Right after Wolfgang’s death, no one wanted to take the binders with the printouts and photo clippings. During his wake, there was a preliminary discussion about who might inherit this collection. Everyone was immediately 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 kept discussing about what we should do about them. Should we burn them all? Would it make sense to give them away as gifts? Wolfgang spent so much money on the magazines that he would cut the photos from. We were together for 10 years, so these binders must be over 30 years old!

He made a lot of collages, some of the smaller ones had been lost. He must have given them away. Each lover of his wanted to get a collage specifically made for them! They would bring Wolfgang their photos, and he would build collages around them. In later years, after he took a computer graphics course, he learned how to download photos and print them out. You can see by the quality and the color palette of the material that these weren’t cut-outs from magazines, the prints that he did himself.

When I was assigned to do a German-learning course in Hamburg and couldn’t travel to Vienna so often, Wolfgang would ask me to buy these magazines and ship them to him. He trusted me. Maybe “trust” is an exaggeration, because he wanted photos with specific body types and dicks. But the thing was that I couldn’t really afford to buy many magazines from Beate Uhse. They were exorbitantly expensive during that time, plus our financial situation was not great. I was editor-in-chief in Poland, but I had to start from scratch in Hamburg. And Wolfgang didn’t have any money either. Sometimes he would get some money from his father, but he was unwilling to accept it, as he would call his father “a fascist.” But his mother would regularly slip him some money, and so he managed to make ends meet. Then there was a period when he started earning money, so we would buy more of these magazines, not only in Hamburg, but also whenever we traveled around Europe: Paris, Spain (where we lived for a while), Italy, England. We went once to Amsterdam, but there we were more interested in the nightlife than searching for gay porn shops. Back then, these magazines were wrapped in foil, so you would buy them without knowing what would be inside. And while the covers were usually enticing, the content often had more text than photos, which was disappointing.

Wolfgang’s collages often feature Christian, his closest friend, an essential figure in his life, his emotional and financial support. Christian understood and tolerated his outbursts, eccentricities, and depression. He sought out doctors for him. When Wolfgang was at his lowest point financially, he would always 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 all this wealth. He had a business enterprise in the first district, which was doing very well, his brother also worked there. His wife had a children’s clothing store on a street parallel to Kärtnerstrasse. And they lived nearby, they had an entire floor, a beautiful huge apartment. Christian and Wolfgang had been friends since their school days; each would have given up his life for the other. Christian died of cancer three years before Wolfgang, even though he had led a very healthy life and won the Vienna Marathon. When Wolfgang became seriously ill, Christian was still alive, but it was clear he would die. He had cancer, he sought treatment at the best clinics in Munich, and there was still a bit of hope that, since he was so athletic, his body might persevere. After Wolfgang got sick, Christian tried to convince me that I move to Vienna for Wolfgang. I was the only person who was willing and capable to take responsibility for his care. Wolfgang thought it was a great idea. “Trust him,” he would say. “He has the money; he’ll arrange your move, and will provide for you financially in your old age.” This was important because with my pension, I wouldn’t have been able to survive in Vienna. We started arranging for the move, for me to take legal care of Wolfgang and to be employed at Christian’s company. They started looking for an apartment for me, and they did find a nice one at Tandelmarkt, not far from Wolfgang’s flat at Holandstrasse. But Christian 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 badly set, dysfunctional for two people, with no separate rooms, no  privacy. We were both reaching the age when having a private room was a must. Besides, Wolfgang continued to “run wild,” and I didn’t want to witness all his sexual adventures. Christian probably left him some money before he died, so Wolfgang was financially secure; he could afford all his whims, including buying and “destroying” books and magazines for his albums.

We met in 1980. At that time, Wolfgang kept traveling between Warsaw and the manor house with the riding school near Siedlce, which he ran with his wife. We met in a funny way. Actually, it was my wife, Iwona, who kind of forced me into it. Before I became editor-in-chief, I ran a youth hostel in the Silesian Beskids. I had managed to introduce there international standards and had developed international contacts, so someone at the ministry decided it wasn’t worth keeping me there, and I was transferred to the editorial team of the “Poznaj swój kraj” magazine (“Discover Your Country”). At that time, Iwona was soon to graduate in her German studies. We moved to Warsaw, where she landed a job as a television presenter. While interviewing interesting people, she stumbled upon Ludwig Zimmerer’s art collection. 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, who was doing the same while working for Zimmerer. And, during one of these trips, we ended up in bed. That’s how it all started.

Wolfgang declared that he couldn’t live without me. Typical bullshit. I was his first man. I was married, and he was married. My wife was on a scholarship in Heidelberg at the time, studying German studies and music. She moved there to pursue her PhD studies, fell in love, and we eventually got divorced. Wolfgang wanted to get a divorce too. Later on, we sometimes talked about how this mutual desire came to manifest itself in us. We were both married, and suddenly we found each other. We discovered we could live without women, but not without each other. I had an apartment on Okrzei Street, and Wolfgang had an apartment two streets away, on Listopada Street, which he got through an acquaintance, a medical doctor. Then he convinced me to move in with him. Wolfgang’s wife would come to spy on us. She hated me and tried to turn Alisia against me too. I visited Wolfgang him at their manor house twice. I lived in a building for horse-riding students. I was only allowed to enter the manor house when his wife was away. Wolfgang would smuggle out food for me. It was beautiful there; You could see that Wolfgang had a knack for decorating.

