"Then there was this cigarette story"
The only party I ever hosted myself (apart from the many that happened by chance) was born out of a great sorrow. Three days and three nights were spent celebrating in my backyard flat in Nauynstraße, Berlin. Many people I knew and didn't know came and went and Hans Magnus Enzensberger, Gastón Salvatore and Hans Werner Henze were also present. I hardly noticed them because I myself wasn't actually there.
After a while, I heard that Gastón Salvatore's latest collection of poems was given the title "The Long Walk to the Apartment of Natascha Ungeheuer". But I didn't want my name to be dragged into the public eye as a allegory of Salvatore's and urged him to come up with a name invented by himself after all, but he remained stubborn. I wanted to sue him, but then a private drama happened at his place. So, I dropped my lawsuit. After all, it was only a little book of poems. Thus, I thought, let's just forget it.
But when Enzensberger later told me that Henze had even made an opera out of it, I wrote him a resounding letter of protest, but got no reply. All this happened in 1969, and I slowly forgot my anger. My life was so exciting and colorful anyway.
In 1985 I had a large exhibition as part of the 750th anniversary of the city of Berlin. At this time, I received a call from the festival director with the news that Hans Werner Henze wanted to come and see me. My anger from back then rushed up again like a fountain, which I could now finally take out on the right person. The two gentlemen came holding a monstrous bouquet of flowers wrapped in crackling glass paper in front of their faces. I was about to start ranting when H.W.H. strode purposefully like a child towards my oil painting "Waiting Room" and lost himself in it, intensely and for a long, very long time. My painter's heart leapt for joy. In view of this extraordinarily intense reaction to my paintings, my anger vanished into thin air. Then followed four hours packed with exciting, anecdotal conversations full of cheerfulness and sympathy.
Then there was this cigarette story. I was still a smoker at the time and Henze had quit, which I didn't know. On an exciting occasion like that, I just had to have a smoke. The festival director shook his head, "Henze doesn't smoke any more, please don't!" So I put the packet of cigarettes far away from my hands, which was quite difficult for me. Then Henze took a cigarette from the box and handed me one too. I wanted to refuse it, but he insisted, persistent like a conductor, and gave me a light, whereupon the festival director, shaking his head, took photos of this episode, which may still exist today. Two weeks later Henze called me, saying he absolutely wanted the "Wartesaal", a picture measuring 240 x 170cm. After that, I had no more financial worries for a year.
However, I had to buy a new, large canvas immediately. The emptiness on the wall where the painting hung was screaming and my room was threatening to collapse. The beautiful letters from H.W.H. were good consolation for the fledging "waiting room".
I think it was in January 1996. I came home late in the evening. The light in the stairwell did not work. I heard the phone in my studio not ceasing to ring and could not find the keyhole. Telephone, telephone! Finally the door was open, I rushed in the dark to the phone, which was still ringing, but in the heat of the moment it fell to the floor. When I finally found the receiver, a voice spoke into my ear: "This is Fausto Moroni, I would like to give H.W.H. a nice birthday present and I thought of the painting '627 Days to Volcano Eruption'; it had been on his desk for weeks as a postcard for an exhibition invitation. He mustn't know about it beforehand, though." We then arranged a rather bizarre transport from Berlin to Marino. Shortly afterwards I received another such fine letter from H.W.H.
Later, he would often invite me to his concerts. Afterwards, we dined and conversed elegantly. Since 1964, however, I had spent a lot of time with the poet Johannes Schenk, my partner, in Worpswede, where we resided behind a 1.70 m high wooden palisade in three magnificent old giant circus caravans and a nine-metre long lifeboat in a wondrously wide, dreamlike landscape close to the sea.
The elegant correspondence with H.W.H. continued, even though we wrote to each other only rarely. Now I bitterly miss the personality of Henze. However, his compositions live on, thanks to the young musicians who are enthusiastic about the maestro's works.
Best regards from
Natascha Ungeheuer
