After Wolfgang died, no one was interested in inheriting this pile of his binders containing printouts and photo clippings. There was a brief discussion during his wake about who might take this big collection. Everyone was interested in the art that Wolfgang collected and the costumes that he sewed, but they seemed to be somehow taken aback by these binders. We discussed about what we should do about them. Should we burn them? Would it make sense to give them away as gifts? Wolfgang had spent so much money on the magazines that he would cut the photos from.

We were a couple for 10 years, which means that these binders must be over 30 years old! Wolfgang made a lot of collages. Some of the smaller ones had been lost, he must have given them away. Each of his lovers wanted to be gifted with a collage made specifically for them: they would bring him photos, around which he would design collages. In later years, after he took a computer graphics course, he learned how to download and print out photos. You could tell by the quality and color palette of the material which were cut-outs from magazines and which he printed out himself.

It was in Hamburg that Wolfgang came up with the idea of collecting material for what would later become his collages. He lived in Vienna, he would visit me, and we’d hang out in bars: some of them had free magazines with photos of naked men. Wolfgang once said, “Look at this! We need to have this!” He came up with the idea that he would cut out photos from magazines and compile them in albums. I would sometimes help him cut out the photos. He would instruct me, “Cut slowly, carefully. Make sure you don’t cut off the dick.” At that time in Hamburg, there were two gay bookstores at Lange Reihe and three Beate Uhse stores, each with the “Schwules” section, where you could buy all the gadgets that are now available in every such store.”1 Wolfgang had been making collages for a while, and he decided that the best way to store them would be in binders. He didn’t want to hang them on the wall, but he glued photos onto paper. He did it also for his own sake: otherwise, he would keep changing each concept and each composition.

At some point, I was assigned to do a German-learning course in Hamburg, and I couldn’t travel to Vienna so often. Wolfgang asked me to buy and ship some gay magazines to him. He trusted my choices. Maybe “trust” is an exaggeration, it was obvious what body and “dick” types he was looking for. The problem was prices: I couldn’t afford to buy many magazines from Beate Uhse, they were exorbitantly expensive. Our financial situation was also not great. I used to be editor-in-chief in Poland. In Hamburg, I had to start from scratch. Wolfgang didn’t have any money either. Sometimes, he would get money from his father, but he accepted it unwillingly, he didn’t want to take money from a “fascist,” as he would call him. But he would take money from his mother, who would regularly slip him some cash, so he managed to make ends meet. Later, there was a period when he had a job and earned money; we could buy more magazines not only in Hamburg, but also during our travels around Europe. We went to Paris, to Spain, where we lived for a while, Italy, England. Once, we went to Amsterdam, but we were more interested in exploring local nightlife than searching for gay-porn shops. Buying these magazines always involved an element of surprise, as they were wrapped in foil and you couldn’t open them before buying. You would buy them without knowing what was inside. Usually, it turned out that the covers were most enticing, that inside there was more text than photos, which was disappointing.

Wolfgang’s collages often feature Christian, his closest friend, a key figure in his life, his emotional and financial support. Christian understood and tolerated all his outbursts, eccentricities, and depression. He sought out doctors for him. When Wolfgang was at his lowest point financially, he would give him money for living and trips. Christian was a millionaire, he had a beautiful villa near Vienna, where we often stayed overnight. He also had a terrible wife and two children, who were totally spoiled by this wealth. He had a business enterprise in the first district, which was doing great, his brother was also employed there. His wife ran a children’s clothing store on a street parallel to Kärtnerstrasse, close to where they lived. They owned an entire floor, a beautiful huge apartment. Christian and Wolfgang had been friends since their school days; each would willingly die for the other’s sake. Christian died of cancer three years before Wolfgang’s death: Wolfgang was already seriously ill, and it was clear that Christian would not survive his cancer, though he sought treatment at the best clinics in Munich. There was still a bit of hope: Christian was very athletic, he had always led a healthy life, he once even won the Vienna Marathon. There was hope that his body might persevere. When Wolfgang got ill, Christian started convincing me to move to Vienna to take responsibility for Wolfgang’s care. I was the only person who was willing and capable to do so. And Wolfgang thought it was a great idea. “Trust him,” he would say. “He has money, he’ll arrange your move, he’ll provide for you financially in your old age.” This was an important argument because with my pension I wouldn’t be able to sustain myself in Vienna. So we started arranging my move: I would be given legal care of Wolfgang and employed at Christian’s company. They started looking for an apartment for me, and they even found a nice one at Tandelmarkt, not far from Wolfgang’s flat at Holandstrasse. But Christian suddenly died, which put an end to these plans. There was no way I could move in together with Wolfgang. His apartment was 67 square meters, but it was inconveniently set, dysfunctional for two people, with no separate rooms, no privacy. We had both reached the age when having a private room was a must, especially that Wolfgang continued to “run wild,” and I didn’t want to witness his sexual adventures. Christian must have left him some money before his death, so Wolfgang could afford all his whims, including buying and “destroying” books and magazines for his albums.

We met in 1980. At that time, Wolfgang had been married, I also had a wife. He had a daughter, I didn’t have children. Wolfgang lived both in Warsaw and in Siedlce’s manor house, part of which was the horse-riding school, ran by him and his wife. They had moved there with their daughter Alisia from another manor house in Masuria. I don’t know exactly why they had moved, probably for financial reasons and because of the distance. I visited their place twice. I didn’t have a good relationship with Wolfgang’s wife, so I stayed not in the main house, but in the building for horse-riding students. Wolfgang would smuggle out food for me. I was only allowed to enter the main house only when his wife was away. It was beautiful there. You could see that Wolfgang had a knack for decorating.

