Josse’s outburst at the Officers’ Club is a sudden rupture in an evening he had imagined as a triumphant entrance. After a night of grueling work dismantling a bumper-car ride, he reaches a classmate’s seventeenth-birthday party and begins drinking; then, without understanding the force overtaking him, he smashes bottles, attacks the room, and collapses. The aftermath brings him back to the psychiatric hospital where his father works, and the episode deepens his desire to get away from Schleswig.

The planned arrival and the work that delayed it

A school friend’s birthday was being celebrated at the Officers’ Club in Freedom Barracks, where the friend’s father was a general and the highest-ranking military officer. The barracks stood beside the water and resembled the nearby psychiatric hospital in its red-brick buildings and enclosing wall. The party was to begin the evening before the birthday, so the guests could celebrate into the next day.

Josse and another friend had spotted a sign at the fairground in Schleswig advertising help with dismantling the bumper-car ride. They asked how long the work would take and were sent to the owner’s caravan. There, the owner offered them twenty marks an hour and estimated three or, at most, four hours of work once the last ride ended at ten. The boys decided to work first and use their earnings to arrive at the party late. They pictured themselves entering the Officers’ Club with the bodily aura of hard labor, ordering a cold beer at the bar while the other school students enjoyed an easier evening.

That self-conscious entrance never happened as planned. By midnight the boys had removed only a small part of the structure. The ride’s owner loaded each piece far back in a large truck, a careful process that made the job seem unlikely to end quickly. Another worker, a bearded, stooped man in shorts and an undershirt, dismantled the equipment at a steady, provokingly slow pace and sang the same few lines through the night. The contrast between the boys’ haste and his unchanging tempo became part of the ordeal.

Coercion, exhaustion, and the delayed party

At two in the morning the boys had loaded the framework, hundreds of little lights, and the electrical metal net. They were sweating and exhausted, while the birthday celebration had long since begun without them. Josse whispered to his friend that they should abandon the pay and leave. When he told the owner they wanted to stop because they had something important to do, the man came down from the truck’s lift and demanded that he repeat himself. Josse could manage little more than saying that they wanted to go.

The owner threatened them, insisting that they could not leave until the truck was full and that their money would come only at the end. Josse was so frightened that he nodded. His friend made one last appeal for their wages and permission to leave; the owner struck him three times on the forehead with his malformed hand and ordered them back to work. The promised paid job had become a situation in which the boys were held by intimidation and by the owner’s control of their wages.

The floor plates made the physical cost unmistakable. Each weighed an estimated forty to fifty kilograms. The boys first carried them one at a time, then had to lift them together. Josse’s muscles trembled, his back hurt, and the screwdriver work had raised blisters on his palms; gripping the plates made his hands cramp. The bearded worker continued carrying plates alone, still singing, while Josse’s friend looked deathly pale and unsteady. Their imagined late arrival at the party receded as the work continued.

The outburst and its immediate aftermath

By the time Josse reached the party, he was the only person who had remained sober. He quickly tried to change that, making and drinking two flaming B-52 cocktails. As guests began to leave and birds sang through the open windows, the room’s aftermath offered a jarring contrast to the polished military setting: a puddle of vomit lay on the pavement below, and the quiet view through a window included the Schlei and an island of gulls. Josse describes disgust giving way with startling speed to anger.

He took an empty beer bottle and hurled it against the wall, then threw more. The force seemed to come from nowhere. He ducked behind the bar as classmates tried to get out of the way, and began throwing full bottles across the Officers’ Club, at walls and windows and, apparently, toward those fleeing. He could not later remember what he shouted. He struck his head twice against the bar, fell, and continued to lash out and scream. Three soldiers restrained him. In a sticky pool of alcohol, he struggled in terror until he lost consciousness.

The transition from party to hospital came as a disjointed awakening: Josse found himself on a stretcher being pushed into an ambulance. He recognized Haus E, the outpatient-treatment building, and was taken to a first-floor room in E-Mitte, with barred windows and no inside door handle. A doctor asked about drugs, alcohol, and medication. Josse would not answer or give his name; he covered his face and pretended to be dead. When staff pulled his hands away to examine the place where he had struck his head, he felt profound shame. The doctor looked surprised, then reassured him and left.

Family, shame, and the wish to leave

Josse’s father soon arrived, disheveled and out of breath, and sat on the edge of the bed. Josse began to cry. His account of the episode was as bewildered as the event itself: it had simply happened, out of nowhere. His father wanted to take him home immediately, but the doctor spoke to him privately and kept Josse overnight so he could sleep it off. In the morning, Josse woke with severe muscle soreness and a hoarse voice, wearing a white, side-tied hospital shirt. His father returned with fresh clothes and took him home; the short walk from the hospital to the family house took less than three minutes.

At home, his mother tried not to cry, and his middle brother embraced him for a long time. Josse was allowed to stay home for a week, then had to return to school. The sequence closes not with an explanation of the outburst but with a change in direction: his wish to go far away and leave Schleswig grew stronger, and he eventually went to the United States. The episode’s defining movement is from an anticipated performance of independence—arriving late with wages earned by hard work—to helplessness, restraint, and exposure before his family. Its violence remains unexplained in the moment, while its consequences make escape seem increasingly urgent.