Cold War

The Cold War is a historical division that enters the novel through ordinary plans and household humor rather than extended political explanation. It shapes the narrator’s attraction to Berlin, becomes visible in a confused exchange about travel to Warsaw, and is finally reduced to a practical joke when Vera proposes putting Höppner’s conscription file in the freezer.

Berlin and the Divided City

Before visiting Berlin, the narrator knows little about it beyond two facts: the Wall runs through the city, and living there would mean not having to serve in the Bundeswehr. The Cold War thus appears first as a condition of his imagined escape from conscription, bound up with a city he has never seen and understands only through fragments.

On a trip with Vera, a question about how long the train takes from Berlin to Warsaw produces a revealing misunderstanding. An elderly woman responds by asking whether they mean the Reichsbahn and East Berlin. The exchange makes the division legible through everyday language: a simple inquiry about a journey crosses into the political geography of a city split between East and West.

The Conscription File in the Freezer

Later, after Frieder takes the narrator’s conscription file, the group discusses what to do with it. Vera proposes putting the file in the freezer, making a joke about the Cold War. The suggestion turns an international standoff into a domestic hiding place: the historical phrase becomes a pun tied to a concrete object, the document that could determine the narrator’s military future.

The joke follows Frieder’s own exemption from service after his suicide attempt and hospitalization. His medical certificate means he does not even have to undergo the examination; the narrator, by contrast, remains uncertain about what to do and does not want to choose conscientious objection and civilian service. The file’s disappearance therefore carries practical stakes, even as the group treats its concealment with irreverence.

From Political Reality to Shared Language

Across these moments, the Cold War shifts scale. In Berlin it is a boundary embedded in travel and in the narrator’s hopes of avoiding military service; in the Auerhaus it is a phrase the residents can bend into a joke. The novel does not develop a political account of the conflict, but its brief appearances show how a large historical division presses on private choices and is then absorbed into the group’s improvised, domestic world.