It’s through this horse-riding school that Wolfgang met Ludwig Zimmerer.2 They were introduced to each other by Andrzej Wajda, who came with his family to the horse-riding school.3 Zimmerer invited Wolfgang to his villa in Warsaw’s Saska Kępa, where he had a collection of sculptures and paintings. He proposed to Wolfgang that he would work for the collection: he would manage, archive, and expand it by making contacts with folk artists all over Poland. This was the context in which we met.

We met in a funny way. It actually happened through my wife, Iwona, who kind of forced me to meet him. Before I became the editor-in-chief of the monthly magazine “Poznaj swój kraj,”4 I ran the Zaolzianka Youth Hostel in Izdebna in the Silesian Beskids. I had some successes there. I introduced international standards into the hostel’s management, I built a net of international contacts, and, at some point, someone in the Ministry [of Education and Upbringing] decided that I should be transferred to Warsaw and become part of the editorial team of “Poznaj swój kraj.” At that time, Iwona was about to finish her German studies. We both moved to Warsaw, where she got a job as a television presenter. And, since her job was interviewing interesting people, she stumbled upon Ludwig Zimmerer’s art collection and upon Wolfgang. One day, she told me, “I met this cool Austrian guy, you have to meet him.” Because I ran the ethnographic section at “Poznaj swój kraj,” I had access to a lot of folk artists, which, in turn, interested Wolfgang, whose job for Zimmerer involved making contacts with folk artists. We started traveling together. And, during one of these trips, we ended up in bed. That’s how our relationship started. At that time, we were both married. My wife was away, doing a scholarship in Heidelberg in German studies. She moved to Germany to pursue her PhD degree, there she fell in love with another man, and eventually we got divorced. Wolfgang wanted to get a divorce too. I had a flat in Warsaw on Okrzei Street, Wolfgang rented a flat two streets away, on Listopada Street, which he had found through an acquaintance, a medical doctor. He talked me into moving in with him.

Wolfgang told me that I had been “his first man.” We sometimes talked about how this mutual desire had suddenly manifested itself in both of us. We met and realized that we could live without women, but not without each other.

In Poland, Wolfgang felt like a different person. He was fully alive. He was fascinated by the mechanics of living under communism, by this otherness: the directness of people, contrasted with the oppressive state that made daily life challenging. Wolfgang was amazed by the resourcefulness of Polish people living in the circumstances of state-wide poverty, by how people would help each other, for instance, when it came to sharing food stamps. This Wolfgang didn’t have access to at all. Me, quite the opposite: since I worked as an editor, I had my connections. As a couple, we complemented each other. I had some connections to Warsaw’s elite, so we operated in social circles inaccessible to average people. I regularly received invitations to exhibition openings and met gallery owners. Together, we managed to get by. We actually could afford many things, because Zimmerer paid him well and in a foreign currency. We would drive outside Warsaw to get dog food. The tenement house where we lived had old pipes, which made the tap water unsavory, so we’d go to the Oligocene water spring in the Ochota district, where we would queue for hours to get water. Wolfgang also developed passion for taking and developing photos; we installed a photo darkroom in the bathroom, which meant that we could never use our bathtub for anything else but developing photos. We had no financial worries, which is why anything artistic that Wolfgang would do at that time was never related to money. He didn’t care about how much money he could earn for designing a theatre set design, for instance. But he cared about recognition. He was thrilled when someone asked him to paint something, he would always do this as a gift, never for money.

When I met Wolfgang, Zimmerer had already been divorced and was about to marry a beautiful woman who was a model. He had a tendency to be extremely jealous. For some time, he suspected that Wolfgang was having an affair with his new wife, but he calmed down when he realized that Wolfgang was in a relationship with me. Zimmerer’s wife was very fond of me. At her request, Wolfgang would sometimes make dinners for them, because, as she claimed, he cooked much better than their maid, who not only was bad at cooking but also had no interest in art. Wolfgang had a talent to make something original and delightful out of nothing. This was the case of the parties we would throw in the flat at the 11 Listopada street: I would spend hours cooking, while Wolfgang’s job was to decorate the table. And he would always steal the attention: he would usually come up with something original, some edible arrangement, some “silliness” that he would add to my dishes. This would usually generate a bigger applause than my cooking.

Our social life in Warsaw was thriving. Through Zimmerer, Wolfgang had contacts with other embassies. Together, we regularly attended theatre premieres. Due to his interest in art, he also attended exhibition openings. Wherever I went with Wolfgang, I could see that he was greeted like a star. People would snob about his visits. When he accepted an invitation to dinner, the hosts would gather their entire company around him, this “crazy Austrian,” as the event’s centerpiece. Some perceived Wolfgang as a snob, which was probably somewhat true, as his family belonged to the Viennese elite and were snobbish because of their wealth. But most people were fascinated by the idea of this Austrian man living in Poland, this poverty-stricken communist state. And that’s attracted to the life in Poland. Wolfgang probably wouldn’t admit it, but he must have been aware that no one would be so impressed by him if he was Polish. Only after returning to Vienna did he realize that his life in Poland had been easy. But this doesn’t mean that he wasn’t talented. If he got interested in doing something, he would succeed at it. He knew many languages: French (he attended an elitist French high school as a teenager), English, and Polish, which he learned on his own.