Wolfgang met Zimmerer through Andrzej Wajda, who came with his family to do horse-riding at their manor house near Siedlce, where Wolfgang, Alisia, and her mother had moved from their previous place in Masuria, probably partly for financial reasons, partly because of the distance. When Zimmerer met Wolfgang, he said, “You’re Austrian, I’m German, come and see what I do.” Wolfgang went to visit him and was delighted: a beautiful house, a two-story villa in Saska Kępa, sculptures, paintings. Zimmerer suggested that Wolfgang help archive the collections and travel around Poland. Zimmerer was divorced at the time, but he soon married a beautiful model. For some time, he suspected that Wolfgang was having an affair with her. He was extremely jealous. When he found out Wolfgang was in a relationship with me, everything immediately calmed down. Zimmerer’s wife was very fond of me. At her request, Wolfgang sometimes prepared 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 was extremely talented, he could turn anything into something delightful. Our parties at the Listopada street typically looked the same: I would cook everything, while Wolfgang’s job was to arrange the table, during which he would add something inventive to my dishes, some edible arrangement, some “silliness,” which would frequently gain more applause than my cooking.

Thanks to Zimmerer, Wolfgang had contacts with other embassies. He would join me to attend theatre premieres. He was interested in art and would go to exhibition openings. Wolfgang wouldn’t admit it, but he must have realized that if he were Polish, no one would be impressed by him to that extent. Only after returning to Vienna did he realize that he had an easy life in Poland. But he was also very talented. Whatever he did, he would succeed. At some point, he had plenty of offers: to create set designs, to expand Zimmerer’s art collection. He also knew many languages; he had attended an elite French high school as a teenager and had learned to speak English when he studied in England. When we lived in Poland, no one wanted to believe that he hadn’t taken any language course, but had instead learned to speak Polish so well on his own. 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. In Poland, we moved in circles inaccessible to average people. As a couple, we complemented each other. I had connections to the elite circles in Warsaw. I received invitations to exhibition openings and met gallery owners, including Piotr Nowicki, who had the first private art gallery in Warsaw, initially in one of the pavilions behind Nowy Świat Street. Nowicki’s gallery later moved to Wierzbowa Street, near the National Theatre.

Wolfgang loved dogs and wanted to live with them. When he was married to Alisia’s mother, he brought a female Irish wolfhound from their farm to his apartment in Warsaw. Her name was Persi. Alisia’s mother was hurt that he hadn’t taken a mutt, but a large dog. Then a problem arose, as Persi had to be bred. We had to find contacts through the embassy. Later, I received a six-month-old puppy as a gift from Wolfgang, but a misfortune happened. One day, while I was away, the puppy was off leash, ran outside, and got hit by a tram. I was on a business trip at the time. I arrived, and Wolfgang was extremely drunk. He was going through a terrible time. Later, when he was expelled from Poland, I was left alone with Persi. Wolfgang wanted me to bring her to Vienna, but I was already stuck in Germany, waiting for the decision about my citizenship. There was an idea that someone would bring her to the border and hand her over to Wolfgang. Ultimately, Ania Cisło saved us and she transported the dog to the manor house near Siedlce, where she remained until his death. Wolfgang missed her terribly; she was the apple of his eye.

Before I met Wolfgang, I already had an allotment plot at Wał Miedzeszyński. My wife’s father was the director of the allotment-garden division, and he offered us a plot of land south of Grochów, where all these “Wólki” begin. Wolfgang and I lived there for several months during each year; when it got warm, we would move there with the dogs. Wolfgang wanted to breed puppies, which was dangerous in our city flat: second floor, trams on the street. We raised six puppies on that plot and went with them to breeder fairs. We loved living there. Our social life was also centered there. Our friends would come over and stay for the night in the attic, which Wolfgang had beautifully decorated. It was important during the communism era that it was a place where people could talk freely. Wolfgang commissioned building a terrace. He loved nature and flowers. There was a grocery store nearby, literally a five-minute walk. We won over a shopgirl, who always left us something under the counter: bread, which was sold out immediately every morning. We could never leave the house early enough. Wolfgang adored the flower-children culture, so he would go shopping barefoot and wearing a sarong. People looked at him as if he was a freak, because he also had long hair, which he braided. He was very self-confident and didn’t care how people looked at him. We usually stayed at that plot until late autumn. We would ferment wine there, I would make jams. In winter, Wolfgang was very creative, he would draw and sketch a lot. He loved reading and got lots of books and newspapers from Zimmerer. For him, our life on the plot was an extension of his stay at the manors, where he lived with his wife. There, too, in the summer, he tended to flowers, plants, and vegetables, and in winter, when there was not much to do because there was no horse riding, he would tend to the house. We stayed at the plot as long as we could. We used electric heating, and when things got really bad, we’d flee back to Warsaw. Wolfgang had a Łada car, and he’d travel with it from Zimmerer’s place 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 take long walks like that. When Wolfgang was evicted from Poland, I had to sell the plot.

In Poland, Wolfgang felt like a different person. He lived to the fullest. He was fascinated by life under communism, by that otherness, by the directness of people, which was in stark contrast to the oppressive state and challenging daily life. He was amazed at how resourceful people were in this national poverty, how much they would help each other, for instance when it came to sharing food stamps. Wolfgang didn’t have access to them at all, me quite the opposite: since I worked as an editor, I had my connections. And somehow, we managed to get by. He had a Lada car, which 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 also go to the Oligocene water spring in the Ochota district, where we would queue for hours. During this time, Wolfgang also developed passion for taking and developing photos; we installed a photo darkroom in the bathroom, which meant that we could never use the bathtub.

