Magdalena Parys-Liskowski was born on 29th June 1971 in Gdańsk. At the age of 13 she left for West Berlin with her family. Changing her place of residence was not easy and caused longing for home, family and friends.
Magdalena Parys-Liskowski graduated from Humboldt University, faculty of Polish Philology and Pedagogy. Her emigration experience as a teenager strongly influenced her literary works. In her books, she constantly writes about the history of Poland and Germany, as well as complex relations between the two nations.
Magdalena has never decided to stay in Poland for good. Today, she feels a Berliner. She has changed her flat in Berlin as many as 36 times.
Interview by Iwona Demska on 8th December 2014 in Gdańsk.
I recall that I had such a hard time back then. And, what is worse, we had to leave which didn’t suit me at all because it meant that I will leave all my friends, family and my dad behind. I really loved him, he lived in Szczecin. I still love him. It meant leaving my other brother behind and it was just so difficult. Oh, well, it still happened and we left. I remember the day when we crossed the border, farewell with the grandparents who agonized over it. And they took us to Kołbaskowo, they accompanied us to the very border. Dear friends of my parents also were there. I remember that all of us were crying. My brother cried, my adopted aunt, my adopted uncle. The only person who didn’t cry, who thought that it was best to save the face and nerves of steel, was me.
It all was so colourful and so beautiful in Berlin. What everyone pursued and dreamt of when they left and thought it a dream come true I perceived as hostile and very foreign. It was foreign and hostile because it was something unknown to me. I only knew the grey, the eastern hopelessness, and I use the word boldly. It was so close to me because I was accustomed to it. And this colourfulness, this vividness and this bustling and raucous Berlin was something really difficult.
At first, I couldn’t get hold of myself. To the extent that I just surrendered to the longing. It came in my dreams. I remember that it was the hardest part. Every night I dreamt of a desolate tree and a kennel. Again and again a grey, sad, almost traumatic place from the Szczecin back yard, somewhere in Szczecin-Dąbie, or something like that. I mean the back yard of my parents’ friends. This seemed the most beautiful place for me in my dream. I came back there constantly. Or another dream. I dreamt of lilac, a tree under my grandma’s balcony, here in Gdańsk, at the former ul. Dzierżyńskiego, today Aleja Legionów. The most beautiful place, a back yard, garages and something great, playing, playing ball I mean, with the children from the neighbourhood. Those were my wonderful dreams and I didn’t want to wake up from them, I didn’t want to wake up. And no colourful shop windows, trips nor various arguments used by my parents that it’s beautiful and if you want to you can get another Barbie doll, couldn’t convince me that it was worth to wake up from that dream.
I recall that I had such a hard time back then. And, what is worse, we had to leave which didn’t suit me at all because it meant that I will leave all my friends, family and my dad behind. I really loved him, he lived in Szczecin. I still love him. It meant leaving my other brother behind and it was just so difficult. Oh, well, it still happened and we left. I remember the day when we crossed the border, farewell with the grandparents who agonized over it. And they took us to Kołbaskowo, they accompanied us to the very border. Dear friends of my parents also were there. I remember that all of us were crying. My brother cried, my adopted aunt, my adopted uncle. The only person who didn’t cry, who thought that it was best to save the face and nerves of steel, was me.
At the time, I had a great time at a disco and I remember that me and my friends met a group of American soldiers. We partied until dawn and we knew absolutely nothing, we didn’t know that the wall fell. It was real news that the wall will fall and that it finally did. Not the news of the day, week, ten.., the news of the century. Nobody expected that. And certainly not us, young, being 17 or 18 at the time, us who were interested in other thigs than policy or the victims of the wall. And after all, when I was returning home I felt that there is something different in the city. I noticed that on my way home the city was sort of abandoned, which was strange and even unnatural. When I heard it on the TV, I turned it instinctively because when you are back from a party in the morning you do quite the opposite. You get to bed and go to sleep. But I turned on the radio and the TV and I heard the news. Immediately, I got together with the people from the party and we went to the place where people were rejoicing. They were happy, over the moon. You can’t blame them, let me say this once more, the idea that the wall will fall was a shock, even a greater shock to the people who were responsible for its fall. Both on the eastern and western side. Those responsible, I mean the people from the DDR politburo, who answered the questions asked by journalists: “Is it really happening, can we cross the wall?” One of them replied, looking into their notes: “I suppose so”.