During our years in Warsaw, we spent several months per year at an allotment plot at Wał Miedzeszyński. I’d had the plot before we met: my ex-wife’s father, who was the director of the allotment-garden division, gifted us with a plot of land, located south of Grochów, where all these “Wólki” begin. I had to sell it after Wolfgang was evicted from Poland. Every year, we would move there as soon as it got warm. Wolfgang had a Łada car, and he’d travel easily between the plot and Zimmerer’s flat in Saska Kępa. Besides, it wasn’t far. We could walk from our flat at Praga Północ or Zimmerer’s place in two hours. We’d sometimes do that. We loved living there. It was the center of our social life: during the communist times, it was precious to have a place where people could talk freely. Friends would come over and stay for the night in the attic, which Wolfgang had beautifully decorated. He loved nature and flowers. He commissioned building a terrace. Nearby, there was a grocery store, literally a five-minute walk from our plot. We won over a shopgirl, who always kept something for us “under the counter”: bread, which was sold out immediately every morning. We could never leave the house early enough to get bread. At that time, Wolfgang was a fan of the “flower children” culture, so he would go shopping barefoot and wearing a sarong. People looked at him as if he was a freak, also because of his long hair with a braid. He was very self-confident and didn’t care how people looked at him. We usually stayed at that plot until late autumn. We used electric heating, and when things got really bad, we’d flee back to Warsaw. We would ferment wine, I would make jams. In winter, Wolfgang remained creative: he would draw, sketch, and read: he would bring lots of books and press from Zimmerer.

For Wolfgang, our life on the plot was a continuation of his years spent in the horse-riding-school manors. There, too, in the summer, he tended to flowers, plants, and vegetables, while in winter, when there was not much to do outside because there was no horse riding, he would do things around the house. Wolfgang was also interested in breeding puppies, which, in our Warsaw flat, was untenable: the flat was on the second floor, the street was busy with trams. We raised six puppies on that plot and brought them to breeder fairs. Wolfgang loved dogs. When he was still married to Alisia’s mother, he once brought a female Irish wolfhound from their farm to his flat in Warsaw. He called her Persi. Alisia’s mother was annoyed that he hadn’t taken a mutt, but wanted instead a large dog. Then a problem arose, because Persi had to be bred. We had to find contacts through the embassy. It was a success. Wolfgang gifted me with a six-month-old puppy, but soon after a misfortune happened. One day, while I was travelling, the puppy was off leash, ran outside, and got ran over by a tram. When I returned home, Wolfgang was extremely drunk, feeling terrible after what had happened.

When Wolfgang was expelled from Poland, he couldn’t take Persi with him. For a while, we were planning to somehow bring her to Vienna. There was even an idea that someone would bring her to the border and hand her over to Wolfgang. At that time, I was stuck in Germany, waiting for the decision about my citizenship. Ultimately, Ania Cisło helped us out by transporting the dog to his ex-wife’s manor house, where she remained until his death. Wolfgang missed her terribly; she was the apple of his eye.

In Poland, and later in Hamburg, no one would believe that we were a couple. I kept hearing, “What an odd couple you are!” We lived together, but Wolfgang never brought it up in public. Another thing is that we were part of an “artistic community,” so “such things” were not a big deal.

Wolfgang was perceived as immensely charismatic. He had a strong personality. He could easily influence my decisions: because of his persuasiveness, I migrated from Poland. He had a knack for winning everyone over. And all those parties we threw together! He loved the night, and he refused to give up nightlife until the very end of his life. In later years, when we kept in touch mostly by phone, he would tell me about the parties he made: how he prepared whatever to eat, and yet people would still show up, eat everything, and have a wonderful time. Rice with cucumbers, chopped parsley, a bit of sauce, that was enough. As long as there was alcohol! At his gatherings, it wasn’t the food but the atmosphere that attracted people. People were fascinated by him, wanted to connect with him. He craved human company, though he was rarely bored himself. This was his great strength. He was quick to forgive arguments, breakups, conflicts. But not always.

One of our close friends was Ninel Kos, a Jewish woman who owned a few apartments on Jagiellońska Street, near the Bagatela Theatre. This was the residence of the Jewish community and the meeting place of the underground movement, a transit point for the material that we delivered and received. One day, Wolfgang invited Ninel to Vienna. She was overjoyed; it was her first visit to the city. Wolfgang had already struggled with depression. I don’t remember exactly what went wrong; it must have been something minor. There wasn’t even a heated argument between them, but he treated her badly. He threw her out of his apartment, and she had to go to a hotel for the night. The next day, me and Ninel met. I brought her her things that she’d left at Wolfgang’s apartment. We started looking for accommodation, where she could stay for the following few days. Fortunately, there were affordable hotels in the neighborhood. And Wolfgang didn’t meet her until she left. Only after a longer while, he visited her in Warsaw. I was terrified, I didn’t know what to expect, as, despite their great friendship, things between them had suddenly gotten so tense. But they reconciliated. In later years, when Wolfgang came to visit his daughter, he would stay with Ninel on Jagiellońska Street; I also kept visiting her in Warsaw regularly until her death.

When we lived in Warsaw, we didn’t know any other gay people, except Nowicki. It was actually quite strange, now that I think about it. When we attended theatre premieres, we would pay attention to how other men were dressed: this was the only tell that they were or could be gay. Back then, there were no gay discos or coffee bars (“kawiarnie”) in Warsaw. There was one gay bar, “Ściek” (“Sewer”) on Trębacka Street, in the basement next to the National Theater. Actors and dancers from the theater would gather there, it was the only place where you could be “out.” I found my way there through Nowicki. Wolfgang and I were frequent visitors, he could vent his frustrations there. A mutual friend of ours, who now lives in Berlin, often called me after Wolfgang’s departure to reminisce, and he himself admitted that he hadn’t been sure if we were a couple. He did know that we were gay; we’d seen each other at the club, but there were many things we didn’t talk about. We didn’t invite each other over for fear of “it” getting out. There were probably private home parties that we didn’t have access to. Then came the “Lambda” magazine.

