In 1980, Günther Grass, Heinrich Bell and Johann Strasser founded the political and literary magazine "L'80". Right after Tito's death, Gras suggested that I write a personal, literary obituary for one of the first issues. I understood it as a kind of obligation, and as an honor, and as an opportunity to place myself among the leading German writers. I started a few times and eventually gave up. I replied to Gras that I would very much like to respond to the invitation, but if I can't, all the phrases just come to me, and he certainly doesn't expect that from me. He replied that he understood me completely, that even he wouldn't be able to write anything about Willie Brandt when he died.
After more than thirty years, has something important changed in my attitude towards that topic? Can I say anything about Tito and his time without being subjective? I could only write anecdotally about Tito, because I was not often in his environment. There are, however, a few people still alive, who followed him day by day, sometimes hour by hour, for years and decades. Blažo Mandić, the press adviser, in whom Tito had complete confidence, had already written books about his late boss, among other things Tito up close, or professor Dr. Predrag Lalević, an anesthesiologist, who was directly responsible for Tito's life and was always one step away from him throughout the decades, until the moment of his death. On the other side of the constellation of writers, she published a lot of nonsense about him in high circulation. It was Grass who told me that I had the opportunity to see Tito and some of his contemporaries as literati and that I should not be silent about it.
I had my first three personal contacts with Tito in 1958 as a representative of the youth and the federal labor action for the construction of the Zagreb-Ljubljana highway. Between 1965 and 1979, I translated about twenty times at his meetings with statesmen from the German-speaking area and interviews with German journalists. I was in Tito's working team at the founding congress of the KEBS (today's OSCE) in Helsinki in 1975, a gathering of communist and workers' parties in East Berlin in 1976, and a meeting at the summit (summit) of non-aligned countries in Havana in 1979. During that time, I only briefly had the opportunity to exchange a few private sentences with him.
Admittedly, it is also a fact that the translator must follow not only every word and nuance, but also the facial expressions and body language of his "client", to somehow "get into his soul" or, as I have already said somewhere, " see him intellectually in his underwear."
WHO LIED WHEN: I am thinking, however, not only about the personality of Josip Broz, but also about the time we lived by connecting him to his name. And were those who once celebrated it sincere then, or today, when they renounce it? An example would be Djordje Balasevic's song "Count on us". Sometimes I play it on YouTube. In SFRY, he said about himself and his generation in relation to what Tito represented that he could "count on them". And today? Today, Balašević no longer sings that song, he said that it was "such a time".
One functionary from "that", Tito's time, who rose very high under Slobodan Milošević, to my question "did you lie then or are you lying now?" not only did he not get angry, but laughed and answered: "Well, then !" I ask the same question to all those who so en masse, overnight, renounced Yugoslavism and became nationalists, denied everything they swore by, who glorified Tito unreservedly, and then spat on him: Did you lied then or now?
THREE PHASES: At least twenty years before Tito's death, public speculation abroad, but muted in our country, began: what will happen when he dies? Yugoslavia, as it was when Tito led it, was a respected country on the international meridians whose views were respected. The Yugoslav passport was the most expensive on the illegal market, because with no other passport it was so easy to enter so many countries around the world without a visa. Yugoslavs were welcomed everywhere. The rise of the country, its economy and the living standards of its inhabitants were evident.
I think that three periods should be distinguished. The first lasts from the end of the war until approximately 1952. It was a harsh time for a certain number of residents. I returned to the country as a sixteen-year-old from a concentration camp in Germany, that is, an even harsher environment, on September 3, 1945. I thought cruelly then and was probably cruel. I've already written somewhere that maybe it was a lucky circumstance for me that I was too young, and that's why I didn't take part in actions, which I would be ashamed of today. All the same, I was shaken by the injustice towards many native Germans. I covered that topic in a small series in the then "Nin", and in a feature in the German radio station WDR, and in my novel The governess, I want to say, I tried to repay some of the victims of my time in the only way I know how - literary. Despite everything, I remain convinced that it was "my" time.
However, most of Tito's period, let's say from 1952 to 1972, was the time of the rise that I have already mentioned. In my opinion, the best that the population of our region has ever experienced. Whoever remembers differently should reconsider and take his position. During that time, that is, for Tito, the concepts of self-management and non-alignment are associated. On self-management as an experiment of "socialism with a human face". it was discussed positively mainly in Western Europe, but also in America and Asia. The policy of non-alignment was respected equally in the East and in the West. The most powerful statesmen sought Tito as an interlocutor on that topic and listened to him carefully. At that time, a lot of foreign money, mostly American, entered Yugoslavia. I am not an expert to analyze how much, but I know that these were grants, not loans, that this support was intended to keep Yugoslavia away from Moscow. I remind you that by the agreement with Greece and Turkey, Yugoslavia was then not de jure, but practically very closely connected with the NATO pact. And I am asking for confirmation from economists that until the mid-seventies, Yugoslavia was not in debt at all, as is wrongly thought today, because Tito himself did not allow that to happen.