We could afford many things. Zimmerer paid him well, in foreign currency, at that, so Wolfgang had no financial worries in Poland. If he did anything, it was for free. He wasn’t concerned with how much money he could get for designing sets; what was more important to him was making a name for himself with his work. If he painted a commissioned painting for someone, he’d give it as a gift and be delighted that someone wanted it. Wherever I went with him, Wolfgang 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 and praise him, the “mad Austrian,” for him. They were fascinated by what this Austrian was doing in a miserable communist state, what drew him to Poland. But he was simply disturbed by the Viennese mentality. Do you know Qualtinger? He was an important figure in Vienna, a singer, lyricist, and poet who critically described the Viennese mentality. Wolfgang was fascinated by him for this reason. His brother had a similar opinion. They both thought Austria was a backwater. That Vienna or Graz, with their universities, created a certain kind of environment, but everything else was a provincial mentality. Wolfgang was against aristocracy, conservatism, wealth—everything his father was attached to. His father, in turn, loved it when I drove him in my Volvo because he had a personal driver back then. It made me laugh, while Wolfgang was very irritated; he was ashamed of his father. His brother, Christian, felt the same way; they agreed on that. But at the same time, they both benefited from the family wealth. Christian lived near St. Stephen’s Cathedral, in the most snobbish part of the city. They shopped only in the most expensive shops, where salespeople in aprons, ties, and bow ties waited on them. Wolfgang was irritated by his brother’s duplicity: here Falter, here political attitudes, here lavish parties at the mill on Neusiedlersee, and the family factory and shop in Voralerberg. Wolfgang said, “I’m so modest, I have nothing, my father didn’t give me anything.” He was deeply affected by the fact that his sister got a house in Paris on Boulevard Richard-Lenoir, his brother a 16th-century mill, and he got nothing because he married a woman from a communist country. And to top it off, a con artist: Wolfgang once blurted out that she supposedly “dyed” horses for sale. I don’t know exactly what he meant. But it was enough for his father to become wary of her. He was probably also afraid that if he sent Wolfgang money, he would be supporting communism.

In Poland, and later in Hamburg, no one would believe that we were a couple. Initially, Wolfgang had a wife, and I had a wife. He had a daughter, and I was childless. I kept hearing, “What a strange relationship!” We lived together, but Wolfgang never brought it up in public. Besides, we were part of an artistic community, so such things were not a big deal. In Poland, we didn’t know any other gay people, except Nowicki. It’s actually strange now that I think about it. There were no gay discos. During theater premieres, you could tell by the way someone was dressed if he was or wasn’t gay. In Warsaw, there was one gay bar, “Ściek,” (“Sewer”) on Trębacka Street, in the basement next to the National Theater, before coffee bars appeared. This was the place where actors and dancers from the theater would gather, the only place where one could be “out.” I found my way there through Nowicki. Wolfgang and I would frequently go there, and 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. When I was permitted to visit Poland again, two magazines were available at Ruch kiosks, one more pornographic than the other. Out of journalistic curiosity, I attended the premieres of two gay-themed plays at small Warsaw theaters.

My friends perceived Wolfgang as immensely charismatic. He had a strong personality and 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! In later years, when we lived apart and kept in touch mostly by phone, he would tell me about how he would prepare whatever to eat, and people would still come, eat everything, and have a wonderful time. Rice with cucumbers, chopped parsley, a little sauce, and 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. This was his great strength. He also easily forgave arguments, breakups, and conflicts. One of our close friends was Ninel Kos, a Jewish woman who had apartments on Jagiellońska Street, near the Bagatela Theatre. The Jewish community’s residence was located there; the underground movement also organized meetings there. It was a transit point for the materials we delivered and received. One day, Wolfgang invited Ninel to Vienna. She was overjoyed; it was her first visit to the city. Wolfgang was already depressed at the time, and I don’t remember exactly what went wrong; it was probably something minor. There wasn’t even a heated argument between them, but he treated her badly. He threw her out of his apartment, so she had to go to a hotel for the night. The next day, me and her arranged to meet. I brought her the things she’d left at Wolfgang’s apartment, and we started looking for accommodation for her for the next few days. Fortunately, there were affordable hotels in the neighborhood. Ultimately, Wolfgang didn’t meet her until she left. After a while, he went to visit her in Warsaw. I was terrified because I didn’t know what to expect. Despite their great friendship, things suddenly became so tense between them. But reconciliation was achieved. She was a rather introverted person, very reflective and forgiving. 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.

Another very important figure in Wolfgang’s life was Wanda Laskowska. They knew each other for a long time. We once spent time together at the Zaolzianka Youth Hostel in Izdebna, near the Czechoslovakian border. I was the director there in the 1970s, and later a friend of mine took over. We often went there with Wolfgang, who loved this place. We had our own apartment there. During one of our stays, Wanda was in the course of preparing a premiere at the Polish Theatre in Bielsko-Biała and needed a break, so she came to spend time with us at the hostel. Wanda, an elderly woman, was in love with Wolfgang, she adored him more than anything. For a while, she wasn’t entirely convinced we were a couple. While staying at the hostel, Wanda came up with the idea of ​​offering Wolfgang a commission to do the set design for the play she was working on. He was immediately excited. He often went to see theatre plays with me, where he was curious, as an architect, to see various sets. And, thanks to his background, this job wouldn’t have been difficult for him. But just before the premiere, he screwed up and didn’t deliver the project, and Wanda withdrew from the collaboration. Despite this, she adored him until the end. She could forgive him anything; she admired his imagination, she knew how to approach him. After he left, she bought some of his furniture as a souvenir and was attached to the November 11th apartment. She also helped him develop artistically until the end. Wolfgang didn’t want to limit himself to collections of naive art or folk art. She introduced him to director Andrzej Józef Dąbrowski, who currently lives in New York; I still speak with him weekly. He was also a teacher, preparing students for exams at schools in Warsaw. He was another important figure in Wolfgang’s life. Andrzej offered him a set design collaboration on a production at a theater in Grudziądz. Unfortunately, this didn’t happen because Wanda Laskowska interfered, reporting to the theater that Wolfgang had no papers. There was a strange situation between them, a professional rivalry, and a personal one, too, because they both adored Wolfgang. Wolfgang didn’t actually have a set design license, and he was Austrian. If Laskowska hadn’t done it, he could have excelled as a set designer, which could have set him on a successful career path: he’d have had Zimmerer’s lucrative business, and through Laskowska and Dąbrowski, he’d have access to theater work. But word quickly spread that Wolfgang didn’t have any papers, and there were times when we simply had to prove our identity for everything. Moreover, around this time, we became too involved in the “underground,” and eventually, Wolfgang was ordered to leave Poland.