Another important figure in Wolfgang’s life was Wanda Laskowska. We would regularly visit the Zaolzianka Youth Hostel, which was run by a friend of mine, who was given my position after I moved to Warsaw. Wolfgang loved this place, we had our own apartment. During one such stay, we spent time with Wanda, who, at that time, was preparing a premiere at the Polish Theatre in Bielsko-Biała and took a few days off. Wanda, who was already an elderly woman, was in love with Wolfgang, she adored him more than anything. For a while, she wasn’t entirely convinced that we were a couple. During our stay at the hostel, Wanda came up with the idea of ​​commissioning Wolfgang to do set design for the play she was working on. He was immediately excited. As an architect, he was interested in how set designs are constructed, this was one of his interests whenever we would see a theatre play. So this would have been a dream job for him. But he messed up, didn’t deliver the project before the premiere, and Wanda withdrew from what could be a longer collaboration. This didn’t end their friendship. Despite this, she adored him and would forgive him a lot. She admired his creativity. After he left Poland, she bought some of his Warsaw furniture as a souvenir. She was emotionally attached to the apartment at 11 Listopada street. She had been supportive in his artistic-creative endeavors until his death. Wolfgang didn’t want to be perceived as someone who was only working around collections of “naive art” or folk art. Wanda introduced him to theatre director Andrzej Józef Dąbrowski, who currently lives in New York, I still speak with him weekly. Andrzej became another important figure in Wolfgang’s life. Once he wanted Wolfgang to be part of a set-design collaboration for a theatre production in Grudziądz. Unfortunately, this didn’t happen due to the interference from… Wanda Laskowska, who reported to the theater that Wolfgang, a foreigner, didn’t have a proper licence, which was necessary for him to do the commission. Andrzej and Wanda had a weird relationship. They both adored Wolfgang, and they seemed to have some sort of personal and professional rivalry around him. If it hadn’t been for Wanda’s intervention, he would have likely excelled as a set designer, which, in turn, could have set him on a successful career path. He would be pretty well set working for Zimmerer and doing set-design theatre jobs. But this didn’t happen. And soon after Wolfgang was ordered to leave Poland.

During his years in Poland, Wolfgang had to travel to the state border in Cieszyn every three months to renew his visa. It was a formality: he’d get a stamp and immediately return. Sometimes we’d travel together and stay overnight at my sister’s villa in Cieszyn. Wolfgang didn’t want to leave Poland, but we got involved in the Solidarność activity to the point that, at some point, we were being followed. They didn’t have anything on me, and I was the editor-in-chief in a state-funded magazine. But with Wolfgang, it was easier. At some point, he was summoned and given a month to leave the country. He said that he couldn’t live without me. I decided to leave too.

My migration beginnings were difficult. As an emigrant (Aussiedler), I was placed in the resettlement camp in Friedland. I was supposed to stay there two weeks, but my stay was extended, Since I was an editor-in-chief in a communist country, I was suspected to be a spy. Finally, a German friend of ours, also a newspaper editor working at its Warsaw branch, intervened. He assured that I wanted to migrate because of my wife: we weren’t divorced yet, and she was doing her PhD in Germany. I was subjected to various tests. I was inquired about my knowledge of hiking trails across mountain huts. Due to the specificity of my job, I had access to maps of all the hiking trails in Poland, which, due to the Polish censorship, was considered to be classified information. In total, I stayed there three weeks and finally received citizenship. And right after me, my wife automatically received hers.

After this, I had to decide where I would have my permanent residence. I had family in Nuremberg and Munich, but Hamburg became an option for both of us. Wolfgang’s step-aunt, Lotte Schmarie, who had been a close childhood friend of his mother’s, learned that Wolfgang was forced to return to Vienna, which he hated. She must have thought that his father wouldn’t agree to help Wolfgang financially, since he had “messed up” in Poland. I don’t think it was true, his father would certainly have helped him, the entire family was involved in helping him. But, in any case, this aunt lived in Hamburg, in a beautiful villa in the Blankensee district on the Elbe River. She and her husband owned several tenement houses, and they rented apartments. She offered Wolfgang one of them: two small rooms with a tiny kitchen in the Eppendorf district. Wolfgang really liked Hamburg. The city had a completely different vibe back then, it was far removed from the awkward pomposity of Vienna. So we decided that I would take over that small apartment in Eppendorf, that Wolfgang would join me there, trying to figure out how to relocate to Hamburg on a permanent basis. There was a larger apartment, also from aunt Schmarie, that was soon to become available. The idea was that Wolfgang would have there his architectural studio that he would start with another person. But the aunt suddenly died, and this idea never came to fruition. Eventually, Wolfgang’s brother found him a job at an architect studio in Vienna. And I’ve stayed in that temporary apartment for over 30 years.