Despite everything, despite the adaptation, not only in terms of language, but also social and every other kind, despite this successful integration, I am a Pole. And back then I observed it keeping my distance. I didn’t give in and I understood that I didn’t give in during a history lesson when the teacher asked us a question. It was a really good, wonderful teacher. He asked us a question in history lesson and the in political science. We had several lessons with him. He asked us how do we perceive Germany in several years’ time. How do we see them in, let’s say, 20 years’ time. As I recall, and I was in 11th grade at the time, most of my classmates of course replied euphorically, as they had heard in the media and at home, that it will be something wonderful. What kind of question is that, anyway? We are one country, one nation, it’s wonderful that we are united. Only I said to the teacher that it won’t be so great because for 28 years, or even longer, I mean the wall of course, this is the East and that is the West. You cannot merge the East and the West during one night and after this euphoria, this enchantment, we will be one body from then onwards. You can sew on a hand and
I had to see it for myself. I had to do something… I had to do what I couldn’t have done when I was 13. I had to go to Gdańsk. Maybe in spite of my parents, anyone. And borrow, live there for a while, in Poland, in Gdańsk. But, as I’ve said, I came back to Berlin quite soon. What was the main reason? Was there something that annoyed you here as an adult? I was annoyed by everything. Maybe it’s pitiful, the things I say, but I was annoyed by everything. I was annoyed by the things I’ve missed, the greyness, the thing so fascinating for me. This familiarity. The things that I brought with myself from Poland to Berlin, that belonged to me, after so many years spent in West Berlin, unfortunately in this colourful, raucous but ordered Berlin, ordered according to the Prussian system. Suddenly, I couldn’t find myself sitting by a gas heater. I couldn’t understand why the streets are… Why I cannot wear high heels and walk normally on the pavement because I’ll somewhere lose the high heel or there is no… In winter it’s slippery, nobody cares for the streets. That at an office I have to almost kneel because the window is so unnaturally low. That a woman in the office is unkind. I don’t know how the situation is today but back then it was a shock for me and I just thought that I cannot, excuse me for saying it, I cannot live in that mess. I am too chaotic myself and I lack orderliness so I couldn’t find myself in such forms without shape.
I’ve always loved to write and I have been doing it all my life. It was so… My diary was my best friend and during the period when my parents were in Germany and me and my brother stayed with the grandparents in Szczecin and we waited for the trip I remember that the diary was really, really important for me and I had it with me all the time. I wrote constantly and noted my every thought, every fear and all my emotions. Before I left, I burnt all those diaries. I didn’t want to take all that with me. I started to write again when I arrived to Berlin but I had never hoped that I will be a writer someday. I suppose that was a dormant dream but I thought I couldn’t handle more than 10 or 20 pages of a book, that I won’t be able to be so persistent to succumb to one topic, elaborating on it from the beginning to the end. That I have so extensive and vivid imagination. No, no, no, I absolutely didn’t believe it. But I’ve always tried. I have a few books that I tried to write and managed to finish 50 or even 70 pages and I reached an obstacle. Those topics surpassed me. And the first book I started to write and I was serious about it but not knowing whether I will complete it was the “Tunnel”. At a certain point I was captured by the topic in such a way that it wasn’t a matter of my finishing it any more. That was just like the voices of all those emigrants, not only Poles, but all those emigrants and German immigrants who spoke to me and I was surprised where did they come from, why do I have to speak German. Why do I speak so much about Germans and so little about Poles. I’ve been asking myself the same question since then.
I wish to be a fully-fledged writer here, who says that she writes only about the things she wants to write, etc. but “Tunnel” wasn’t that kind of a book. “Tunnel” was a book… It certainly had its therapeutic value but I know that now, when I look at this book at a distance of 7 years, and I see that I processed various traumas there, injecting them into old Berliners. Today I understand that migrations of a German and a Pole are not so different at all, that migration is always the same, that it’s always connected not with nationality but simply with loss.
I must say that I’m really lucky. I really, really am very lucky. I managed not to lose Poland and not to lose the Polishness in me and, at the same time, gain a new place in the world, love the country that for us, Poles, seems so difficult to love, Germany. I discovered so many wonderful, amazing valuable people and great places in this country. Every day I am amazed with this country anew. And every time I became enchanted with Gdańsk and Poland anew.
