He was sitting at the table after a reading.

That was a few years ago.

Munich.

An Asian restaurant.

Outside, people ran after their shadows.

Left and right talked past each other.

But he looked expectantly at the paper napkins in front of him.

Secretly he had pulled them out from under the elbows of the steam-babblers, laid them in a small heap in front of him and folded a corner here and there.

A penetrating look.

facing the phenomena.

Not melancholic at all.

Well so what!

For a few minutes he seemed to be examining the material of the paper, feeling along the edges, checking the fabric for anything new.

Then, suddenly, an exclamation: "Well, what!" Something had surprised him.

The often described mischievous smile now determined his features.

No intellectual expression.

Nothing seemed complete to him.

He was interested in the questions and was always looking for even better answers.

Founded and founded at a pace that passed entire generations.

Someone whose own spirit was running away, it felt like that sometimes.

Human dignity is inviolable

But now, here, this evening, just a quiet anecdote: how he recently refused to be x-rayed at the security barrier at the airport, how, after some back and forth, he simply walked past the scan cabin and was stopped by the security staff , had been searched and scolded and would have yelled again and again: "Human dignity is inviolable." "Human dignity is inviolable." A quick cheeky side glance.

Whether you really understood the metaphorical scope of the incident.

Then quickly back to the napkins.

But now an interruption from across the way: someone on the other side of the table wanted to know something about Bachmann, how it had been with her on the balcony back then.

Now his eyes got very small: "Very nice." That was all.

Nothing more had to come.

People chatted away quickly, dessert was served left and right and another beer was ordered.

Later he said, without any regrets: "I was always too impatient to tell stories." As if there wasn't a whole confession in this sentence, his whole way - the impatience as the driving force of the writer.

Too much to see, too much to think, too much to capture of what's around him.

There was once an emperor who, even as a young man, they called him stupor mundi, "the wonder of the world".

Enzensberger had nothing of an emperor.

But everything amazing.