Summer with Tucholsky – Das Zeitdorf

One sits in every small town and has her up to the neck. Ah – the eternal houses, the marketplace, the stupid dogs – the eternally of the same people, the tightness who too close familiar with everyone – and if you knew how I long to get out …! We have no suggestions here in Messenthien … a cloudy village. Paris! London! They do not guess how limited people are here … out! Out -!

One sits every time and it is fed up to the neck. Ah – the same keywords, the commonplace, the stupid pictures – the eternally of the same contemporaries, the tightness that too close familiar with everyone – and if you knew how I long to get out …! We have no suggestion here in 1926 … a cloudy time. Renaissance! The year 2000! They do not guess how limited people are today …! Out!

The journey the picture.

Of course, it does not matter where you can apply your suitcases; It depends on what you bring home – in your head. Some travel all over the world and come home as a little. I knew a merchant who staked in India for a long time – according to his intellect, I would hardly have believed Magdeburg.

But of course most people expect more from the outside than can be found; And if it weren’t for the movement of the trip, being strange, there isn’t much. “It’s nice,” speaks the way to “look at things – it is terrible to be them.” And you don’t want to live everywhere. Because you live, so suddenly all acquaintances of the small town reappear: the ambitious and the Dreigroschen-Mussolini-the night watchman of art and the street cleaner of censorship … All birds are already there. And the stranger seizes the umbrella again.

All of this is also available in time. We are captured in time as in a small nest – umlurt, claps, everyone knows each other and moves uncomfortably close to the body – there is no escape. It is sometimes to drive out of time.

And where do we lead? In the reluctant time.

We would first have to learn the language of the other era – even with the purest German in 1926, the Berlin from 1805 would not be far. We are strange around, were amazed and shaken, enthusiastic and delighted, tired and bored, like on a trip. And if we were acclimatized, we longed for a different time.

But if it would happen, maybe one continued: the megalomania that each era owns it. The world is filled with small towns of the time, from people who have never come out of their time who have seen nothing other than their miserable seventy years. You have read travel descriptions, so history books – but it doesn’t do that alone. How well would you do you to let the time wind blow around your nose – what do you see?

They see how other times give birth to other customs – as other times have different ideals, as is the matter of course, what is natural to them – and since only and only the self -evident that no one speaks more about a person, they might be changed, shaken, wise back. You no longer said: that’s the way! But they said: Yes, that’s how it is today …! But they see another one.

They suddenly see how little the meaning of the people and the things corresponds to the effort of Radau, which is always carried out, they will occur, like a stranger who accidentally got into a kinship. “Oh!” He thinks. And: “Why only all of these people shout so horrificly?” Contemporaries are irritated like small towns, irritated to each other, as can otherwise only be family members, with eternally alarm -ready red head. It is not worth it. And they understand that the hustle and bustle mainly comes because the controversial people and things not only have their meaning in themselves, but also another strange quality: the time to belong to the time in which the confessors live. A conversation about past objects always has a lovely cool – today it is shot down violently and hot. Just like Ms. District Administrator does not get upset about the abstinence in Canada, but it is about the hat of her neighbor.

Kleinstädter are more intolerated, harder, more adamant than the people in the city. Kleinstädter know everything exactly, but little of the relativity, keep tough on what they once recognized and do not accept anything outside of their walls. Small time. They are biased in the delusion of their alone.

And because you can never refute Belgard in Pomerania with the island of Bali, because the magistrate in Belgard can always say: “That may be everything – but we do this here!” – So everything miracles do not help. For the little citizen in the eighteenth arrondissement in Paris, London is wide and the sixteenth – and in any case he doesn’t want to know much about “that out there”. He is man in the middle, and where he sits is up.

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And therefore it also makes little impression on the small time when you hold the Napoleon, the Messalina and the Wallenstein … As little as a cowboy in a Norwegian fishing village can cause something other than a kind of annoying astonishment. Not here with us, my dear … The widely traveled stranger may laugh at the tightness – he cannot change it, he cannot expand it.

Tones, immortality! Bladder, retrieval, from full baking on the trombone of fame! You don’t stir the contemporaries. Because they have one thing ahead, something that is unbeatable: they are on it. It is her hour, her day, her time. And you can’t get there.

The man on the time machine at Wells drives up and away – he has it well. But we sit tied up, forged, tied up, condemned at the eternal little time and long for each other. Travel! Travel out of time.

The text was first published in the »Vossische Zeitung« in August 1926.