Wolfgang never wanted to return to Vienna, but he eventually accepted the idea of settling. Do you know Qualtinger? He was an important figure in Vienna: a singer, lyricist, and poet who was immensely critical about the Viennese mentality. For that reason, Wolfgang was fascinated by his work. And this is where he and his brother Christian agreed: they both had an opinion that Austria was extremely provincial. That Vienna or Graz, due to their university infrastructure, created a more refined environment, but that everything else was seeped in “backwards” mentality. Wolfgang was strongly against aristocracy, conservatism, wealth: that was everything that his father was attached to. He was ashamed of his father’s tendencies. His brother felt the same way. But, at the same time, they both benefited from the family wealth. Christian had a flat near St. Stephen’s Cathedral, in the most snobbish part of the city. The whole family shopped in the most expensive shops, where salespeople in aprons, ties, and bow ties would wait on them. Wolfgang was sometimes irritated by his brother’s duplicity: on the one hand, Falter and liberal political attitudes, and on the other lavish parties at the mill on Neusiedlersee, and the family-run factory in Voralerberg. Still in Poland, Wolfgang would say, “I’m so modest, I have nothing, my father didn’t gift me anything.” He was hurt by the fact that his sister was gifted with a house in Paris on Boulevard Richard-Lenoir, that his brother got a 16th-century mill, while he got nothing due to his marriage to a woman from a communist country. And, to top it all off, they perceived her as a con artist! Wolfgang once blurted out that supposedly she “dyed” horses for sale. I don’t know exactly what he meant by that, but this was enough for his father to become suspicious of her. Probably, his reasoning was that he would accused of supporting communism if he had regularly sent Wolfgang money.

Eventually, Wolfgang accepted the prospect of settling in Vienna. I lived in between the two cities. I had my own flat in Hamburg, I took there German courses and other training courses. Sometimes, as a journalist, I travelled to Bonn, where I took courses dedicated to journalism. Wolfgang would often come to visit, sometimes he would for 1–2 weeks, most of the time he didn’t have a steady job in Vienna. He wasn’t registered  with social welfare because then he would have been immediately assigned some jobs, and he refused to accept any. Nothing appealed to him. He was determined and stubborn; you couldn’t force him to do anything. He had his own schedule. He needed to get enough sleep, and he would go to bed late: he usually read, did sketches or drawings only at night. This worked well when he worked for Zimmerer in Warsaw, where he didn’t have fixed hours. But it didn’t work in Vienna: there was a time when he started working and earning good money. His brother found him a job in an architecture studio. But he was soon let go because he was always late and time-wise unreliable. He wouldn’t show up for morning meetings because he overslept or simply didn’t feel like going. This was part of his depression, which he had suffered from for long years. He was constantly frustrated that no one appreciated his designs. He felt that it didn’t matter that he had graduated from prestigious architecture schools in Vienna and London. Also, this was a time when computers would gradually replace the drawing board, and this was something that he couldn’t find his way around.

Wolfgang’s Viennese apartment was dysfunctional. He didn’t have a table, he did everything on the floor, which was covered with several layers of carpets. He would constantly curse that they had to be vacuumed. I don’t know where this idea of having many carpets on the floor came from, he probably was taught during childhood that the number of carpets on the floor was proportionate to the amount of wealth. His mother also had carpets everywhere, silk carpets that required specialist care. I remember vacuuming them for her, as Wolfgang couldn’t force himself to do so. Sometimes, we would get an extra carpet from his mother so that we could sell it and have some money out of it. They had many such carpets, they just sat there, rolled tight in bags. The family had a lot of such carpets because Wolfgang’s father was a manufacturer and was well connected: he had a source from where he imported them.

In Vienna, Wolfgang developed his passion for sewing. He had a great hand and a high-quality sewing machine. He loved visiting fabric stores; he could always find something there, even when we didn’t have much money. Back then in Vienna there weren’t many fashion stores around, so Wolfgang’s passion came in handy. He had a lot of creative ideas for clothing. He would sew suits. They were frequently unfinished, put together haphazardly, but still they were perfect for parties. One time, Wolfgang shocked me because he had taken his mother’s fur and cut it way too short, he must have gotten measurements wrong. The sleeves were too short, he tried to make up for the length with another material, this all looked ridiculous. But still he insisted that he would wear it, this was his idea for a costume that he wanted to wear for some gay party. When his mother found out, she was furious, he had taken the coat without telling her, and she found out only when she noticed the missing fur coat. But he easily acquiesced her. He said, “Mom, you don’t need it. You don’t go out anymore anyway, so either I use it, or it will be eaten by moths.” ​​He was carefree about clothes, he would cut them spontaneously, as he saw fit. He did a similar thing with some precious cashmere scarves that he used to sew a jacket.

Wolfgang had a lot of imagination and little shame. One time, he took his mother’s furcoats for a skiing trip. He’d wear them while skiing, because, as he said, they needed to be “aired.” To one Live Ball in early spring, he walked from Hollandstrasse, in a skimpy costume, half-naked, with his dick hanging out. Passers-by just stopped and stared. I was walking beside him, dressed as an angel, with some modest wings.

He was an open, charismatic man. He made friends easily, he found lovers easily. He had broad horizons as an artist, as a human being, and as a Polish person: he somehow became Polish during his years lived in Poland under communism. He was interested in men with intellect; he wasn’t just driven by the “dick” energy. I remember how one time in Paris he picked up a guy. He spent one night with him, but then this guy robbed him. Wolfgang immediately forgave him, though we didn’t actually have enough money even to travel back to Vienna. We had money for enough gas to get to the Polish border, and then we needed help from our friends. For him, the most important thing was that they had great time in bed.

Wolfgang was driven by strong emotions and sexual lust. He sometimes needed to have sex with me twice in a row to satisfy his needs. He was constantly drawn to discos, where we would stay until dawn. He tormented me with these discos because, as a driver, I had to be sober all night long so that he could freely go wild. Wolfgang wouldn’t end a disco night without a sexual partner. In later years, we had this arrangement, well, I really had no choice. I would sleep in one room, while he stayed in the other, having fun with his lovers. He always craved physical intimacy. He would establish rapport through dancing immediately, with just a few words. He was an exceptionally dynamic dancer for Vienna, which was much stiffer back then.

