Liberties

We arrived at our goal in the dark, via the Avus. The green eye of the Radio Tower winking, as we saw the city sprawled below us. The broad streets radiated inwards reaching towards a center, monsters’ fingers, from the days of silent film, closing round a throat. The journey passed by ditches, new building sites, gaps between houses, where excavated earth lay in heaps glinting like slaughtered beasts on the hook. Under S-Bahn bridges they sat on their mattress thrones, wrapped in blankets, figures of the night from all the countries of Europe, the princes of alcohol. The jagged shadows emerging from courtyards met in front of posters for a retrospective of UFA-films called From Caligari to Hitler. translated by Karen Leeder