The only normal people are the ones you don't know very well.
(Alfred Adler)
There was no way to attend lectures at the university. Berlin was in a state of total exception – and the university was said to have stopped normal operations. Her mother, who, with haggard face, was hurrying from meeting to meeting, had asked her – well, she had pled – that she stayed at home. Otti Seidel was torn between curiosity and alarm. TV and radio were only working sporadically – and if they were broadcasting, quality and informative content left much to be desired. Therefore, it wasn't easy to know what was going on actually. The newspapers seemed to get it right in most cases, but only with some hours of delay. – Her mother was a good source of information, if she was available. As Imperial Minister of the Interior, she was permanently briefed about almost everything. Of course, it was the great nationwide picture she was presented, rather not the Berlin-specific details, because that was not her responsibility. – Nevertheless, Otti was learning a lot from her mother's tales. TV and radio weren't working properly because they were state-owned. There was no redundancy. Once several installations had been occupied by rioters, the network had become defective. Berlin was worst off: all local stations were in the hands of the insurgents – or destroyed; broadcasts had to be accomplished with mobile transmitters from outside.
It was an unhallowed coalition that had formed, her mother was claiming. The peaceniks had allied with the Völkischen and the communists – and together they were assaulting the existing order. – One was even considering to employ the armed forces against them, Käthe Seidel had told Otti. That was an absolute fracture. It had been one of the foremost objectives of the August 1918 Reichstags Initiative to abolish just that, the prerogative of the crown to employ soldiers for suppressing internal unrest. And now, the SPD, the liberals and the Zentrum, those parties who had pressed home the new constitution back then, were debating to rescind this stipulation. Käthe was appalled, she said. It was like treason. But the police services, which were a responsibility of the individual states, were incapable of crushing the insurgency. So, what else could one do?
Otti had grown up in a world, where only the police was maintaining internal order. The armed forces were trained to fight external enemies, weren't they? How could they sensibly be employed against the rioters? With tanks, guns and bombers? That didn't bode well... It was a piece of information that really worried Otti. Her mother said Chancellor Schumacher was grimly determined to crush the riots – and the rioters. In his eyes, they were scum, sluggish social parasites. And Schumacher wasn't alone with this notion. Even if the left wings of SPD, LDP and Zentrum had initially opposed the rocket deal, they had since come in line, more or less. Whatever the cause, this level of rebellion could not be tolerated. – Otti thought everybody should cool down, before serious damage was done to society. But who would listen to her? Not even her mother did... – And she couldn't come into contact with her peers, because she was cordoned off in the Wilhelmstraße. Darn it!
