Kairos

In Berlin, preparations are underway for the anniversary of the founding of the GDR. Katharina leaves in the middle of a performance at the opera house to meet with Hans. She passes by a church when the doors open beside her and she can hear an opposition event happening inside. She thinks about how art inspires the feelings that galvanize collective action.

Katharina reports what she saw to Hans, who wonders if Ludwig, who was baptized several weeks earlier, was present at the church. Hans cynically comments that the GDR is worth nothing now.

Katharina reflects on the state of the GDR. She walked out of class after the lecturer described the protests as a counterrevolution, but now she wonders if her heroic impulses merely indulge her vanity. She cannot trust her emotions, recalling Hans’s criticism of her in the sixth cassette. On the other hand, the actions of her generation allow her to feel the renewed power of socialist symbols, like the singing of “The Internationale.”

Katharina is assigned to perform harvest duty with Rosa. The other artists working on the farm become indignant about their harvest detail and discuss the protest actions taking place across the nation. A sculptor named Robert leads Katharina, Rosa, and several others to escape the farm. They talk about fleeing west, but also reflect on the difficulty of managing a communal government successfully.

While her friends are preparing to join the protests, Katharina listens to the seventh cassette from Hans, who blames himself for their sorrows. Katharina finds an escape from the tumult of the world around her in Hans’s cassettes. She is unable to process her own thoughts about what form society should take, especially as everyone else in her life, from her friends to her mother, expresses their support for different resolutions. Hans is the only one who mocks the displays of solidarity for the protests as “bourgeois-looking.” Erika expresses her concern for Katharina, who seems removed from current events.

Hans drops Katharina off at Rosa’s apartment, where Rosa expresses her resentment for Katharina’s relationship with Hans. They have sex while thousands of East Germans overwhelm the border guards at Bornholmer Strasser to enter West Germany.

Katharina runs into an ex-boyfriend who claims to have bought a newspaper in West Berlin. Later, the lecturer at her class stands by his values and laments the loss of his people to the temptations of West Germany. Most of the class are eager to cross the border once the class ends.

Katharina dreams that she is in a collapsing building, whose strength Hans tests by shaking it from the outside. Katharina fears that the building will kill her, but she starts laughing.

Following the fall of the Berlin Wall, Katharina and Hans visit West Berlin. The West German government dispenses welcome money to allow East Germans to enjoy a taste of their capitalist economy, though neither Hans nor Katharina claim the money for themselves. Katharina gets into arguments with Sibylle, who resents Katharina’s condescension toward her desire to go shopping in the West. Hans shows Katharina around, making it clear that he is no stranger to the lifestyle of the West.

Hans resigns himself to the futility of resisting the encroachment of West Germany into the East. He and Katharina fall into a domestic pattern of life, even as Hans continues to return to his family. The year 1990 starts with Katharina feeling alone and worried that her country will soon no longer exist.

Hans announces that his radio station is restructuring, which puts his job at risk. He demands affection from Katharina, who refuses to give it although she still loves him. Hans anticipates his death.

The 1990 general elections are held in East Germany, resulting in the abolition of the state and its reunification with West Germany. The East Germans feel the impetus to begin familiarizing themselves with West German law and business practice so that they can survive through the transition period. This clashes, however, with their lifelong socialist education.

Hans learns that he will no longer receive a salary from the radio station. He accuses Katharina of never really enjoying sex with him. Meanwhile, Ingrid has been joining protests for the first time in her life. She is dumbfounded by Hans’s resignation but finds freedom in his sense of futility. Hans feels his home slipping away. Stores across East Berlin clear their stocks, including a bookstore that had chosen to throw its entire catalogue in the trash to make room for new titles.

Katharina travels to Venice and writes to Hans about her experience of the city and its art. She has not forgotten about his sadness, which has grown to include the postponement of his new novel’s publication. Katharina promises to revisit the city with him one day. Upon her return to Berlin, she is surprised by the city’s burgeoning commercialism.

Rosa is shocked by her new purchasing power, which she uses to buy groceries on Katharina’s return. Her reaction represents the larger general reaction to life in East Berlin, which has culturally and legally been absorbed into West Germany. To reassure themselves that their actions are ethical, young German shoplifters steal only from big businesses. The sudden surfeit of consumer choice sends them into the cycle of capitalistic alienation, where they must constantly make new acquisitions as the pleasure of the old ones wears off. Katharina joins in this trend as well.