While he lived in Poland, Wolfgang had to travel to the 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. Wolfgang didn’t want to leave Poland, but we got involved in the “underground,” in Solidarity. He was helpful and greatly helped the underground by easily transferring materials abroad. We’d deliver information through the Austrian embassy to Vienna, and from Vienna, it would spread out into the world. And so, slowly, we started to get caught. From a certain point, we were being followed. They let me go, perhaps because I was the editor-in-chief and couldn’t prove anything. Wolfgang was given a month to leave the country.

My beginnings were difficult. As an emigrant (Aussiedler), I first ended up in a resettlement camp in Friedland, where I was supposed to stay for two weeks, but my stay was extended. They started spying on me, making it difficult for me to get German papers. They suspected that, as editor-in-chief from a communist country, I was a spy. Then a dear German friend of ours, an editor of a newspaper (I don’t remember which one), who worked at its Warsaw branch, intervened. He confirmed that I was migrating for his wife: we weren’t divorced yet, and she was in Germany on a scholarship. They subjected me to various tests. They checked my knowledge of hiking trails to mountain huts. As an editor, I had access to maps of all the trails in Poland, which were generally classified by censorship. I even knew where which power lines ran. This took three weeks, until our friend finally saved me and I received citizenship. And right after me, my wife automatically received hers.

Wolfgang didn’t want to return to Vienna, but he accepted the registration order there; he didn’t have much choice. I could have obtained permanent residence immediately; I had family in Nuremberg and Munich, but Hamburg was an option. 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, and probably thought his father wouldn’t give him money since Wolfgang had “messed up.” This wasn’t true, because his father would certainly have helped him, and the entire family was involved. In any case, my aunt lived in Hamburg, in a beautiful villa in the Blankensee district on the Elbe River. She and her husband owned tenement houses and rented apartments. She offered Wolfgang one of them: two small rooms with a cramped kitchen in the Eppendorf district. Wolfgang liked Hamburg. The city had a completely different character back then, far removed from the awkwardness and pomposity of Vienna. So we decided that I would live in that small apartment in Eppendorf, and Wolfgang would live there with me and try to move away from Hamburg permanently. We waited for a large apartment to become available, also in Schmarie, where Wolfgang could also have an architectural studio. But my aunt died suddenly, everything was sold, and the studio never came to fruition. Eventually, my brother brought Wolfgang to Vienna, where he secured him a good job at an architectural firm. And I stayed in that temporary apartment for over 30 years.

Ultimately, Wolfgang accepted Vienna. And I lived in both cities. I was permanently in Hamburg, where I had my own apartment. I also took German courses and other training there, but practically I lived in Vienna. Furthermore, as a journalist, I received special journalism courses, so I had to travel to Bonn, and he came to visit me there. He often visited me in Hamburg when he missed me. He would sometimes stay with me for a dozen days at a time, as he hadn’t had a permanent job for long. He didn’t register on social welfare because he would have been immediately assigned to work there, but he refused to accept any; nothing appealed to him. He was a strong personality; you couldn’t force him to do anything. He had his own hours. He needed to get enough sleep. He usually only sat down to read, sketch, and draw at night. This worked well at Zimmerer’s in Warsaw, where he didn’t have fixed hours. He started earning a good living in the job his brother found him, but because of his depression, he was constantly unpunctual and unreliable. He wouldn’t show up for morning meetings because he overslept or simply didn’t feel like it. He was constantly frustrated that no one appreciated his designs, even though he had graduated from good architecture schools in Vienna and London. Furthermore, this was a time when computers were starting to replace the drawing board. He couldn’t find his way around it.

Wolfgang’s Viennese apartment was dysfunctional. He didn’t have a table, so he did everything on the floor, which was covered in layers of carpets. He cursed that they constantly had to be vacuumed. I don’t know where this came from, but he was taught from childhood that the more carpets you had on the floor, the more wealthy it meant. I remember vacuuming in his mother’s apartment; he didn’t attach much importance to it. His parents had silk carpets that needed proper vacuuming. We sold more than one carpet for a lot of money, and his mother would give them to him, saying they would just sit there rolled up in bags. She wanted Wolfgang to have money; she knew how valuable those rugs were. They had a lot of rugs because their father, a manufacturer, had good contacts and imported them. Wolfgang also loved to sew. He had a great hand for it and a good-quality sewing machine. He would curse terribly when something didn’t work out. God forbid you approach him then. He loved going to fabric stores; he always found something there. There weren’t many fashion stores in Vienna back then, and he could sew anything he wanted. Sometimes his suits were barely buttoned and almost unfinished, but they were perfect for parties. One time, Wolfgang shocked me because he cut his mother’s fur coat too short. He got the measurements wrong, and the sleeves were too short, so he tried to sew something. It looked ridiculous. He insisted on it because he was getting ready for some gay party. My mother was furious when she realized it was her fur coat that was missing. He tells her, “Mom, you’re not going out anymore anyway; moths will eat that fur.” ​​I don’t know what would happen if she found out what he did to her fur! He didn’t care about clothes. He cut them up as he saw fit. The same with the cashmere scarves he used to make his jackets.

