ABSTRACT
i woke up, roused by shooting. Soviet soldiers surrounded me. Where was I? What was happening to me? Then I remembered. The war was over. Hitler was dead. I was at the Admiralspalast Theater in the Russian sector. A gun had just been fired on stage. I dozed off during the world premiere of Postmeister Wyrin, put on by the State Opera. I hadn’t been in the Admiralspalast since my mother took me here about fifteen years ago to see a variety show. Now the State Opera was using this threadbare theater, because nothing but picturesque rubble remained of its own, once magnificent house on the Unter den Linden boulevard, a few blocks away. Except for the Soviet soldiers, the audience was shabbily dressed.
