The Psychology of Love

Chapter 34 Comrade

Chapter 34   Comrade

"Sam, YU, I'm so glad to see you," Professor Österreich beams at them.
"You're looking much better, YU. I'm glad Sam came to check on you on Friday. That's true friendship. True comrades stand by each other. Go through thick and thin. Yeah, not everyone is lucky enough to find a true friend in the one life we've been given," Österreich says, patting his friend Dieckmann on the back.

"Well," Dieckmann replies, "Not everyone is so pleased about it when true comrades always stand up for each other. How often have you quarreled with your wife because you rushed to me. As if I were a child with a cold who couldn't manage on his own," Dieckmann laughs and pats Österreich on the shoulder.

Both laugh heartily and reminisce about their student days.

Österreich had married the love of his life after graduating from high school. Then, when he met the self-confident and smart Dieckmann in the first semester of their psychology studies, he found his second mental half.

The man from the North Sea coast who understood his thought processes.

They became friends and studied the old masters of psychology together.

And because Dieckmann was never willing to let a woman's loving care into his life, Österreich always worried when he fell ill.

Dieckmann's entire family lived in Emden, the largest city in East Frisia on Germany's North Sea coast. He was the first son of four brothers and a sister and decided to leave home after graduating from high school.
When he told his parents that he was going to study in Berlin, a world collapsed for the family. His mother cried and did not want to let go of her firstborn.

But Dieckmann could not help himself.

The urge to discover a new world far from the tides he knew, to free himself, to explore and to show his life new paths, overrode the secure feeling of family care.

And it was to be Berlin. The city of torn hearts.

A long, all-suffocating wall still divided the city in 1976. It drew its deep claws through the whole of Germany, tearing the country in two.

Separated families, friends, thoughts and ideologies.

And in Berlin, the small heart of the country, the Wall ran silently and dangerously through the streets.

Divided West and East, paths, landscapes, desires.

The pain of being torn apart also raged in Dieckmann. He had to leave. And in the torn heart of Germany, he had to face his own identity.

He began to study psychology at the Free University of Berlin, then still West Berlin.

And that's how he met Bernhard Österreich. The small, young man with glasses, who upset the professor with his impatient questions during the lecture.

Made him smile and smirk.

A man who clung to him and followed him everywhere.

They became friends and went through their educational journey together.

Went through the liberation blow of the fall of the Wall in 1989.

Saw the united hearts embrace.

Bravely fought with the hardened ideas and exclusions of the Germans against their own new found German comrades.

East and west. North and south.

No compass direction posed an obstacle.

Österreich and Dieckmann remained inseparable.

And Österreich's wife, a petite beauty, had to learn to accept over time that her husband did not see only her and their two common daughters on the high pedestal of his life. Manfred Dieckmann was always on this pedestal.