A friend had run away with my wife. For the second time I was left with nothing. Woman away. Child gone. No apartment, no money. Even the job was gone. Why did I have to experience this for the second time? I found myself unable to live. I had sold my remaining furniture. I drank, numbed my pain thoroughly.
The village pastor pulled me out of the ditch. Something similar had happened to him. His wife would soon move out of the rectory. Then I could use two small rooms under the roof. There were conditions to be met. One request was that when I moved out again I would renovate the rectory hall. I had learned painters. No problem. Second, no drop of alcohol. The parish council voted unanimously. What a saving luck! I only drank water for a year.
For the first six months my hands didn't want what I was used to from them. I couldn't paint anymore, I felt paralyzed. It was a terrible time. Yes, I was at risk of suicide, but I had promised the pastor, with whom I still feel friendly today, that I would not harm me.
One year became 18 months in the rectory. My self-repair was more complex than originally thought. The pastor and I occasionally had breakfast together. I dreamed something very strange last night, I once told him. In a dream I moved to Wismar, went to the brothel and painted the whores. His answer was spontaneous: If I were a painter, I would do it immediately!
So I renovated the holy hallway. The village plumber packed my bulky waste and easel into his van and drove me to Wismar. There I occupied a partly empty old house. It was the period after the German reunification.
Even in the distance, I saw no blossoming landscapes. I had not been insured for a long time and the identity card had expired years ago. An account? No. In Wismar I confidently started my future as a painter with 30 Deutsche Mark. I had nothing to lose. In such situations you are not afraid. And if I ended up in jail, I would paint the guards.
Now I was looking for a brothel and ended up in one of the city's most frivolous and smoky bars. In Eastern times, many serious literary figures read here in the former New Antiquarian Bookshop. The popular book corner mutated into a wine shop with a cult character. There the very well-read, wine-bibbing innkeeper paired me up with a gentleman who, dressed as an Eulenspiegel, did popular city tours. The doctor had diagnosed him with cancer and he decided to spend the rest of his time with the women. He knew the five brothels of the small town very well.
We made an appointment and he introduced me to all the whores in town the following night. Ladies, that's him, the new portrait painter of this city, I heard him say in a deep voice. He will paint you all! At that moment I would like to be sunk in the ground. My God, I came from the rectory, felt like I hadn't seen beauties so lightly clad for 200 light years. There I was now running up to pubic violet and cursed my dream.
In the last brothel, the noblest in town, I met young women who I felt could understand me. Hah! I guess right, no sex, just paint? Now the competition started. Who would lay the painter flat. The pimps initially had no understanding for my project. Painter, don't drive the girls here crazy with your loopy painting, they should work.
At the end of the month, when Hamburg bankers and Wismar shipyard workers ran out of pocket money, the women were bored. Somehow they were missing, at least financially, the punters. It was good for me. We had a lot of time, also to exchange life stories. Please, painter, did you fall in love again after years? In one of us? No, it's one out there. She is a civil engineer. Well, bring her with you. And in fact the puff mother, who was also curious, agreed. But when suitors come, she's gone. No problem. So we sat with bacon and vodka for a few nights with the girls behind the striptease stage and celebrated life extensively.
Diving into this half-world was not only weird, full of frivolous stories and absurd, but also really exciting and interesting. A terrific reflection of our society, entertaining and shattering at the same time.
On the afternoon of my 40th birthday, the neighbors were amazed, a gold-colored Mercedes pulled up. Six whores and the puff mother got out. The girls lightly clothed, armed with flowers, sparkling wine and cakes. The lavish festival ended shortly before 8 p.m. The ladies had to work.
Now they knew the poverty in which I lived. From now on I got great gifts. Used plates, cutlery, drinks glasses of all kinds. One actually gave me a pillow when she was modelling in the small studio. I often waited for the women for many hours. They were not reliable in terms of time.
Boah! This eternal wait! So I came up with the following rule. Arriving late for every hour, I get a free beer at the bar in the evening. It worked out pretty well and became my main food source.
A lot was built after the fall of the wall. Construction site to construction site. So it made sense to collect a wooden pallet every night on the way home as welcome heating material for the tiled stove in the small studio. Winter break. I didn't had money for coal. Friends from Neukloster, who used to visit my disco, heard about my hypothermic situation and unloaded a trailer full of wood on my doorstep. That was the rescue in winter 1996/97.
Real friendships developed with the girls. A Siberian native said at the sight of my portraits that I was giving them dignity that they did not experience in everyday life.
My civil engineer liked the painted portraits. Don't you finally want to exhibit them? I'm not good enough yet. How long do you need? Please give me five more years. In fact, she kept my back financially for five years. Yes, he paid the money back later.
More than 350 visitors came to my first exhibition in the Gallery Baumhaus at the Old Wismar Harbor at the opening in May 2001. Of course I had also invited the puff mother. From a distance, when she saw the masses, she initially thought that it was a demo against the whore pictures, that is, against her brothel.
But no! The party went on until the early morning. Today, the Wismar Cultural Office says: Nobody expected that. We were afraid that the happy audience would fall into the harbor basin.
I went to the brothel every day for a year. After that I stopped. The abysses of the men and the stories of the girls made me more and more apocalyptic nightmares. So I gradually withdrew.
Six life-size portraits tell of this incredibly exciting time with interesting strong women, which I learned to appreciate very much.
Years later, when my wife, yes, the engineer, and I lived in the immediate vicinity of Herbertstrasse in Hamburg, I met one of the young women in the burlesque bar opposite our flat for the first time.
Do you still have our portraits? Yes of course. I could have sold them multiple times, but somehow I could never bring myself to do it. So you didn't make any money from us? No!
But I learned from you, learned a lot, for and about life. I really mean it.
© MWJ, Wismar, 08/05/2020
Detail of
the painting
Portrait-Cycle Prostitutes