We once had a hilarious situation. We almost caused an accident. We were walking back home, drunk, at three in the morning, crossing the Donau Canal bridge. Wolfgang hadn’t picked up anyone that evening, and he was desperate for sex. He said, “Take off your pants, I’ll fuck you.” It was a dark night, no pedestrians. We were leaning against the railing, safe from harm. Suddenly, a taxi driver was passing by, and he stared at us with such shock that he barely avoiding driving onto the sidewalk.

Due to his depression, Wolfgang also suffered from terrible uncontrollable temper. Once, he flew into such a rage, for no reason, that he threw a glass on the floor. A piece of glass hit and made a deep cut in my leg. This happened a week before our planned trip to Italy, we were to travel together with my friends from Basel, who were to play concerts in Italy. Our plan was to drive to Rome together, leave the car there, and sail to Ponca Island, near Naples. It was a great plan. I knew Rome. Years before, my wife and I were guides in Rome, I knew the city well and my plan was to show Wolfgang around. After the accident, Wolfgang bandaged my wound, hoping it would “go away.” However, he couldn’t completely stop the bleeding, and, eventually, we had to go to the emergency room. The doctor saw me and said, “What have you done to this man?! He’s as white as a sheet!” I had lost a lot of blood, I was on the verge of losing consciousness. This put a stop on our trip. Wolfgang was so shaken by what he had done that he moved out for two days to his sister’s flat. He needed to calm down. He said he couldn’t bear what he’d done to me. So he left me alone, I couldn’t walk. Wolfgang’s mother would check on me. I had to crawl on the floor to open the door for her.

His outbursts of aggression were strange. I could sense that something was wrong, because there was no reason for him to get suddenly so angry. Looking back, that must have been the first moment I realized Wolfgang had been depressed. He himself couldn’t understand what was happening to him. He would complain that sometimes he couldn’t breathe. We didn’t know what was going on. There was no real reason for such heavy stress: we weren’t living in poverty, and professionally he was relatively successful. Only later he was correctly diagnosed. It took time to find him the right medication and dosage, but he took medication for the rest of his life.

We traveled together. I had a Volvo car, we drove around Europe. There was a longer period when we lived in Spain. For a while, we hoped to settle there. We didn’t know the language, but there was an opportunity that Wolfgang could start a professional career there. It all started back in Poland. During a party at an embassy, we met Paloma, who was a daughter of the Spanish ambassador. Paloma was immediately drawn to Wolfgang, partly because he was gay, like her brother. We started hanging out together. We even made an idiotic blood pact, that was Paloma’s idea of a testimony to our bond. Wolfgang was impressed by Paloma’s family background: through her mother, she was part of the aristocratic Alba family with a six-hundred-year tradition. I don’t remember much about her father’s roots. Paloma was addicted to drugs. She was totally out of it, she struggled to understand the world around her. Since early childhood, she had traveled with her father, who, as an ambassador, would regularly change countries. Every time they moved, she would have to learn a new language. Her father was assigned mostly to communist countries. I remember that he had served as ambassador in Yugoslavia, Bulgaria, and Hungary. For Paloma, this was added psychological pressure. She hadn’t managed to graduate from any studies, and she didn’t have to because she was financially secure. Her family lived in Madrid, her father was well connected across Spain.

One day, Paloma had an idea that we both come to her house in Sanchorreja, where we would all find Wolfgang a job. First, Wolfgang went on his own, just to verify if everything she had told us about the place was true. We weren’t sure if this house even existed, we didn’t know if there were conditions for us to live there. But it turned out that everything had checked out. Wolfgang returned to Poland, delighted. We packed our stuff and left for Spain by train. It was 1990.

A few years earlier, Paloma got divorced from her husband, a musician. What had remained after his presence in Sanchorreja was a grand concert piano, standing in a concert room with seats for a dozen or so people. Since then, Paloma had lived on her own in her modern villa. A half-hour walk away, her brother had a medieval manor house with antique furniture and a swimming pool. It was his inheritance, which he didn’t use much, he spent most time in Madrid. He occasionally visited the house in the summer; during his absence, we had his permission to use the pool. Paloma’s house was an hour away from Madrid by car. This location was inhabited by wealthy people who had their summer residences there. Wolfgang immediately immersed himself in the local gay community, as he ticked several boxes: he spoke several languages, he was an architect, he was gay.

However, our plan to live in Sanchorreja was compromised by the lack of a car. Paloma had a car, but she used it herself. Seville, the nearest location where you could buy groceries, was a dozen kilometers away. The village itself was so provincial that when I called from the post office, I had to dial the number myself because the clerk was unable to do it, for some reason. It was impossible to communicate in any language other than Spanish. While Paloma was very eager for us to stay, her drug addiction and depression were increasingly apparent. She was very unreliable. At one point, Wolfgang decided that we shouldn’t stay in her place, that we had to become independent and find another place to live. There were three barns that we could have at our disposal. Paloma and her brother agreed to give us one of them, they were willing to register us in the land-and-mortgage register. We slowly began renovating and rebuilding the barn, everything seemed to be going well. But the winter came. We were allowed to stay in her villa over winter, while she was back in Madrid, but this was a summer residence. The village got deserted, everyone had left for Madrid. Since the village was located in the mountains, there were such heavy snows that it was impossible to keep up with shoveling the snow away from the dirt road between the villa and the main road. It was impossible to get by without a car, and we couldn’t afford to buy one. We had no savings. Paloma promised to lend us her car, her brother declared that too, but they both changed their minds so often that we couldn’t rely on them. And Wolfgang finally decided that we should return to Vienna. It was a pity. We were hoping Wolfgang would find employment as an architect. This was only possible in Sanchorreja, where we had a rent-free apartment. We wouldn’t be able to sustain ourselves in Madrid: there was too much competition in terms of jobs for architects.  Same in Paris: there we also had access to an empty apartment. Wolfgang’s sister owned one, and she constantly lived elsewhere: Luxembourg, then the Philippines. She would have been happy to lend it to us. Wolfgang really wanted to get away from Vienna: he was fine with the idea of living in Spain. He was fine with Morocco. Part of it was his attraction to the mentality and beauty of men living there.

