Desolate and Alone

Chapter 18 of Who Was WM? Investigating a Televisionary: The Life and Work of Wolfgang Menge

8 min readAug 11, 2024

This fake photo — created with ChatGPT — shows WM 1955 in his Tokyo apartment, working through the nights to make ends meet— kept awake by his little British pills.

Is Kissing Culture?

First and foremost, WM needs to make money — more than he had planned. He realizes this after just a few days in Tokyo. In a letter to his mentor Albin Stuebs, he writes:

“The East is as exciting and fascinating as it is expensive for people like us.

He’s earning Deutsche Marks, and the exchange rate is anything but favorable. WM begins to work harder than he has ever worked in his life. Topics abound. He researches and writes about daily politics and culture, Japan’s structural unemployment and the resulting leftward shift of parties and unions toward China, the Crown Prince, Japanese weddings, theater, film, Asian sex trafficking, and even commissioned pieces for NWDR’s women’s radio program, such as “The Position of Japanese Women” (an expression he finds amusing). And, of course, making a virtue of necessity, he pens an article about the exorbitant cost of living. WM even researches kissing culture:

“Kinuyo Tanaka, the so-called ‘Queen of Japanese Film,’ has only been kissed once and declared afterward, ‘I hope something like that never happens to me again.’ Before the surrender, any form of kissing was strictly taboo in Japan. Until then, censors cut all kissing scenes from films. When movie kisses were shown for the first time — in 1946 — the big city theaters erupted in roaring laughter. Country folk, on the other hand, were disgusted. The famous old grandmother’s remark is recorded as follows: ‘Ugh,’ she cried out, ‘they’re spitting in each other’s mouths.’”

WM’s Little English Helpers

What reads as if written with a light touch, he types out during hours of toil with a heavy stroke and multiple carbon copies.

“I don’t know, dear Mr. Stuebs, if you can tell from the manuscripts how much work went into them. It’s at least ten days at 10 hours each.”

After months of nonstop work, WM doesn’t know how else to cope: he reaches out to a Hamburg friend asking for stimulants. He reminds “dear Hans” that “I once got you pills several times that you couldn’t obtain in Germany.” Now he asks him to return the favor and send “a few of those English tablets”:

“I unfortunately don’t know what they’re called or where they’re made. But I sometimes have to work 20 hours straight and would really like to have precisely these pills because they seem the least harmful to me.”

Tokyo’s Nights — Short and Lonely

On top of overwork comes private loneliness. In Tokyo, it’s hard to make friends. In July, WM confides to his sister Marianne:

“I’m slowly starting to like the country a bit. And now, I can tell you that in the first few weeks, I would have preferred to leave again. As pretty and charming as the Japanese girls are, the men seem repulsive to me. I would have preferred to leave for Hong Kong. I’m gradually feeling more comfortable, though I think one will always be relatively lonely here. No intimacies to report yet. I’m not quite ready for that.”

He evokes the complete isolation he experiences as a foreigner even more drastically and poetically in an autobiographical feuilleton for NWDR radio:

“The nights are short in Tokyo. It’s pointless to go to bed before midnight. Sleep is impossible until the mosquitoes settle down, and the cicadas and crickets finally accept that they can’t drown out the taxis careening around as if drunk with their desperate, lung-busting calls. Last night, I must have fallen asleep anyway; perhaps the brief rain beforehand had cooled things down. I must have been sleeping because when a whistle awakened me, I remained in the no-man’s-land of dreams for a long time. Someone in front of my house had whistled a few notes from La Traviata, and he kept repeating this signal until I slowly stumbled up to see who the hell wanted to visit me in the middle of the night. Only after rubbing my eyes hard to adjust to the glaring lamplight did I discover the tatamis, the straw mats covering every Japanese room. Suddenly, I knew where I was — in Meguro-ku, Kakinokizaka, Tokyo. I also knew something else: I had gotten up for nothing. The whistle wasn’t for me.

Here, no friend whistles outside the window.

Here, I am alone, like every other being, with white skin, big eyes, and a long nose.

Every evening, I go home to the high-walled little piece of self that belongs to no one and that I share with no one. Once I’ve locked the door, I’m inside, hopelessly barricaded; no passerby will stop. They all walk by; no one will ring, and certainly no one will think of whistling a few bars from La Traviata at midnight because they suddenly feel like talking to me about the Chagall exhibition in the Marunouchi Building.”

The Stale German Feel Motivates

As lonely as he is in Tokyo, WM wishes for a friend. One who doesn’t mind long noses. And preferably one who can also help him earn money.

Illustrated magazines pay the highest fees in Germany. WM’s exclusive contract with Die Welt allows work for publications like stern, Quick, or Revue after getting permission. However, true to their genre, they demand illustrations — glossy photos. WM can’t provide those since he never became the press photographer he once dreamed of being.

