When the Wall came tumbling down
Sometimes you have to knock down a wall to appreciate freedom
I was there when the East German Volks Polizei, the dreaded VoPo’s, detained my buddy Paul at Checkpoint Charlie for having “subversive literature.” (it was the same brochure about the structure of the West German parliament the rest of us had carried through with us without any trouble at all.)
Five years later, VoPo'ss from the same barracks made jovial jokes about “komeradschaft” — camaraderie — as I posed with them for a photo next their goofy little Soviet-made squad car.
It’s amazing how knocking down a wall can change peoples’ attitudes.
The 1989 fall of the Berlin Wall, celebrated two days ago, was an event my German relatives were unshakably certain would one day occur, although probably not in their lifetimes. When they took me to see Bonn during my first visit to Germany in 1985, they explained that Berlin was really the nation's capital, and that the seat of the federal government in Bonn was just temporary.
A week later I had my first encounter with The Wall and an authoritarian government. Rereading my journal brings back a rush of feelings and emotions.
“My Fourth of July was certainly atypical for your average American,” I wrote. “The life and excitement of West Berlin was dramatically lacking in its drab, colorless neighbor.
“People seemed less friendly and certainly more depressed than West Berliners. They are suspicious of visitors and suspicious of each other. There were hardly any shops on Unter den Linden for us to unload our DM25. We bought Havana cigars for our dads…and after walking around some more, returned to the same shop and bought some chalky chocolate….
“We left East Berlin considerably gladly and more appreciative of our decadent western way of life!” I wrote that night in my hotel.
In 1990, less than six weeks before Reunification, I again journeyed through East Germany to Berlin. This time there was no pause at the east/west border while VoPo’s released dogs to sniff under the train for escapees.
“The last time I went to East Berlin it took half an hour to clear customs,” I noted in my journal. “Yesterday we hopped a U-Bahn (subway) and cruised into the eastern zone without any ceremony whatsoever.”
Well, there was one small ceremony. As his friend Anna, a Pole, snapped photos, my friend Klaus had to step onto the platform and back into the train at one particular stop. Less than a year earlier that subway station was bricked up to prevent East Germans from escaping to the west through the subway tunnels.
“Last year I couldn’t get out here,” Klaus said with a huge grin, jumping back aboard as the doors closed.
“Of ‘the Wall,’ the only sign is a scar along the pavement,” my journal entry continued. “Part of the inner of the two walls…still stands and people were industriously whacking away at it…”
It was exciting to see the transformation going on all around me, both physical and within the people of Berlin. There was blossoming entrepreneurship and capitalism that hadn’t existed for more than two generations.
“The flea market in front of the Brandenburg Gate is an interesting phenomenon,” I wrote. “The West Berlin police chase the vendors into the east over the scar left by the wall. The VoPo’s in the east chase them back. Some vendors set up on the scar itself, the remains of the wall becoming something of a free trade zone.”
Years later, it was exciting to hear stories of East Germans’ discovery of the west for the first time. My friend Markus Querengässer grew up in Dessau. His father, Joerg, was active in the anti-communist movement. At last the rallies paid off.
“As we drove our car through the wall, people cheered us and gave us coffee,” recalled Markus. “I was a kid. I didn’t even drink coffee! I felt like we were sports heroes or pop stars!”
When I think about The Wall I think mostly about people. I think of the terrified look on Paul’s face when, after half an hour of interrogation by the VoPo’s, he was finally released to join the rest of us in East Berlin.
I think of the VoPo’s with whom I had my picture taken, their ridiculous little police car and their pathetic attempts to be less officious. I think of the East Berliner who, in a previously unthinkable rush of capitalistic fervor, rented me his hammer and chisel for ten minutes so I could take my own whacks at The Wall. I think of Markus and his parents, of Klaus and of Anna, whose East German street map of Berlin called The Wall “protection against western decadence.”
Oddly, I also think of some of the folks who post often vitriolic and sometimes amazingly ignorant stuff on our Web site, just because they can. Maybe if they first had to confront VoPo’s or take part in rallies or knock down a wall to win the right to say what’s on their mind, might they respect their rights a little more and perhaps be a bit more thoughtful and courteous about what they write?