Wolfgang had imagination and a lack of shame. One time, he took his mother’s fur coats skiing. He’d wear them, saying they needed some air. To one Live Ball in early spring, he walked from Hollandstrasse, half-naked, with his dick hanging out. Passersby just stopped and stared. And I was beside him, modestly dressed in some wings, dressed as an angel. Just as he made friends easily, he also found lovers easily. He was an open, charismatic man, with broad horizons as an artist, as a human being, and as a Pole, because he also benefited somewhat from his time in the communist system. He was interested in men who had something intellectual about them; he wasn’t just driven by “dick.” I remember one time in Paris, where he picked up a guy he’d spent the night with who had robbed him. Wolfgang immediately forgave him everything, even though we didn’t actually have enough money to get back to Vienna. We only had enough money for gas to get to the border. More important to him was that they were good in bed. That’s how he was: terribly emotional, and he had a huge “lust.” He sometimes needed to “sleep” with me twice in a row to satisfy his needs. He was also constantly drawn to discos, where we stayed until dawn. He tormented me with these discos because, having a car, I had to be sober so he could afford to go wild. Wolfgang couldn’t leave a disco without a partner. And there wasn’t a disco where he didn’t want to get close to someone. He had a way of establishing rapport through dancing, with just a few words. He craved physical intimacy, and he’d embrace while dancing, which was surprising back then. Vienna is completely different in that regard now. We once had a hilarious situation where we almost caused an accident. Drunk, at three in the morning, we were crossing a bridge on our way home. Wolfgang wanted sex. He said, “Take off your panties, I’ll fuck you.” It was a dark night, no pedestrians. We were leaning against the railing, safe from harm. But a taxi driver drove by and stared at us so intently that he practically drove onto the sidewalk. Wolfgang didn’t pick up anyone that evening and couldn’t go without sex until we got home. In later years, we had this arrangement; I really had no choice: I was in one room, and he was in the other, having fun with his lovers.

Wolfgang had a terrible temper. Once, he flew into such a rage that he threw a glass on the floor, it shattered, and cut my leg. I still remember what kind of glass it was made of. It happened a week before our planned trip to Italy. My friends from Basel were playing concerts. They suggested we drive to Rome together, leave the car there, and sail to Ponca Island, near Naples. I used to work in Rome; my wife and I were guides in Catholic Rome, so I knew the city well and could show Wolfgang around. We even had the keys. Wolfgang bandaged the wound, hoping it would “go away.” However, he couldn’t completely stop the bleeding, and he finally had to take me to the emergency room. When the doctor saw me, he said, “What have you done to this man? He’s as white as a sheet!” I bled out so badly I almost fainted. We were supposed to leave in a week, but he was so shaken by it all that he moved to Ingrid’s or one of his cousins ​​for two days to recover. He said he couldn’t bear what he’d done to me. His mother would come over to check on me. I had to crawl to the door to open it for her; I couldn’t walk at all. His outbursts of aggression were strange; I sensed something was wrong, because there was no reason for him to be so angry at me. Looking back, I think that was the first moment I realized Wolfgang was depressed. He couldn’t understand what was happening to him. He said that sometimes he couldn’t breathe; we didn’t know where it was coming from. He wasn’t living in poverty, after all, and he was successful professionally. He was only diagnosed later. He changed doctors and psychiatrists for a long time, but then it was regulated, but he took medication for the rest of his life.

We traveled together. I had a Volvo that we drove around Europe in. We lived in Spain for a long time. There was even a chance we’d settle in there despite not knowing the language, that Wolfgang would have a job there. While we were living in Poland, we met Paloma, the daughter of the Spanish ambassador, at a party at an embassy. Paloma was fascinated by Wolfgang’s fact that we were gay; her brother was gay too. We started dating. We even made a blood pact, idiots. She suggested that we each cut ourselves and spill our blood on paper as proof of our union. Wolfgang was impressed by the fact that Paloma came from the famous six-hundred-year-old Alba family on her mother’s side. I don’t remember her father’s surname. She herself was a drug addict and had difficulty functioning, struggling to understand the world. From childhood, she traveled with her father, who, as ambassador, was constantly changing countries, so she constantly had to learn a new language. Her father was assigned mostly to communist countries: he served as ambassador to Yugoslavia, Bulgaria, and Hungary. The young girl couldn’t handle the pressure; she hadn’t completed any studies, but she was financially secure. Through her father, she had contacts not only in Madrid, where her family lived, but throughout Spain. One day, she suggested, “Come to my place in Sanchorreja, and we’ll find Wolfgang a job.” So Wolfgang went to the interview alone, to check if everything was really as she said—that the house existed and if we could live there. He returned delighted, and I packed everything up and we left together by train. It was 1990.