At some point during this difficult summer of 1955, it dawns on him that he has a photographer friend. He just needs to lure him to Asia. Will Tremper’s next letter arrives in early August.

“Dear Wolfgang Menge, your not writing is nothing short of a catastrophe. As the devil would have it, I might suddenly turn up in Tokyo tomorrow, and you’d have to be terribly ashamed and scrambling for excuses. Besides — I think I’ve allowed myself to say this once before — the whole world trip is only half as interesting if you don’t stay in touch with us! Whoever I ask: No one’s heard anything from old Menge. Man, if you knew how interested I am in all this and how desperate I am about you being so lazy about writing. Are the ladies really that classy? — I note that this is now the third letter without an answer and that you should stop kicking loyal souls. It doesn’t pay off. Break a leg.”

His ex-B.Z. colleague’s interest in Japan and WM’s experiences is all too evident. At the same time, he shares helpful inside information: namely, “that the entire Welt editorial staff (and ‘entire’ might even be an understatement) was against your first six articles, but that [the editor-in-chief] Zehrer loved them and had them published quickly, one after the other (in one week I read three: People Without Space — Sex Trafficking — Film).”

Tremper wants to escape what he calls “that stale German feel”:

“I was in London and Paris over the weekend, with Noucha for TV appearances, and I’m still quite miserable from returning to Germany. Thank God that at least Berlin exists.” And: “Everyone talks about how one should get out, but no one does.”

World Travel With and Without Will

WM seizes the opportunity. He arranges with Will Tremper to report from Asia as a team. Tremper wants to secure assignments from illustrated magazines, for WM’s texts and his professional photo reports.

“I’ll come with camera gear, pretty certainly before Christmas.”

WM adjusts his plans accordingly. In July, he had written to his parents:

“Above all, I won’t stay here forever but will see more of the world. If nothing comes up, by my calculation, I’ll slowly make my way to South America this time next year, stay there for a while, and then head back to Europe before going to Africa.”

After the correspondence with Will Tremper, he now announces that these plans “can change every day due to something or other”:

“One of my former Ullstein reporters, who has always been very attached to me, works excellently, and is a brilliant photographer, will come here. Maybe I’ll travel around the world with him and work for illustrated magazines — in other words, making money for a while.”

Millionaires Must Save

Because no matter how much he writes for Welt, NWDR, and his few other clients — it’s never enough. He needs a minimum of 1000 marks per month to live in Tokyo. This contrasts with the low fees he receives from Germany. Die Welt’s flat rate was 400 marks; since July, it’s now 500 marks per month. It’s offset against a fee of 50 pfennigs per line. WM has tried to deliver more articles than the guaranteed fee covers. However, the editors simply don’t publish them to avoid the extra cost. NWDR’s fee is between 70 and 90 marks for a half-hour broadcast. Bavarian Radio, which he now also supplies, pays somewhat worse. South German Radio deducts income tax in advance, so WM no longer writes for them. The line fees of regional newspapers south of the Main River, like Rhein-Neckar-Zeitung, or of trade journals like the Munich Information Service for the Television Industry, for which he is allowed to write, are in the pfennig range.

At the same time, as a foreign correspondent, he must stay current and inform himself about what’s happening in Germany. Newspapers, flown in by air freight, are costly. To reduce his overhead, he writes to his ex-publisher Heinz Ullstein and asks for complimentary newspaper copies. The millionaire surprisingly responds promptly:

“I can only comply with your wish to send you newspapers regularly on high national holidays. Because with shipping, each copy costs us DM 1.07.”

When the Thousands Roll In

In addition to his own living expenses, WM must earn 250 marks every month, which he uses to support his parents and sister. The family can no longer afford their big city rent and has to move to cheaper Braunschweig to live with relatives. “Unfortunately, I can’t help financially at the moment,” WM writes. He sees little choice but to bite the sour apple and take on work for picture magazines. Even if he doesn’t appreciate this sort of publication.

“Of course, to cover my necessary financial needs, I can switch to illustrated magazines, of which I have several offers,” he confides to Albin Stuebs. “That way, I would earn more money for less work. I just need to photograph little girls who maybe shine shoes or sit on the floor, and the thousands would roll in.”

But only if the pictures of the “little girls” meet the required quality. Through the mediation of his old friend Richard Gruner, now co-publisher of the stern, he was able to conclude a contract with the magazine. The topics have been agreed upon. But he has to wait for photo reporter Tremper to fulfill the assignments. Until then, he continues to type through the nights. You can tell by his looks that the stimulants have arrived.

“I think I’ve actually gotten a bit thinner,” he writes to his parents. “But only in the face. I never gain or lose weight otherwise, no matter what I eat. That’s not because I don’t eat enough or live dissolutely — if I’ve ever been solid in my life, it’s here — but certainly because I’ve had so much trouble and had to work so hard.”