The last time I met Uli Enzensberger was at a session in an Irish pub in Berlin. His partner Inge played the tin whistle and it was a long evening. He insisted that his cancer, which was troubling him, was taboo as a topic of conversation.
Ulrich Meinrad Enzensberger, as his full name was, was born in Wassertrüdingen, Franconia, during the war in 1944. He was the youngest of four brothers. After graduating from high school in Nuremberg, he went to West Berlin to avoid military service.
On February 19, 1967, nine young people with one child moved into the apartment in Berlin-Charlottenburg Writer Uwe Johnsonwho was temporarily living in New York and knew nothing about the takeover of his Berlin apartment, and called themselves Commune I. Rudi Dutschke had praised the idea of a commune as a “new form of living together” – at least theoretically. When it became concrete, he backed down, wrote Uli Enzensberger in his book “The Years of Commune I. Berlin 1967–1969,” which was published in 2004.
In the year the commune was founded, Uli was arrested on suspicion of having planned the so-called pudding assassination attempt on US Vice President Hubert H. Humphrey. In November 1969, rockers from the Märkischesviertel beat up the Communards and smashed up the apartment. Apparently they were angry about the generous fee that the Stern had paid for the famous nude photo with a back view of the Communards.
Inquired about the concept of parasites
Uli then went to Munich, where he finished his German studies and joined the KPD/ML. He moved into the “Metzstraße community” with Rolf Heißler and Brigitte Mohnhaupt, which was part of the “Tupamaros Munich” area. Proceedings by the Munich public prosecutor’s office because of… It is suspected that Enzensberger and Heißler were involved in an arson attack on a Munich magistrate in February 1970has been discontinued.
Uli later worked as a journalist and translator and about the Circumnavigator Georg Forster as well as written about the concept of the parasite. In Rheinsberg he succeeded Wiglaf Droste as town clerk in 2009. I was able to be there on the weekend when the keys to the stables of Rheinsberg Castle – the town clerk’s apartment – were handed over. There was a lot of wine flowing and the three of us held a reading.
Uli fought against the damned cancer for a long time and didn’t let it limit him. In the end it didn’t work anymore. Uli died on Sunday morning at the age of 81 in his Berlin apartment. He is missing as a wise voice against the madness of the world and, above all, as a friend.