In the first of this trilogy of posts, I wrote about the history surrounding the opening of East Germany and the Berlin Wall. In my most recent post, I told of my experiences traveling through East Germany to Berlin via Checkpoints Alpha and Bravo. But it was what happened after I entered Berlin that still gives me chills. After reading so many cold war spy novels, entering Berlin seemed like a dream. I had read of people getting shot trying to cross from east to west. I had seen pictures of the famous wall, pristine white on the East Berlin side with a raked “warning track” in front of it. The wall was covered with graffiti on the West Berlin side and, in fact, was an ugly scar on the landscape. The Brandenburg Gate, or Brandenburger Tor in the German language, supposedly sat on the demarcation line. However, it was only tantalizingly close to the line separating east and west. In fact, it was wholly in East Berlin. We could look through the gate, but we couldn’t walk throught i, which had once been the symbolic entrance to the city. Some of the city’s most famous landmarks were in East Berlin, such as Alexanderplatz. This square was the site of the Fernsehturm, or television tower, which was topped by a sphere that was the object of amusement to the westerners who could view it across the demarcation line. The orb was designed by Swedish engineers who may or may not have realized the effect that the sun would have on it. Whenever the sun shone on the tower, its reflection would appear in the shape of a cross, which did not go over well with the atheistic tenets of communism. No matter what the city fathers did to the tower, the cross remained. Westerners referred to it as “the Pope’s revenge“. Seeing it was always worth a good chuckle.
Not that West Berlin was without its own landmarks. I was struck by how green the city was. There seemed to be parks and green belts everywhere. I was not really prepared for that, but it was a welcome surprise. Perhaps the most popular area to Americans was actually a street known as Kufürstendamm or simply “Ku’damm” to the locals. It was a major shopping area and the center of some of the nightlife in West Berlin. Along the broad avenue one would find the Gedächtniskirche, known in English as the Kaiser Wilhelm Memorial Church. It suffered bomb damage during World War II, and the damage was left unrepaired as a reminder of the horrors of the war. The church was also the location where one could find many “creatures” (my word) of the two-legged variety after the wall was opened. Some of these low-lifes would slither out from under their rock and congregate at the church in the very early 1990s. Drugs were a problem, and you could find many of their compatriots at one of Berlin’s famous train stations, the Berlin Zoo Bahnhof. (Note to purists regarding some of my links: I KNOW that Wikipedia is unofficial and may contain some inaccurate information. However, many of the locations have webpages in German, and I’m assuming that my readers, for the most part, would prefer to read about these locations in English).
I loved walking up and down the Ku’damm and visiting the shops and trendy restaurants. I’m sure that most of you have heard of the Harrod’s Department Store in London. Berlin had its own department store to rival Harrod’s. It was known as the Kaufhaus des Westens, or simply KaDeWe, as it is known to the locals and tourists alike. The translation is rather loose, but assume that it means “the shopping mall of the West”. Its sixth floor food gallery is staggering, with food from all over the world. I have also visited the famous Harrod’s food gallery, and KaDeWe competes admirably with Harrod’s.
Of course, by this time, the wall was becoming a piece of history, but much of it still remained, and I wanted my crack at it. I have mentioned in an earlier post, that my school district had two schools in Berlin that reported to us. Because of the difficulty in getting to West Germany for training, we had made a deal with our staff members there. We would bring the training to them. Otherwise, they would have been required to take the duty train all night from Berlin to Bremerhaven, take the training during the day, and return the following night. It was much more practical for us to go to them. At that time, our agency was implementing a new supply tracking program, and one of the supply clerks from a school in my district had been selected to pilot the program and then provide the training to his counterparts throughout Germany. This young man was in his early 20’s and was a Brit by nationality. His mother lived in the Netherlands, as did he and his wife. He crossed the border every day to work at one of our schools at a NATO air base right on the Dutch-German border. As it happened, his mother had remarried, and her husband was an American soldier stationed in Berlin. This young man and I drove to Berlin in order to provide the training to the school supply clerks, and we used our off-time to explore. This man’s stepfather just happened to be the non-commissioned officer in charge (NCOIC) of the Military Police detachment at Checkpoint Charlie. He was on duty on November 9th, when the gates opened at the “Ossies” (people from East Germany or Ostdeutschland, were frequently called “Ossies” in the West. It was often considered to be a perjorative term, depending on its use. Boy, did he have some stories to tell.
