Berlin Wall – Don't Gel Too Soon

RePost: Best of Don’t Gel 2009 – The End of the Berlin Wall: Twenty Years Ago

This is the Brandenburg Gate in the center of Berlin. The first time I saw it, in 1974, there was a wall built right through it.

Here’s a photo of it then, from the Hotel Adlon website. The hotel stood, from 1907 to 1945, when it was decimated by a fire, just to the left of the Gate. It was the stopping place for world leaders and socialites and was rebuilt shortly after the Wall fell.

Because Berlin has such a dramatic history, it was always exciting to be there — maybe more so while the wall remained.

I remember especially coming through Checkpoint Charlie
(that’s it on the left) on a dark fall day (Americans were allowed to
visit for the day after going through this scary border station and
having cars and packages searched) and, as we approached the Gate,
seeing an old man standing, looking over into the West. In his hands,
clasped behind his back, was a rosary. Not so popular in communist
East Berlin. I recall thinking immediately “Oh. His daughter is
getting married in the West today and he can’t go, and he’s standing
there, thinking about her, praying for her.” Berlin in those times
lent itself to imagining such things. The drama was palpable.

The first time we went to Berlin after the wall fell, I remember, it was
pouring. Oblivious to the weather, we walked back and forth beneath
the lovely arches in the now-open gate, kind of giddy at what it meant
to the people of Berlin and all those who care about freedom and, I
guess, redemption. For despite what happened in Berlin during the war
(and we’ve studied it extensively and spoken both with survivors and
those involved in the rebuilding of the Jewish community) the Wall caused immeasurable suffering and was a diabolical slash through the heart of the city and every one of its people.

I’ve written about Berlin before: from its playgrounds to its grim Communist years. We go there often. It seems to pull us back, its intellectual energy
and re-emerging Jewish community irresistible. Once, when we’d taken
our kids there while the Wall remained, one son, around 5, bought a
stuffed wool pig and told everyone he “got it out of jail.”

Here’s one last photo – of two buildings: one redone and the other still old and rickety, in the very cool neighborhood of Prenzlauer Berg, which is in the old “East Berlin” and now, last I heard, had the highest childbirth rate in Germany and was home to artists, writers, musicians and fashionably cool people who don’t have to work. What you see stands for it all: the struggle to renew, still only partly complete.

The 50s, TV, The Company and The Hungarian Uprising

I was ten in 1956, when the people of Hungary rose up to end the Russian occupation. It was a rout – and they remained under Communist domination until the fall of the Berlin Wall. It’s difficult to explain now just how scary it was to hear of these heroic people crushed in the streets, and, for a child, difficult to place. Could it happen to me? To my family? How did the Russians get there? Why did they care what people did in Hungary?

A couple of years later a local church group sponsored a Hungarian family’s move to the US and their son, our age and pretty good at speaking English, came to dinner at the home of my friend Lois and spoke to a group of us – maybe it was our Girl Scout troop; maybe just a bunch of girlfriends – I’m not sure. He was dramatic and dignified and so happy to be there. Listening to him and the stories of those he’d left behind was a haunting experience – especially in the mind of a romantic politicized 13 year old mad for JFK.

I hadn’t thought about any of this in years, but this summer TNT brings us The Company – a history of the CIA — and of the Hungarian tragedy of 1956. From the perspective of 50 years it’s still so sad, even through the gauze of TV melodrama – and the freedom and prosperity of Hungary today doesn’t mitigate much.

I’ve kept my eye on what happened in the East since then. We took our kids through Czechoslovakia and East Germany while they were still behind the Iron Curtain. We couldn’t get the boys dry socks after a heavy rain because, as the storekeeper told us “we don’t have socks today.” We gave all our Bruce Springsteen tapes to our guide; each one would have cost him a month’s pay on the black market.

I’ve even been to Pottsdam. That photo on the left is the bridge where spies were exchanged during the days of the Cold War. So it’s not like I don’t know what happened historically. Once in a while though the recreation of reality, even with Hollywood gloss, slams me back where I was for a little while.

That’s all – I’ve been sitting here trying to think of a real ending for this – and I can’t — no massive summary available. Good night.

WAY BACK IN EAST BERLIN AT STASI HQ

This is the headquarters of the East German Security Forces – STASI. It’s now a museum. We went there today in an appropriately grey, rainy day. We left the brightly lit neighborhood where we’re staying and took the U Bahn (subway). The exit from the station was breathtaking. Literally. I’d been all over East Germany, in Dresden, East Berlin and all the little towns along the way as well as in both Prague and Budapest — on several occasions before the Wall fell. I know more than most Americans about the grossness of life for the people trapped there for so many years.

Somehow though – after leaving funky Prenzlauer Berg – and even the U Bahn station with its neon and magazine stands and climbing the stairs to find – the past – was stunning. This part of Berlin is still as it was – lines of grey, sterile, tall apartment blocks. Each looking like the end of the line. No signs. No ads. No nothing. You walk a block and go into a parking lot, up a little rise and there’s the building in this photo.

Enter and its shabby and grey. Here’s whose statue is in the lobby.

Yup it’s Karl Marx – but this time he’s a small copy and here to remind us what used to be. And what used to be is pretty bad. I wish I could explain what it felt like to wander the halls where these men (it was mostly men) dominated and terrorized generations of East German citizens. To see truncheons and vans that travelled day and night with receivers to pick up random conversations – and photos of sweeps and arrests – and of this cell.

Now remember, I’m an old leftie myself. I wish the world could allow people to give what they can and receive what they need. But this is not what was happening here. Not at all. Fear was the dominant value – and conformity to prevent any threat to the state. Walking around looking in those bland offices and at the room after room of photos and documents had far more impact than even atrocity stories about the period. Because if you’ve been around eastern Europe before 1990 you knew the weight on your heart; you could feel the thickness in the air. And it was from this place that enforcement of that weight emanated. The museum not a fancy place and I don’t think much visited but if you come to Berlin (and you’ll love it here) come here. It’s a deeply disturbing reminder of what people are capable of doing and of how they always call it something else when they’re doing it. We had lots of thoughts about what’s happening at home now in relation to this – but that’s a conversation for another day.

And here’s a little bonus – the view out the double decker top deck on a bus later in the day — in a more liveable part of what was the East, in the same rain…..

IT WAS [ALMOST] 20 YEARS AGO TODAY….

Around seventeen years ago this playground, built by the parents of Prenzlauer Berg, then part of the Soviet-dominated East Berlin, opened. Just a little while later Rick and I came upon it. We usually spent much of our time in Berlin in the East, and still do. It was a cold day, and in the home-made fireplace a bright fire burned. Kids were running, climbing, and having a wonderful time in this very low-tech “adventure playground.”

It’s still here, still low-tech and still much-beloved. It’s always meant a lot to me; it was very dramatic to cross into the East, see trees growing from the roof of the decimated central Synagogue, see a wall right across the very beat-up Brandenberg Gate (which now looks like this by the way) and to know that the people whose children played here were trapped, and, much of the time, scared. That they were able to create this for their kids in the middle of it all was inspiring. So, tired and not really up for a serious narrative tonight – I offer you this lovely little place – still loved by parents and kids alike – and probably, among those kids, some whose parents were playing there when we first visited. Goodnight.