt (office of order) whose officers rove the streets of every town and city making sure everything is just so. I think there are roughly two officers per citizen but this is just a feeling so I could be wrong. In any case, they are omnipresent. The average German does not have an angel on one shoulder and a devil on the other but an Ordnungsamt officer on each, elevating obedience to the level of divinity.
This commitment to order is believed to contribute to a stable and reliable society. It is also what can make Germany such a tense and joyless place to live. There’s an Ordnungsamt energy reflected in the collective disposition: skeptical, paranoid, righteous. At all times the way you live is measured against how you ought to live. Minor transgressions are often met by the petulant groan of a stranger. Maybe you entered through the exit door or walked on a red. You can gauge how comfortable a society is by the pettiness of its grievances. In Germany, it is not Live and Let Live but Tell Others How They’re Living Incorrectly. Then call the cops.
Over time, the enforcement of rules no matter how arbitrary to the situation at hand, combined with the innate German quality of Rechthaberei (the need to be right at all costs), can leave you starving for some humanity. Many who are told they should leave if they don’t like it probably think that’s some good advice right there.
I know every country has its rule fetishists but those twenty minutes at the park struck me as a particularly German incident. It was just so…expected. And because I expected it, and because I find it so ridiculous, it inflamed me even more when it happened, to the point where I really did ponder the prospect of leaving. That the only three people we encountered at the park threatened to call the police is an absurd ratio. I can barely come up with five reasons to call the police. To live in a country where people do it for sport is genuinely depressing.
Why couldn’t anyone explain why we shouldn’t be able to kick a ball in a public park on a Sunday afternoon? It’s a wilfully ignorant question. I knew it was never about that. It’s never about the actual thing here—it’s about the principle. This has always bothered me, the anti-thinking element of it, though I also acknowledge my own petulance in the matter. My girlfriend’s verdict was basically, “lol Aquarius.” It’s true, I’ve always had a hard time accepting things on the basis that that’s just how they are, that the existence of a rule should inherently validate its necessity. But what should I expect from people whose lives are so arranged that they are not accustomed to unusual happenings, and who are, from the outset, in a malevolent rage at the fact of non-conformity? My dad and I were not merely two people kicking a ball on a Sunday afternoon. We were a threat to the delicate balance of a rigid, vigilant machinery.
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