With the union of East and West German currency, East Germans proceed to throw out their old furniture, accumulating rubble by the ruins of the Berlin Wall. Similarly, many items of value in East Germany are either defaced or go for cheap in the markets.

Rosa suspects that Katharina is embarrassed of her, which is why she hasn’t been introduced to either of Katharina’s parents. They end their relationship at the start of 1991, so that Rosa can date another friend. Hans tries to negotiate his lifelong commitment to Katharina in exchange for him leaving his family. Katharina doesn’t want a trade, just as Hans doesn’t want to go into the void of the unknown.

Katharina kisses Robert, her sculptor friend, after a night of dancing. She travels to Vienna and is dazzled by its preservation of the past. She remains in a relationship with Hans, though she does not get pregnant as they had planned. During the summer, Hans goes to Paris with Ingrid. He does not call Katharina that entire time. Some of Katharina’s friends die or are injured in accidents. Others emigrate.

Hans fears losing his studio, so Katharina offers her desk to him. He refuses. In August, Katharina travels to Tuscany and sleeps with an Italian man named Alessandro. Hans welcomes her back on her return, but by then they are beginning to separate.

Katharina breaks up with Alessandro, who thinks the path to a relationship is clear with Hans out of the way. Instead, Katharina feels disgusted at the thought of ever having sex again. To explain her relationship with Hans, she feels that she might have been looking for a father figure after all.

Hans loses his job at the radio station, which is closed down following the dissolution of East Germany. He briefly participates in a rehiring program but realizes there is not much left for him to do at age 60. Ingrid learns that their apartment will undergo a rent hike.

That December, Katharina loses her repulsion for sex, which is revealed to have been the result of hormonal changes. After spending an evening with Hans, she goes to have sex with Robert.

At the end of the year, Hans listens to the radio as its frequencies are turned over to West German stations. It is his first time to celebrate the New Year with Katharina. The following month, Katharina admits she is pregnant. Hans desperately tries to claim the child as his own by naming it. Katharina denies him. Several months later, her baby dies stillborn. Katharina is visited by Robert and Hans. Hans accuses her of not wanting his child. Katharina denies this, saying, “It would have been all wrong. Wrong from the ground up” (281). This marks the second phase of their separation.

Katharina travels to Egypt and spends a night sleeping between the paws of a sphinx. She has a vivid dream in which she enters the realm of the dead and sees Hans at the Employment Bureau, remembering her dates with Hans in places that no longer exist. Hans asks her to weigh his heart. She walks through a cemetery and wonders if it was right to return to Hans after her child died. She lies under Hans and bites him. Hans stops recognizing her.

In the dream, Katharina sees her mother working as a tour guide and her father retired and living by the water. He points out the gap between history and personal tragedy. Katharina tells Hans that she will call him when she wants to, which he interprets as rejection. A stranger offers her a job as a “hostess,” which he means as a euphemism for sex work. The stranger tries to seduce her, then pays her after they have sex in the Jacuzzi.

Still in the dream, a West Berlin student wants to marry her. She buys bookshelves with Hans, whom she has never loved more than in that moment. She takes off the rings she received from Hans and floats into the air. Hans asks her to choose between him and the student. Katharina becomes certain that she will never see Hans again.

Katharina reads a series of documents relating to an unofficial collaborator of the Stasi, the former secret police of East Germany. The collaborator, codenamed Galileo, agreed to work with the Stasi long before Katharina had even been born. Katharina recognizes the code name as the title of a play by Bertolt Brecht, whom Hans had been close to after arriving in East Germany.

The files describe Galileo as a man who wants to cooperate because of his political views, though he is also presumed to receive government advantages in return. Galileo lived a double life, betraying his friends by identifying them to the Stasi. Galileo had been deployed to extract data from female subjects, infiltrating the cultural sector of the country. Katharina connects Galileo’s mission details to Hans’s secretive behavior on some of their dates. She finally feels that she is seeing Hans fully for the first time. She learns that Hans had been an active collaborator up until the expatriation of Biermann. He began trying to disassociate from the Stasi around the same time he met Katharina. Sometime before their first meeting, the Stasi deployed surveillance against Hans in his apartment.

Katharina retraces the steps of their first meeting, though many of the landmarks have radically changed in appearance. The file reveals that Hans’s collaboration with the Stasi formally ended around the same time that she replied to Hans’s third cassette tape. In her reply, she indicated her desire to be known fully by Hans. She realizes then that he wanted the same thing. Now that he is dead, there is only silence between them.