A few years earlier, Paloma had divorced her musician husband. During the summers, she lived alone in Sanchorreja in a modern villa with a concert grand piano and seating for a dozen or so people. A half-hour walk from her villa was a medieval manor house with antique furniture and a swimming pool. It had been inherited by her brother, who lived permanently in Madrid. He would visit for short periods in the summer, and in his absence, we could use his pool. Paloma’s house was in a village an hour from Madrid, where wealthy people often came for their summer residences. Wolfgang immediately immersed himself in the community. He was multilingual, spoke French, English, and German, and had easy access not only as an architect but also as a gay man, so he quickly became acquainted with the local gay community. However, our plan to live in Sanchorreja was hampered by the lack of a car. Paloma had a car, but she used it herself. Seville, where we shopped, was a dozen or so 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 didn’t know the numbers. Furthermore, it was impossible to communicate in any language; everything was done by hand. Paloma comforted us and encouraged us to stay, but her drug addiction and depression were increasingly apparent. She was unreliable. At one point, Wolfgang said he wouldn’t be staying with her, that we had to find another place to live. We had three barns at our disposal there. Paloma and her brother agreed to transfer one of them to us, to register us in the land and mortgage register. We slowly began renovating and rebuilding it. Everything seemed to be going well. We almost succeeded with that barn. We restored it to a good condition and needed to continue the renovation during the winter, living in her villa when Paloma was away. But that was a summer residence. Winter came, the village was deserted, and everyone had left for Madrid. The village was nestled in the mountains, and the snow was so heavy that we’d have had a hard time shoveling the road from the villa to the main road. So we were left alone there, with no way to shop. It was impossible to get by without a car, and we couldn’t afford one because we didn’t earn anything. Paloma said she’d let us have hers, and so did her brother, but they both changed their minds frequently. Wolfgang finally decided we should return to Vienna.

In later years, I spoke to Paloma on the phone a couple of times. She invited me to come. She said her grandmother was in love with me. I refused to be persuaded. During that time, I did spend a lot of time with her grandmother. I had to take care of her while Paloma and Wolfgang went out and had fun. My grandmother lived in the same tenement building in Madrid as Paloma, one floor above her. She played the piano a lot. She was very knowledgeable about Russian literature and music, and I was in love with Dostoyevsky, so we had a lot in common. We communicated in Russian; she spoke little but understood a lot. If we had managed to stay in Spain back then, Wolfgang would have left Vienna immediately. He might have been able to work as an architect, but in Madrid, where we wouldn’t have been able to support ourselves, whereas in Sanchorreja we had a rent-free apartment. By comparison, he had no professional opportunities in Paris; the competition was too fierce. His sister lived in Luxembourg, then the Philippines, so her Paris apartment was always empty, and she was even happy when we were there. Wolfgang wasn’t exactly indifferent either. Spain suited him. Morocco suited him too, where he’d visited several times and said he’d love to live and work. He was fascinated by the mentality and the handsome men there. He also sought out such lovers in clubs.

We lived together in Vienna in an apartment on Hollandstrasse until, on one of his trips to Graz, Wolfgang met Michael. We had a friend there, and he stayed with her one night because it was on his way. We were just about to leave. First, he mentioned that he’d met a really nice guy there, and the next day, he announced he’d fallen in love. He felt enormous guilt at suddenly having to decide who he wanted to be with. He remembered that I’d emigrated from Poland for him, even though I was doing quite well there. Admittedly, I had problems because I was the only editor-in-chief not registered with the party, something they wanted to force me to do. Because of this, I was unwelcome at the party editors’ meetings. I also had a housing booklet as a journalist, but they blocked it. Funnily enough, after I left, they gave me a silver cross of merit to bring me back to Poland. I refused. After the fall of communism, when I was finally able to visit Poland, I had dual citizenship, and a chance arose to redeem my housing certificate. I was allocated a freehold apartment, with a choice: Złota Street in Warsaw or Zielonka Street. I withdrew, persuaded by Wolfgang, who said, “Why do you need this apartment? You already have two, in Vienna and Hamburg.”

After getting involved with Michael, Wolfgang asked my mother if I could move into the apartment behind St. Stephen’s Cathedral, which she had given him as his own. It was 52 square meters. Wolfgang and I had already started renovating it for the future. My mother agreed, even offering to pay the rent, which wasn’t much anyway. She had a bit of a personal interest in it, as I took care of her and Wolfgang’s father, especially when Wolfgang was on field trips. Wolfgang’s father died shortly afterward. I lived in that apartment for over a year; I could have stayed longer; no one kicked me out, and there was no pressure from my family. They treated me like a family member. Ingrid and Christian said, “That idiot, how can he do that? Let him have a lover, but don’t throw you out!” Besides, the apartment on Hollandstrasse belonged to Ingrid, who paid the rent because Wolfgang’s income was always unstable. I also had a studio and a photography lab at my disposal. Ingrid offered me a temporary place to live in her residence, the historic mill in Neusiedlersee, where I also stayed. I had a Volvo, so I was mobile. They also had enormous trust in me because, which they appreciated, I could mentally withstand Wolfgang’s outbursts. Ultimately, I decided it wasn’t worth it. In Hamburg, my apartment was empty, while in Vienna, I was at the mercy of Wolfgang’s mother, who looked after me “out of pity” since Wolfgang had kicked me out of our apartment. That’s how, I suspect, his entire family might have interpreted the situation. I returned to Hamburg because I felt I was “forced” to be in Vienna, with Wolfgang and our previous shared environment constantly in the background. I needed Hamburg for my independence. I could have lived in Wolfgang’s apartment until his mother died, but he eventually sold it. However, I had good contacts in Hamburg. My journalistic accreditation gave me a lot of freedom of movement. I had assignments outside Hamburg for this purpose. In Salzburg, I was offered a job at the Sommerfestival, something that didn’t exist in Vienna at the time. Apart from a few theatres, like the Burgtheater and the Akademietheater, all the others operated primarily for school trips. That’s when I met Ismael Ivo, a choreographer and dancer who was quite famous in Hamburg at the time. I even interviewed him.