Later, I talked to Paloma on the phone a couple of times. She invited me to come. I didn’t want to go. She would reminisce how her grandmother was in love with me. I had spent a lot of time with her while Paloma and Wolfgang were usually out, having fun. The grandmother and Paloma lived in the same tenement building in Madrid, separated with one floor. She would play the piano. We would talk about Russian literature and music, I was in love with Dostoyevsky. We communicated in Russian; she spoke little but understood a lot.

Wolfgang and I lived together in an apartment on Hollandstrasse in Vienna until, during one of his trips to Graz, Wolfgang met Michael. We had a friend there, he would usually stay at her place for the night. I remember that we were just about to leave for a vacation together. At first, Wolfgang casually mentioned that he’d met a really nice guy in Graz. But the next day, he declared he’d fallen in love with him. He started struggling with an enormous sense of guilt, as he realized that he had to decide whom he wanted to be with. He was fully aware that I had left Poland for him, at his request, while I had been doing professionally quite well there. It’s not that I didn’t have any problems: I was the only editor-in-chief that was not a member of the Polish United Workers’ Party. I had been constantly pushed to do this; I had been unwelcome at the Party-led journalist editor sessions, my housing booklet (“ksiazeczka mieszkaniowa”), which I had as a journalist, had been blocked. Funnily enough, some years after I left Poland, I was awarded with the Silver Cross of Merit, which I was supposed to pick up personally. I refused. After the fall of Communism, I was free to visit Poland, I had dual citizenship. There was an opportunity to redeem my housing booklet, and I was proposed a freehold apartment either at Złota Street in Warsaw or in Zielonka [13 km to the north-east of the centre of Warsaw]. I declined, persuaded by Wolfgang, whose reasoning was that I already had two apartments in Vienna and Hamburg.

After Wolfgang met and decided to live with Michael, the situation had changed. I had to move out. Wolfgang asked his mother if I could move into one of the family’s apartments. Located around St. Stephen’s Cathedral, the flat was 52 square meters, and it officially belonged to Wolfgang. We had even started renovating it, thinking we would move in there in the future. Wolfgang’s mother didn’t mind, she offered she would cover the rent, which wasn’t much anyway. She had her personal agenda, since I had been taking care of her and Wolfgang’s father, especially when Wolfgang was on field trips. Wolfgang’s father was ailing and died shortly afterwards. I moved into this apartment and stayed there for over a year. I could have stayed longer. No one would kick me out, there was no pressure from his family. I was treated like a family member. Ingrid and Christian kept criticizing Wolfgang, “That idiot, how can he do that? Why not have a lover, but without throwing you out?!” Besides, the flat at Hollandstrasse belonged to Ingrid, she kept paying the rent, given that Wolfgang’s income was unstable. His family was generous toward me. I suspect that they were sure that Wolfgang had kicked me out of our apartment, this must have been their interpretation of the situation between us. I had a studio and a photography lab at my disposal, while Ingrid also offered me a temporary place to live in her residence, the historic mill in Neusiedlersee, where I also stayed from time to time. It was possible for me to do this, since I had my Volvo car, I was mobile. The family appreciated and trusted me, since they knew that I was the only person that could withstand Wolfgang’s outbursts.

After a year or so, I realized that I needed to move out. My flat in Hamburg stayed empty, while I spent most time in Vienna, at the mercy of Wolfgang’s mother, who was helping me “out of pity.” I returned to Hamburg for good, I felt that staying in Vienna would be somehow “forced,” that I needed a clean slate without Wolfgang and our shared social context constantly looming in the background. I needed Hamburg to regain my independence. I had good contacts in Hamburg, my journalistic accreditation gave me a lot of freedom of movement. I got some jobs outside Hamburg. In Salzburg, I worked at the summer theatre festival, which was something that didn’t exist in Vienna until ImPulsTanz. That’s when I met Ismael Ivo, a choreographer and dancer who was quite famous in Hamburg at that time.

After I left Vienna, Wolfgang eventually sold the flat. His mother had died. Our relationship was initially fractured. Probably out of guilt, Wolfgang preferred not to stay in touch. He was angry at himself for kicking me out of his flat, though he would never admit it. He would always say, “I am who I am. Why should I feel guilty?” That’s how he was. It was easier for him to break a relationship with someone than to admit he’d done something wrong. He also suffered from mood swings. He’d tell me, “I love you more than life!” and, a few moments later, he’d scream that he’d never been in love with me, that he regretted bringing me to Vienna. He was like that not only with me. There was a breaking point for everyone in his life: you need to either leave him or accept him the way he was. There was no way of changing him. For this reason, I suspect, his circle of friends gradually shrank. We shared a few friends who were on my side, because they were aware of the character of our relationship. I have a different character, it’s easier for me to forgive. This is why, we stayed in touch out of my initiative. And after some time Wolfgang felt comfortable enough with our relationship. With Michael, I was friendly. I sometimes visited them in Vienna, I could see that Michael had settled well with Wolfgang. He had set up an aquarium. Because his last name was “Eder” and Wolfgang’s was “Reder,” they had a name card on their door with their last names combined. They lived together until Michael got fed up, met someone else, and left. He rarely confided in me, but once he mentioned that Wolfgang had been unbearable.

