Dr. Gerhard Stoltenberg

Dr. Gerhard Stoltenberg appears as a public figure whose authority seems almost physical: a tall minister-president whose presence can command a room, yet who is unexpectedly brought down by a patient’s familiar game. His visit to a new psychiatric clinic offers the narrator both a staged display of institutional progress and a sudden reversal of power. Years later, at the narrator’s father’s funeral, Stoltenberg’s diminished appearance gives that earlier grandeur a different measure: the aura belonged not simply to the man, but to the office he held.

Official Authority and the Clinic Visit

At the clinic’s opening, Dr. Gerhard Stoltenberg is a prominent guest on a rainy day. Before entering the new building, he turns to a thoroughly soaked chorus of patients singing a sailors’ song. The narrator’s father apologizes for the weather, and the visit proceeds after a delay. The episode first establishes Stoltenberg not through policy or biography but through his place in a public ceremony, where patients, clinicians, officials, and the press are gathered to present the institution to its visitors.

Inside, the narrator’s father describes the building as a decisive departure from custodial psychiatry, declaring that treatment and patient welfare will now take priority. Doctors and attendants introduce their areas of work, including music and art therapy. The rooms are filled with patients painting, making things, or playing music, while the wards are strikingly quiet. The narrator’s second-oldest brother privately observes that the most visibly disturbed patients have been kept out of sight and that only the well-behaved are being shown. The presentation’s calm therefore looks less like an ordinary picture of life in the clinic than a carefully managed one. Stoltenberg notices the stillness and asks whether the place is always so peaceful; the father acknowledges that it can become loud, while emphasizing the staff’s effort to manage it.

A brief disruption comes in a group session for young people with psychological problems associated with years of drug use. One teenager rejects the discussion and leaves to use the toilet. The narrator reads Stoltenberg’s response as pleased rather than offended: he treats the interruption with an easy acceptance, suggesting that someone who needs to go should go. The moment distinguishes his public composure from the carefully quiet tour. He does not insist that the clinic’s visitors be protected from every unscripted encounter, even as the visit has already made the contrast between the showcased wards and less manageable realities apparent.

The Toy-Gun Incident

After the visit, the party gathers beneath the entrance canopy beside the waiting limousine. Stoltenberg praises the narrator and his brothers for their behavior, thanks their father for the building, and offers help if problems arise. He then walks toward the car between two men carrying long cases. As he begins to bend toward the open door, a familiar voice shouts a threat. The narrator recognizes it at once: the astonishing change is not the identity of the speaker, but the effect his words produce on the adults around him.

The two case-carrying men throw themselves onto Stoltenberg, forcing him into the mud as they draw black pistols from their cases. The narrator’s father urgently tells them that there is no danger and that the speaker is one of the clinic’s patients. Rudi emerges from behind a newly planted concrete flower tub, raising a silver revolver. The father identifies him as harmless and explains that he often plays this way; the narrator adds that people on the large psychiatric grounds have previously been ambushed by him. The explanation does not immediately settle the confrontation. One of the men threatens to shoot if Rudi comes closer, while Rudi advances, delighted by the impact his game has finally achieved.

The father steps into the line of fire and reframes the scene for Rudi: the men are already on the ground, so Rudi has won and can put his weapon away. Rudi considers this, then throws the revolver into the air. Its unmistakable plastic clatter on the road exposes the toy and confirms the father’s account. The men climb off Stoltenberg, and the moment pauses before the ceremony can resume. The incident turns the clinic’s official display inside out: a patient who had been treated as a potential threat has, through play, brought the minister-president and his armed protectors into the mud.

Mud, Composure, and Public Image

Stoltenberg remains face down after the men rise. His parents kneel beside him; his father reassures him that all is well, and his mother tells him he can get up. When Stoltenberg slowly lifts his head from the mud, he declines the father’s offered hand and says he can manage on his own. He then stands, tall and dripping, transformed in the narrator’s description into an immense upright pig emerging from a mud bath with its two companions. The grotesque image punctures the dignity of the office without suggesting that Stoltenberg loses his composure or retaliates against Rudi.

The father asks the photographer to stop taking pictures, but the reporter departs proudly through the mud. The family and Stoltenberg then set off together in an odd procession toward the nearby home. The Family dog reacts to the minister-president with frantic barking, growling, and whining, shrinking away before baring its teeth; the narrator’s brothers drag it into their parents’ bedroom. This second eruption of disorder extends the episode’s comic reversal beyond the clinic entrance: the public guest who had just been toppled by a toy-gun game now provokes alarm in the household animal as well. The narrator’s attention stays on physical reactions—mud, a plastic weapon, the dog’s fear—rather than on any formal political consequence.

Later Encounter and Narrative Significance

The narrator’s father and Dr. Gerhard Stoltenberg never see each other again after their moment of fraternization at the opening. Each uses the familiar form of address only once. Yet Stoltenberg attends the father’s funeral after leaving office. There he stands bent before the narrator’s mother, making himself smaller as he offers condolences in a thin voice. The narrator, who had taken Stoltenberg’s aura for something innate and enduring, recognizes that the authority and radiance have disappeared with the office.

His departure makes the change concrete. He drives away not in a limousine but in a small green car, overshoots while leaving the cemetery parking area, and blocks a bicycle path because the road is not clear. A teenage girl rings insistently and gestures at him; Stoltenberg dutifully reverses to make room. The small, ordinary encounter offers no dramatic confrontation comparable to Rudi’s ambush. Instead, it closes the portrait by placing the former minister within everyday traffic, obliged to yield like anyone else. Across the two scenes, the narrator measures public authority through bodies and gestures: the tall official knocked into mud, then the retired man bent in condolence and backing up for a cyclist. The contrast makes office appear powerful but temporary, while the narrator’s comic details keep the memory of that power from hardening into reverence.