Our relationship after our breakup was mixed. Initially, after our breakup, probably out of guilt, Wolfgang preferred no direct contact with me. He was upset that he was kicking me out of the apartment, but he didn’t want to admit it. He always said, “I am who I am, why should I feel guilty?” It was easier for him to cut off or reduce a relationship with someone than to admit he’d done something wrong. He also had mood swings. One time he’d tell me, “I love you more than life itself!” and another time he’d accuse me of never having been in love with me and that he’d brought me to Vienna for nothing. He wasn’t just like that with me. The people in his life quickly realized they had to either leave him or accept him as he was. This, among other reasons, caused his circle of friends to dwindle over time. Sometimes it was Wolfgang who messed things up, other times it was people who got mad at him for some story. I had a few friends who sympathized with me because they knew our relationship. I, on the other hand, knew his character well and was able to forgive him. Knowing this, after our breakup, I took the initiative to maintain contact with him. As a result, Wolfgang felt comfortable enough to continue our relationship. Michael had a friendly relationship with me. I sometimes visited them, and it was clear that the boy had settled in very well with Wolfgang. He was a student at the time. He had set up an aquarium there. Because his last name was “Eder” and Wolfgang “Reder,” they had a name card on their door with the last name “REder” combined. And so they lived together until Michael got fed up with him. He never confided in me, but once he mentioned that Wolfgang was unbearable. And in the meantime, he met someone else and left Wolfgang.

During our relationship, I had a relationship with his parents. I regularly did their shopping. My mother was getting on in years, and my father was mostly bedridden, bedridden with polyneuropathy, so he walked with a cane. He enjoyed being driven around in my Volvo. Being a snob, he loved eating at restaurants twice a week. He was a regular there. He’d come in, sit down, and order, and I’d act as his driver. This greatly irritated Wolfgang’s mother, who would constantly say to her husband, “How can you allow this?!” It wasn’t even that he was intentionally treating me badly. He simply forgot about me. And my mother insisted that I always sit at the table with them. Wolfgang hated all these restaurant outings; he constantly protested that he wouldn’t go out to dinner with “Old Man.” Then there were the obligatory dinners at my parents’ house once a week, during which his father and Wolfgang always argued. Money was the underlying issue. Moreover, his father only read the “Kronen Zeitungi,” while Christian was editor of “Falter,” and Wolfgang treated his father almost as a fascist. He argued constantly with his father, but at the same time loved him deeply, hating only his attitude. He was deeply affected by his father’s death and death. He cried and couldn’t calm down for two days. This wasn’t the case with his mother. His father had a specific personality. For example, he often scolded me for not speaking German properly. And his mother, like a true mother, always hugged me. When she saw that I had bought wine for them that my father wouldn’t drink, she assured me not to worry, that she would drink it with me.

Their mother came from a wealthy Hungarian family that owned a huge tenement house in Budapest, but it was taken away by the communist regime; they couldn’t get it back. Christian was a secretary to a minister, and he had a few openings, but it didn’t work out. As a young girl, Wolfgang’s mother moved to Vienna. She was wealthy and beautiful, so she immediately landed a modeling job and appeared on magazine covers. When she met Wolfgang’s father, he was a fledgling manufacturer. Later, he owned a factory that produced fine wood parquet floors for wealthy families, which Christian criticized him for destroying the forests. They were very wealthy. Their father had a mistress, to whom he gave a villa near Vienna. He gave Wolfgang’s mother a luxurious lifestyle, thanks to which she never had to work. She had a subscription to the opera and one or two theaters. Her husband hated going there, so she took her friends with her, and sometimes I went with her, as I had journalist accreditation for several theaters. I was amazed that everyone recognized her. I knew them all well, including Christian and Ingrid’s family. I was also intimately familiar with their “high society.” In the hallway of my parents’ apartment stood a chest filled with their treasures: gold, diamonds, jewelry, documents. Funny, I was the only one who looked after it. They trusted me. They knew Wolfgang wouldn’t take anything, and Christian didn’t need it, because he was rich himself. He himself had actually encouraged his father to sell his mother’s jewelry. The brothers didn’t have a cordial relationship for a long time. Christian felt responsible for Wolfgang, his brother’s “lunatic,” “free bird,” as he even called him in his funeral eulogy. For example, when Ingrid threw parties, he always arranged for him, directing him where to sit. Only at Ingrid’s 50th birthday, where I was employed as a photographer, did Wolfgang and his brother, both tipsy, apologize to each other. Later, their relationship warmed.

Some time after we broke up, Wolfgang timidly asked me if I could take care of his zoo while he was gone. None of his friends wanted to move into his apartment for the time being; they were all walk-ins, and no one lived nearby. Some of them weren’t very good at caring for animals. Sometimes, when Wolfgang came home, dead fish would float near the surface because someone had forgotten to clean the aquarium. By the way, what I went through with that aquarium! Wolfgang installed a complex water oxygenation system. When cleaning one aquarium, the fish had to be moved to another, but not all at once, because some of them could eat the others. And come on, man, remember all those instructions, given three hours before he left! When he was gone for two or three weeks, birds would fly around the apartment, and you had to feed them. The apartment was terribly hot; you couldn’t open the window to keep them from flying out. You were suffocating in that apartment. Or the dog peed on it or shat itself in anger. Oh well, those were good times.

Despite our breakup, I stayed in touch with him. I came to Vienna at least once a year. Sometimes I’d take my current partner, or my former partner, who was a fashion designer and died in a fire in a tenement building in Hamburg. Sometimes my sister would come, because sometimes I had more than one apartment at my disposal when Wolfgang and his mother were away. But taking care of her apartment was a nightmare. It was a huge space, 200 square meters, with a rooftop terrace and garden, where the grass would constantly dry out during the summer, so we had to water it and tend to my mother’s flower beds and flowers. Wolfgang and I would bring bags of soil there every year because rain and snow would wash away the soil, and it had to be constantly replenished. It was a beautiful garden, with a view of all of Vienna. After his mother’s death, Wolfgang was able to take over the apartment; he was permanently resident there. He gave up because not only would he have to pay rent, which wasn’t very high since it was a private apartment, but he’d also have to spend a fortune on maintenance and maintaining the terrace. Besides, he wasn’t a fan of the apartment. He loved the terrace, but the apartment itself was awkward. It was a transitional space, three rooms in a row, a long hallway, and at the end, the entrance to the bathroom and a closet several meters long, containing all of his mother’s furs.