During our relationship, I had developed a relationship with Wolfgang’s parents. I regularly did shopping for them. His mother was getting on in years, while his father was mostly bedridden with polyneuropathy, he could walk only with a cane. He loved when I drove him around in my Volvo, he pretended he had a personal driver. This idea made me laugh, while Wolfgang would get super angry. Being a snob, he loved eating at restaurants twice a week. He was a regular there. He’d come in, sit down, and order. He would forget about me, as if I was really his driver. I don’t think he did that on purpose, but this really irritated Wolfgang’s mother. She would criticize him heavily for this and insisted that I always sit at the table with them. Wolfgang hated these restaurant outings. He would always protest against going out to have dinner with the “Old Man.” On top of that, there were obligatory dinners at his parents’ house once a week, during which his father and Wolfgang always argued. Money was the underlying issue. And politics: his father read only “Kronen Zeitung,” while Christian wrote for “Falter.” Wolfgang talked about his father in almost-fascist terms. But while he constantly argued with him, he loved him deeply. Only the attitude was the problem. Wolfgang was devastated when his father died. He kept crying, he couldn’t calm down for two days, which wasn’t the case with his mother’s death. His father had a specific character: he would scold me for not speaking German properly. His mother was more emotionally open: she would always hug me. Once, I brought wine for them, which was not good enough for his father; she immediately told me not to worry. She said she would be happy to drink this wine with me. She was very motherly.

Wolfgang’s mother came from a wealthy Hungarian family that owned a huge tenement house in Budapest, confiscated by the communist regime. The family couldn’t get it back, they tried a few times: Christian was a secretary to a minister, so he had some connections, but it didn’t work out. As a young girl, Wolfgang’s mother moved to Vienna. Wealthy and beautiful, she immediately landed a modeling job: her photographs were on some magazine covers. When she met Wolfgang’s father, he had been a fledgling manufacturer. When I met him, he had owned a factory that produced fine-wood parquet floors for wealthy families; Christian criticized him for destroying forests. The family was very wealthy. The father had a mistress, he gifted her with a villa near Vienna. Thanks to his businesses, Wolfgang’s mother could lead luxurious lifestyle and never had to work. She loved going to the opera; she had a subscription to the opera and a few theaters. Her husband never wanted to join her, so she would invite other people, including me. I myself had my journalist accreditation that gave me access to several theaters. Whenever we went together, I was amazed that everyone recognized her.

I knew the family really well: Wolfgang’s parents, the families of his siblings. I became familiar with their “high society.” In the hallway of his parents’ apartment stood a chest filled with their family treasures, it was filled with gold, diamonds, jewelry, some documents. Funnily, I was the only person who looked after it. They trusted me. They knew Wolfgang wouldn’t take anything, and Christian didn’t need it, because he himself was rich. Christian actually encouraged his father to sell his mother’s jewelry.

The brothers didn’t have a cordial relationship. Christian felt responsible for Wolfgang, he would call him “free bird,” he even said that in Wolfgang’s eulogy. Only at Ingrid’s 50th birthday, where I was employed as a photographer, did Wolfgang and his brother, both tipsy, apologize to each other. Since then, their relationship became warmer.

Some time after we broke up, Wolfgang asked me, with some shyness, if I could take care of his “zoo,” while he was gone. None of his friends wanted to move into his apartment even for a short time. Some people offered they would occasionally pass by. No one lived nearby. Some of his friends weren’t very good at caring for animals. There would be situations when Wolfgang, having returned home from holiday, would find dead fish floating belly-up in the aquarium because someone had forgotten to clean it. By the way, what I went through with that aquarium! Wolfgang installed in it a complex water oxygenation system. So, while cleaning one aquarium, you would have to move the fish to another one. The catch was that some of the fish couldn’t be moved to the same container, as they would eat each other. It was impossible to remember all the instructions, which Wolfgang would usually give you three hours before leaving! When he was gone for 2–3 weeks, his birds would fly around the apartment, while you had to feed them. Also, Wolfgang’s apartment in the summer would get terribly hot; you couldn’t open the window, for the birds would immediately fly away. So when taking care of his “zoo,” you would be suffocating. On top of that, Wolfgang’s dogs would get upset because of his absence, so they would pee or shit on the carpets. Oh well, those were good times!

Despite our breakup, we stayed in touch. I came to Vienna at least once a year. Sometimes I’d bring along my current partner. Earlier, I would visit Vienna with my former partner, who was a fashion designer and died in a fire in a tenement building in Hamburg. My sister would also join me whenever we had more than one apartment at my disposal: this would happen when Wolfgang and his mother had gone on trips together. But taking care of her apartment was a nightmare. It was a huge space, 200 square meters, with a rooftop terrace and a garden, where the grass would constantly dry out during the summer. During my years in Vienna, Wolfgang and I had to constantly water it and tend to her flower beds: we would bring huge bags of soil every year, because rain and snow regularly washed away the soil. It was a beautiful garden, with a beautiful view of Vienna. After his mother’s death, Wolfgang could take over her apartment; this was his registered primary residence. But he didn’t do it. One counterargument was rent, but it wasn’t high since it was their private apartment. The other though was the perspective of spending fortune on maintenance, including the terrace garden. Another thing was that he wasn’t a fan of the apartment. He did love the terrace, but the apartment was