I noticed something even then, but I didn't attach importance to it. When we took out a loan, I, for example, for the purchase of my first, second and third "ficha", I started the three-year repayment with a third, and ended with a fifth of my salary. That quiet, imperceptible inflation benefited the citizens. Of course, the bills for all of us came later, but not for the loans from abroad, which did not exist. Tito's attitude was that one should not only work for the future, but live in the present. I would say he was an epicurean.
The third period still in Tito's life are those last years, when his formal authority was intact, but the reins slowly began to slip from his hands in favor of national leaders in the republics and provinces. Only then did the borrowing of the country begin, because loans were cheap and it was believed that they would be easily serviced from the growing national income.
PERSONNEL, NOT A NATIONAL QUESTION: I claim that for Tito and the highest officials of the state and SKJ, who were with him - including those who fell away little by little, such as Đilas, Ranković, the forgotten Kavčič (the Slovenian "road affair"), Tripalo, the group around Nikezić - it didn't matter at all who was of what nationality, but who was "whose cadre". It sometimes overlapped, but it was also funny. When I was supposed to go as an adviser to the Yugoslav embassy in Bonn, the problem was whether I was a "Serbian" or a "staff" from Vojvodina. Somewhere, I don't even know where, it was decided that I was a "Serbian cadre". But no one was interested in whether I was Jewish by "blood", Hungarian by the sound of my surname, German, because we spoke German at home, or Serbian, because I spoke and wrote Serbian, so unlike many of my "Serbian" friends, I wrote, and even today I write in Cyrillic. I used to write German in Gothic for a while, but I had to stop, because - since my generation is dying out - no one in the German-speaking world knows it anymore.
In various articles in recent years, authors suggest and try to illustrate with quotes taken out of context that Tito had a negative attitude towards Serbs. This is nonsense, which cannot be supported by anything. Nikola Ljubičić was the Minister of the Army from 1967 to 1982, and for Tito, who loved the army, that was probably a more important position than the Prime Minister. And Petar Stambolić was the president of the federal government from 1963 to 1967, before that the president of the federal assembly. For a long time, Aleksandar Ranković was the "second man" behind Tito, and they are certainly not like a Croat and a Serb. Not to mention the highest officials in Yugoslavia during Tito's time, who were "Serbs", such as Koča Popović or Draža Marković. Any serious analysis will show that the Serbs, that is, the Serbian staff, were equally represented in the running of the state.
I had the opportunity to observe Tito in the last years of his life from the perspective of a translator. I noticed - for the first time very intensively in Helsinki in 1975 - that his careful, curious look, sometimes just for a moment, especially if he thought no one was watching him, shut down, as if he was taking off his mask, and became hard, very serious, I would say, painful. At the time, I thought it was about his physical pains, which he sometimes complained about. Like when the cultural and artistic society "Ivo Lola Ribar" performed a folklore program in front of him and his guests. Among the players is my daughter Nadja. "Comrade President, that is my daughter," I said. I thought maybe he would invite her and take a photo with her. But he just waved his hand and answered: "But not one of them has leg pain..." Today, I am thinking whether it was only about the pain or whether he, based on the information at his disposal and his political instinct, felt a danger for Yugoslavia, for his life work. Some say today that he was "breaking up Yugoslavia". What nonsense!
About republican "chiefs" will be written for a long time, many more documents and autobiographies must come to light. I also met Marko Nikezić as a translator when he was the Minister of Foreign Affairs, but sometimes I also had the opportunity to talk privately with this educated, smart man. I remember that it was at the National Theater when I met him for the first time after he became the president of the Union of Communists of Serbia. I congratulated him and asked him how he felt about his new duty, and he replied: "It will end badly for me." His "downfall" certainly did not come about because he was a Serb, but because of the differences that he described in his memoirs. very precisely describes Mirko Tepavac, and Draža Marković also helped in the "killing" of Nikezić.
Slovenia was not led by Tito's closest, dearest associate Edvard Kardelj, as many think. Slovenians did not like Kardelj, because for them he was "too" Yugoslav. The real boss was today almost forgotten France Popit. Immediately after Tito's death, I traveled as a translator to Austria and Germany with Stanet Dolanc, who then told me that he would become the federal minister of the interior. That amazed me and I asked him if he couldn't get anything better, the ministry of defense or being the president of the federal government? He answered me: "I protested too, but Kreiger told me that I was still a pawn for them and that I had to listen." Many commentators in our country and abroad described Dolanc as the most powerful politician, which he never was.