Wolfgang was somewhat relieved when he realized I wasn’t keeping in touch with him and his family out of snobbery or for the sake of a comfortable life in Vienna. I had my own life in Hamburg, and only when things got serious with Wolfgang did his friend Christian try to bring me back to Vienna permanently. He wanted me to live nearby; he wanted to provide for me financially. He knew that the others in Wolfgang’s life were only “in passing.” In later years, his circle became small. Wolfgang gradually began to want to travel with me again, but it never happened because he always had someone to share his bed with. For example, to Normandy, where his sister and her family had a beach house. These trips from Vienna were very important to Wolfgang. He had his sister’s residence in Paris at his disposal. She always gave him freedom to do what he wanted to do and with whom. She was grateful that he went on vacation with his mother; she couldn’t visit her often herself. She had three children, and her youngest son was in school at the time. I remember her crying to me once on the phone, “Piotr, how lucky I am that he knows you. I would go crazy if I had to take care of that nervous Wolfgang.” They understood each other very well. She supported him financially, and her husband earned a very good living. She was always there for him when he didn’t call, when he didn’t want to come. She thanked me very much for wanting to move to Vienna for him, and I was pleased when I was able to help him. This was important to me. Her children were very fond of me. At the wake after Wolfgang’s funeral, they told me I was the “only uncle” they had left. They were all very effusive towards me because they saw how dedicated I was to helping Wolfgang, and before that, his parents.

Wolfgang’s relationship with Alisia was difficult at first. Her mother had a negative attitude towards us, and until her death, contact was sporadic. I knew how poor Alisia was living with her mother. Christian and I arranged for them to send packages to Poland for Christmas. Alisia took a long time to warm up to me. Our relationship warmed after Wolfgang’s first surgery. She was relieved that she didn’t have to come and look after his apartment. Wolfgang supposedly had many friends, but it turned out no one wanted to stay with him in the hospital. He was very bored there. I was with him constantly, and at home, his entire animal enclosure was waiting for me to tend to. Alisia was happy to see me there. Wolfgang didn’t have a washing machine for a long time, so I went to the laundry room or the basement, where we had to keep records, so I had to fit in. In later years, he remodeled the bathroom: he removed the bathtub, installed a shower, and put in a washing machine. Later, when Wolfgang received his social welfare assignment, all the women who came to help around the apartment fled, one by one, out of fear and disgust at having to clean “those dicks,” that famous mosaic in the bathroom. Another thing is that he had his whims. If, for example, he wanted some sweets, he had to buy them. For that, he needed someone he trusted, someone he could send to get money from the ATM. He knew he could not only trust me completely but also call me at any time. And I would fly to the hospital on Johannes-von-Gott-Platz and fulfill his whims. Sometimes he’d call in the evening and say, “My panties are covered in shit, I’m out of clean ones, bring me some.” I had to leave them at the reception desk because, after all, I wasn’t officially his family. It took a real toll on me mentally when I saw how much he was suffering.

It was important to me to have up-to-date information about his health. Later, when he was sicker, he called me not to confide or complain, but to assure me that everything was fine. He spoke matter-of-factly about the situation and said, “There’s no way out, I have to move forward.” I was concerned that he was pushing himself to the brink of collapse, especially when he had HIV. Before he got sick, we worked at the Vienna AIDS Center. Wolfgang was very committed to it, devoting a lot of time to it, missing other appointments to help these people. When he got sick, medications were already available, but they caused bleeding and clotting problems. Wolfgang was supposed to be careful not to injure himself, but he constantly ignored them. His leg problems began when he fell off his bike while drunk. First one toe, then the other, and the wound slowly spread up his leg. He recounted all of this to me; I saw how terribly he suffered. When he accidentally touched his foot, he’d scream in pain. It must have been a nightmare for him. Ultimately, the doctors decided to amputate his foot. He then had further amputations. I always came to see him. I’d quit my job in Hamburg and stay in Vienna. After the amputation, he decided to live with one leg, to drive a car. He told me about the methods he used: he’d put a mirror between his legs so the amputated leg could learn to function like a real leg. The beginnings were difficult; he had trouble shopping. But he pushed himself to become independent despite the suffering and pain. I admired him for being able to overcome the pain, for not giving up. He only complained sometimes. I knew he was suffering because he wasn’t one to complain.

As he began to get sick, his energy diminished. He became indifferent. He began to lose interest in everything. What devastated him most psychologically was that after his last surgery, everyone buried him alive. This happened because the doctors couldn’t wake him for three hours. They didn’t know what had happened. Suddenly, it turned out he had suffered a serious circulatory disorder. They called his brother with the news that he was in a bad way, that they had to expect the worst. Alisia was brought in. There was a near-wake, discussions about who would receive what after his death. I don’t know who told him, but it broke him down mentally. And then he started going crazy again. Despite his disability, he kept receiving guests, throwing parties, and drinking so much alcohol that, combined with the medication he was taking, his internal aorta ruptured. This was the cause of his death. Three days later, he was supposed to go on vacation with a priest friend. He had already packed his bags, the tickets were bought. I was supposed to come and take care of his apartment. If he could, he would throw parties every day. He craved human company, though he was rarely bored himself. He loved the night. He refused to give up the nightlife until the very end.