IN THE TIGER CAGE - ISOLATION IN THE BASEMENT OF RUMMELSBURG
How the State Security Tried to Break My Will
This is the 5. volume in the "Stations" series.
1987. East Berlin, German Democratic Republic (GDR).
After a failed drug-smuggling attempt, Bernhard Christoph Lichtinger ends up in the notorious East German prison of Rummelsburg. When he refuses to work for the Stasi and later also refuses to carry out hazardous work involving asbestos, he is sent to the so-called Tiger Cage – an isolation cell deep beneath the prison.
Three steps forward. Turn. Three steps back.
For weeks, his world consists of a dividing grille, a wooden board, a metal bucket and a small air shaft. No conversation. No clock. No toothbrush. No distractions.
The furnishings are rather limited.
All that remains is cold, silence and his own thoughts – which, after a few weeks, provide rather more company than he would like. Outside, life goes on. Down here, there is hardly anything left by which to measure time.
While the Stasi waits for his resistance to break, Christoph struggles with something else: loneliness, monotony and the question of how much freedom can be taken from a person before he begins to lose himself.
A shaft of sunlight through the air vent. A flying ant on a finger. Things that would barely deserve a second glance outside an isolation cell can become an entire world down there.
IN THE TIGER CAGE is the fifth volume in the autobiographical STATIONS series and the true story of a man who had to discover what remains when almost everything is taken away – freedom, privacy, comfort, conversation and any reliable sense of time.
It is a story of isolation, resistance and survival, told with honesty, self-deprecation and black humour. The kind of humour that can still make you laugh long after there is nothing left to laugh about.
Because even in an East German isolation cell, absurdity does not disappear. Quite the opposite. Sometimes it becomes particularly apparent.
Bernhard Christoph Lichtinger writes from lived experience – from setbacks, detours, new beginnings and encounters that need no invention. His stories take shape wherever real life leaves its mark.
If you haven’t read any of the books in the STATIONS series yet, you can start with any of the following titles. Each volume tells a self-contained story, but read in order, they reveal a much bigger story together.
Volume 1: WHAT SHE SAW – A TRUE STORY
Volume 2: THE MAN WITH THE CRUTCH
Volume 3: TRANSIT – THE LAST DAYS OF FREEDOM
Volume 4: DEPARTURE INTO THE UNKNOWN
VOLUME 5: IN THE TIGER CAGE – SOLITARY CONFINEMENT IN THE BASEMENT OF RUMMELSBURG
Volume 6: FRIDAY THE 13TH (IN PROGRESS)