THE WALL AROUND TITA: In those last years, it was increasingly difficult to get to Tito, he was "guarded" because of his illness "from stress". The head of his cabinet, General Berislav Badurina, stood out in this regard. (Also one of those whose name no one mentions anymore, and who played a very important role in those last years of Tito's life.) I was in the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and worked on the preparations for the Non-Aligned Summit in Havana. Our ministry also made a proposal for Tito's speech and I wrote in that version of ours a few sentences that I thought were important, but also universal, because we all suspected that it would be one of his last, if not the last big performance.
In Havana, I didn't work as a translator, because nobody needed "my language", German, but every night I wrote an internal bulletin for Tito about everything that happened during the day, so I set my personal records of not sleeping. None of what I wanted to hear from him was in the speech he gave, which was precisely measured but unexciting, not to say boring, especially compared to the performance of some African presidents, such as Julius Nyerere of Tanzania or Kenneth Kaunde from Zambia. When I later inquired whether the version on which I, along with many others, had worked had reached him at all, he was told that he was "spared" from it. After the end of the big meeting in Havana, he invited everyone who worked there as part of the Yugoslav group to lunch, even though a hurricane was already threatening, which would hit Cuba a few hours later. His advisers told him to postpone it for Belgrade, that he was tired, that he should fly home as soon as possible, but in this respect he was energetic and remained true to himself: "Whoever watches with me, will have lunch with me!"
On September 9, 1979, I saw him for the last time, shook his hand and he said to me - as to many others on that occasion: "Thank you."
A few months after that, he went to a hospital in Ljubljana and half a year later he would die.
SELF-MANAGEMENT AND CO-DECISION-MAKING: Already at the end of the fifties, I was invited to give lectures about Yugoslavia in Germany or to participate in debates in front of the audience, on radio or television about my country. I did it gladly for several reasons: I like to talk, that is, as they say, I am "chatty", I liked to brag about that Yugoslavia, which I came from and which I was asked about, and besides, the pay was usually relatively good , of course in foreign currency.
In Germany, for example, we have had a lot of discussion about the differences between self-governance, (Self-government) and co-decision making, (co-determination). In our opinion, self-management meant that the management of the means of production should be entrusted to those who work directly with them. Co-decision-making started from the point of view that the direct producer is not educated enough to "deal" with capital, so it should be done on his behalf by educated union representatives trained for these jobs. If I managed to point out the core of the debates in this simplified way, it turns out that we, (Yugoslavs), were in favor of a much more direct way of making decisions, than they, (Germans) whose trade unions were a kind of "vanguard of the working class" approximately Leninist-Stalinist model. Am I exaggerating? Well, of course. But how can I simplify the essence of many years of brainstorming, if not in that way? At that time, Italian leftists, above all Berlinguer, (Enrico Berlinguer), leader of the Communist Party of Italy, declared themselves in favor of Yugoslav-inspired "Eurocommunism". It would be interesting to open a discussion today about what it actually was, including the results of the "Korčula school" that we (led by Kardelj) so stupidly and to our own (Yugoslav) detriment suppressed.
AND AFTER TITA...: The most common question after all those lectures or discussions "at the round table" was always: "And what will happen after Tito?"
Our crude propaganda found a phrase that meant nothing, and I think it set us back - "Even after Tito Tito!" But what was I thinking on the one hand, and what was I saying on the other?
I was mostly cautious. I would say that it would be good for the maintenance of the Yugoslav community if Tito lived as long as possible, but that it will be clear only after his death whether the Constitution and the entire organization of the country will really guarantee the survival of what we used to call self-governing socialism. I spoke publicly in such a restrained way that it would seem as credible as possible. I was intimately convinced that socialist, self-governing Yugoslavia was a permanent category, that it was "the third way" that was the only correct one. I used to say that within my family as well. Now I publicly admit my misjudgment precisely because of my disappointment, because it turned out that I was not right at all.
My opponents in discussions were often "right-wing" German journalists, such as Karl Gustav Strem from the daily "Die Welt". He was an excellent connoisseur of Yugoslavia, he also knew Serbian well. He always claimed that after Tito's death, Yugoslavia would quickly fall apart. In our dialogues, I sometimes thought that I was more dexterous and seemed "victorious", but the historical development denied me.
The question remains, how is it possible that Yugoslavia, which seemed to me exemplary to such an extent, fell apart, and that in such a bloody way? How is it that "fraternity and unity", which Tito said countless times in phraseology that "should be guarded like the apple of one's eye", turned into the most gruesome possible mutual slaughter and persecution? Did Tito, by his insistence on "brotherhood and unity" - which even I was tired of - show that he doesn't really believe in him? Why did the idea of Yugoslavia turn out to be unsustainable, even though as a dream of politicians and intellectuals it was strongly expressed above all in Croatia and Slovenia during the 19th century. century? I don't know, I don't understand, I can only state that it is like that now, and I don't know what will happen in the future.
