DSO stop brings friends together

October 11, 2001

BY MARK STRYKER
FREE PRESS STAFF WRITER

When the Detroit Symphony Orchestra arrived in Nuremberg, Germany, on Tuesday, violinist Marian Tanau added another link to the chain of his remarkable destiny.

Waiting for him was Joseph Muller, a Romanian-born German national, who in 1989 risked his career to help Tanau, then 22, defect from Romania. Muller was repaying a debt to Tanau's father, who 15 years earlier had risked his own career -- perhaps his life -- to help Muller defect.

The two embraced. In Romanian, Muller said, "You are looking more and more like a man." Tanau replied joyously, "It's so good to see you again."

Like many other tales of fate from behind the Iron Curtain, this one is layered with political intrigue and paranoia difficult to evoke in the post-Communist era. Muller, an upholsterer, was a friend of Tanau's father, a theater technician. When Muller decided to defect with his family, Tanau's father schemed to borrow a car, pick up the Mullers, who were posing as hitchhikers and deposit them at the Yugoslavian border.

Flash to 1989. Communism is on the brink of collapse, but Tanau, who plays in an orchestra, is suffocating personally and professionally in Romanian society. With no plans to defect, he visits a friend in Suhl, East Germany. In Tanau's pocket is Muller's phone number, which his father has given him with instructions to call if he needs anything when he's outside Romania.

Tanau's friend is not in town, so he is forced to spend nearly all his cash on a hotel. He calls Muller, who arrives a day later around lunchtime. "What can I do to help?" he asks. On the spur of the moment, Tanau says, "How hard is it to get across the border?"

Muller tells him to pack his bags; they have a better chance in daylight when the guards won't suspect anything. At the border, Muller places his West German passport on top of Tanau's upside-down Romanian passport. Both documents are green. He hands them to the guard, who assumes both are legit without separating them. Tanau and Muller cross into West Germany.

"I was totally scared," remembers Tanau. "I probably would have done jail time in both East Germany and Romania, I would have been fired from my job and had to start all over again."

Tanau spent a year in Germany doing construction and factory work and manning a game of chance at an amusement park. He was granted political asylum and allowed to emigrate to the United States in 1990, when he joined his sister in Burlington, Vt. He attended graduate school and in 1995 won a spot in the DSO. In 1999 he brought his parents to America from Romania.

Tanau has seen Muller just once since his defection -- in 1998 when a previous European tour took the DSO to Germany.

"He took a major chance in his life, and because of him, I am part of American society, I play in a major symphony and I have a wonderful family with two children," Tanau says.

Tanau's father never imagined that when he helped Muller escape he was helping his son take the first step toward freedom.