Since my young friend and I wanted our crack at the wall, we made arrangements to meet his stepfather around the dinner hour. We checked out sledge hammers and bolt cutters from the supply room at our Berlin High School and were ready to meet the famous wall. The stepfather’s name was Nate, and he took us to an area of Berlin that was actually more of an appendage to the city than a part of West Berlin. This enclave was known as Steinstuecken, and it was wholly located in East Germany, not abutting against East Berlin. It was administratively a part of West Berlin, so the road connecting it was framed by the Wall on both sides. In short, there was wall everywhere. The link shows a picture of the road leading to the enclave in 1975. Not much had changed in 1990; there was still a lot of wall to pound on. Nate took us to the border and we began our hammering away. We found that the wall on “our side” was covered with graffiti, just as it was in the rest of West Berlin. On the opposite side was the “death zone”, a freshly raked area that I previously referred to as a “warning track”, much like a baseball outfield strip that warns the fielder that he is about to collide with a wall. In this case, the collision might have been with a hail of bullets. We began our destructive efforts with a vengeance. I took part of the pipe that sat atop the wall, as well as the steel flange that held it in place. I cut the reinforcement bars (re-bar) that provided strength to the masonry and removed large sections (well, small enough to still fit in my trunk). I got smaller chunks as well. In all, I had several boxes of the pieces of the wall and its supporting elements. I must have gotten carried away, because at one point, I looked down and saw that I was standing on freshly raked soil. Uh-oh, I thought to myself. I looked up and saw that the wall was a pristine white. I figured that I had just crossed the former border. Now that, in itself, should have been a moot point. There was no border any longer. Just to satisfy my curiosity, I said to the cop that had accompanied us, “Nate, am I in East Germany?” He answered that I indeed was in East Germany. Next question, and most important to me: “Is this area mined?” His answer was, “We think we got them all, but we aren’t certain.”
Was he yanking my chain? I didn’t want to find out the hard way. I carefully retraced my steps, making certain that I stepped only into the footprints that I had left earlier and crossed through the hole in the wall that we had created. Safely back on the West Berlin side of the wall, I breathed a bit easier and wondered if I had a change of underwear in my bag that was in the car. After a few more swipes at the wall, and a few more great stories about duty at Checkpoint Charlie, we returned to our hotel and had a few beers to celebrate our victory over communism that evening.
I can joke about it now, but that was an experience that I will remember for the rest of my life. This completes my trilogy of my experiences surrounding the fall of the Berlin wall. My only subsequent visit to the city was with my family a few weeks later during a school vacation. We had a great time touring the sites and seeing what was left of the famous wall. We also got several good looks at the “national bird” of a reunited Germany. That would be the construction crane. They were everywhere. Although my daughter Allison says that she doesn’t remember this, she made a lot of people chuckle on that trip. The Soviets still had their war memorial in West Berlin. Every day, they would march across to change the guard. While it wasn’t as impressive as the changing of the guard at Buckingham Palace, it was a definite tourist attraction. The Soviet soldiers would goose-step as they marched to their memorial. Allison decided it would be cool to walk along with them. Here is this little girl, who might have been about 7 at the time, goose-stepping alongside the very serious Soviet soldiers. Some of them even cracked a smile. I wish I had a picture of that, or if I do have one, I wish I could find it.
If you are planning a trip to Berlin, be sure to visit the various museums relating to the division of the city. They will be very moving and educational. I need to go back very soon. It has been way too long.
Retired-Ed
November 19th, 2009 at 12:17 am
What an experience it must have been. You have been very fortunate to have had such opportunities with your travels! (Do I sound as jealous as I feel?)
November 21st, 2009 at 2:43 am
Great info, Ed. This brings back so many memories. I visited relatives in the GDR three times in the 70s and 80s and was in Berlin several times while it was divided. I have a few little chunks of painted cement I bought in Berlin in 1990. I didn’t chip them myself, so I can’t say for sure that they are even really from the wall, but it’s what they represent that is important to me. I will never forget the first time I walked under the Brandenburg Gate in 1990 into the East or about a year later when we drove to Magdeburg and Halle to visit those relatives who had lived behind the iron curtain for so many years. I’m happy to say that they are all doing fine now. My two cousins (both teachers) and their spouses stayed there. Since the whole school system changed drastically, it was quite a challenging job. Two of their children moved to the west: Cologne and Hamburg. The other two stayed in the East.
November 21st, 2009 at 7:23 am
We certainly lived history, didn’t we? It was so exciting.