In February 1980, I was in East Germany as a translator with the president of the Federal Executive Council, Veselin Đuranović. He called me early one morning and told me to make an appointment with Honecker right away, because we had to stop the visit, Tito was dying. I admit that I had a hard time holding back tears while doing that job. At that time I was working in the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, from February until the end I also read those daily bulletins of the medical council, which were not published. I was sorry that they were torturing an old man by forcefully keeping him alive, but modern medicine does that for almost everyone.
When he died, I was assigned to be in the group that welcomed foreign statesmen in the building we then called the Federal Executive Council. And during the funeral itself, I sat in the hall of that palace, where Tito often gave receptions, and watched the television broadcast with a small number of officials, guard officers, cooks and waiters.
I don't have a relationship with graves, I guess because I don't know where my parents were killed and buried. Memories are stored in thoughts or in photographs. In my apartment, I keep a photo of Tito with his personal dedication, which I received in 1974, when I left for Germany to be a counselor at the embassy. I went to Tito's grave several times, always with someone, for some reason.
In rare optimistic moments, I say that the solution is "Goodbye in Europe". When I look, for example, at the new joint enterprise for the railway transport of Serbia, Croatia and Slovenia, to which Bosnia and Herzegovina, Montenegro and Macedonia want to join because of very clear, material interests, it seems to me that there is hope. So won't that be a restored Yugoslavia on rails?
Why did the idea of worker self-management backfire here? We know, of course, that it never worked as it was intended, because the Party representatives, under the suggestion of their committees, managed to interfere too much in the appointment of directors - "innocent managers", as we called it in our long-overdue, now ridiculous terminology, and in planning production, and especially, for example, in the division of apartments and the like. I saw it then too, but I thought that these problems would be overcome in time. This is especially important to think about today, when due to the world economic crisis, even in a strong economy such as Germany, they really try and succeed in involving the direct producers, as we called them (Germans say Arbeitsnehmer - "those who are employed"), in decision-making and transfer on them and part of the material responsibility.
What about the non-aligned movement? In the fall, if Minister Jeremic is to be believed, its representatives will meet in Belgrade to commemorate the first summit meeting of that international organization. Who will they represent? Egypt, the current presiding country of the Movement, which should formally convene that meeting? Who will be at the head of that country in four or five months? Other "reputable members" such as Libya, Syria, Iran? And what is the best they can do? Maybe they will go to Tito's grave to lay wreaths.
JOSIP BROZ FROM KUMROVAC: And Tito's personality? It would be good if those historians who consider themselves serious and those authors who claim to know something more and special, finally point out the various nonsense that is spreading. Tito is undoubtedly the same Josip Broz from Kumrovac, who is also mentioned in the official biographies published during his lifetime. Many archives are still closed or unexplored. We do not know all the details about the reasons for Willy Brandt's resignation, first as German chancellor, then as president of the Social Democratic Party of Germany, let alone what happened with Tito and around him, especially when it comes to his Moscow years. Herbert Wehner and Eleonora Steimer (Wilhelm Pick's daughter), who lived at the Lux Hotel in Moscow at the same time as him, told me a little about it, but these are just points of a pointillist painting, and I described them in my book Tito's translator.
What this peasant from the Croatian-Slovenian border, who learned the locksmith trade, became a test driver for the "Daimler-Benz" company and, as a non-commissioned officer, came second in a fencing tournament within the Austro-Hungarian army, meant to the world, was best shown on his bury, because never before or since have so many statesmen gathered in one place. He was one of the most prominent political figures of the second half of the 20th century.
I like to tell an anecdote. Venue: Dusseldorf, lunch in honor of SFRY President Josip Broz Tito given by Prime Minister Heinz Keen. Among others, the most important representatives of Germany's big capital are present. The host says something like this in his toast:
"I hear, Mr. President, that you were one of the first guest workers from your country in Germany and that then, before the First World War, you were thinking about moving to America." What would have happened to you, to your country and to Europe if you had really gone across the ocean then?"
Tito didn't want me to translate for him, he understood and spoke German very well, he spoke to me in a whisper and said that now he couldn't read the "nonsense" that they had written for him as a toast, but that we would have to improvise and I would translate for him. He said among other things:
"Yes, Mr. Prime Minister, I was actually working near here, in Mannheim, and I was thinking about going to America so that I wouldn't have to serve in the Austro-Hungarian army." I don't know, of course, what would have happened to my country and Europe if I had emigrated, but I will tell you what would have happened to me personally, in that case I would now be a millionaire in America."
The German politicians and rich people present smiled sweetly, applauded and I think they took him at his word.
