In the Time of Two Germanies

by

Lanin D. Thómasma

I was watching people walking into a restaurant in Hof, a border town in southern Germany. That is, it was a border town at the time. Within a year, it would lose that status forever.

It was late 1989, and Hof lay on the border between West Germany, the Bundesrepublik Deutschland, and East Germany, the Deutsche Demokratische Republik. The locals just called them the BRD and the DDR. The two Germanies were one of the oddities that came out of Europe's swift transition out of World War II and into the Cold War. Germany was occupied by the four major allies, the US, Britain, France and the Soviet Union. Each ally had its occupation zone. Russia's zone was in the east, the region that bordered on Poland, and when tensions got too high between Stalin and the west, the Soviet Zone declared itself a separate country.

As if that weren't complicated enough, the capital of Germany, Berlin, was located right in the middle of the Soviet Zone, and the city was divided into occupation zones along with the country. The East Germans, under the Russians, declared Berlin to be the capital of their new country, and demanded that the western allies leave. The western allies responded by refusing to recognize East Germany as a country. And so for the next forty years, they continued to occupy Berlin as if World War II were still going on.

And the Soviets played along. Amidst all the tension and uncertainty of the Cold War, Berlin kept its official status as an occupied city. West Germany set up a provisional capital in Bonn, and the DDR was, diplomatically at least, ignored.

But even in a one-party country, people can still vote with their feet. Even before the end of World War II, Germans had started fleeing the East in favor of the West. The DDR secured their “inner-German border” the best they could, but Berlin remained their weak point. Berliners could move freely from one part of the city to another, and a growing number of them were hopping on trains in the western sector that took them to West Germany, its freedom and its prosperity.

And so the East Germans did the unthinkable. They built a wall – not only through the middle of the city, but around all of West Berlin. It was thrown up over the course of a day or so, but over the next few years, what started as a pile of hastily-stacked cinderblocks was refurbished into a full-scale barrier. The construction included barbed wire, minefields, strategically spaced guard towers, an extensive lighting system and a regimen of human and canine guards to patrol the entire length of the encirclement.

Geopolitics is a curious animal. The world reacted in shock to the Berlin Wall the day it was built. Television screens in the west showed footage of people picking their way through the wire, jumping from windows not yet bricked up on the borderline, one young man shot and left to bleed to death by East German border guards. And yet, after a few days, it became clear that the west, West Germany and the US in particular, weren't going to do anything tangible to stop the DDR. The erstwhile Allies kept referring to East Berlin as the Russian Sector. French, British and American troops still passed into the eastern city, and Red Army vehicles still traveled the streets of West Berlin.

As an athlete might adjust to a sports injury, so the world adjusted to the DDR's "Anti-Capitalist Rampart". Travel to West Berlin became a diplomatic feather in the cap of the West. Business continued as usual, and even expanded, while East Berlin struggled to rebuild. The DDR government kept a brave face to the world and to their own people, touting in print and on film the progress and beauty of their side of the city. The real contrast between propaganda and reality wouldn't become evident until the city was reunited, and a casual visitor could compare the sectors directly.

There were three major Autobahn routes to West Berlin, the most commonly-used being the central corridor, which ran from Hannover over Braunschweig, the home of Volkswagen. The southern route set out from Nuremberg in northern Bavaria, and the northern route connected from the city/state of Hamburg. The most interesting feature of the latter route was that it led directly past a Soviet Army base, though woe betide anyone caught trying to make any record of that fact.

The central crossing of the "Inner German Border" included a checkpoint for Allied military, known as Checkpoint Alpha. There they were processed by Russian personnel, to maintain their official denial of East Germany's jurisdiction. Upon reaching West Berlin, soldiers stopped at Checkpoint Bravo, and to cross into East Berlin, they passed through the well-known crossing in the middle of town, Checkpoint Charlie.

For non-military travelers, the three-hour drive from the BRD to West Berlin involved at least an hour's wait at a DDR border crossing. Here they were processed by the East German Border Patrol, whose demeanor tended to exhibit the ebb and flow of diplomatic attitudes, from well-mannered aloofness to thinly-veiled obstructionism. A third of the border patrol were members of the DDR's infamous Staatssicherheitsdienst, or Stasi, which kept a sharp watch for any sign that a guard might be anything but hostile to the West and all it stood for. Friendliness was not encouraged.

Once my wife accompanied a group for a visit to Herrnhut, which lies almost on the border between East Germany and Poland. They had with them a prop telephone for a play they were slated to perform. Upon entering the DDR, the border guard decided that the phone was a suspicious item, and couldn’t be allowed into the country. So he impounded it along with a few other items, to be returned when the group was ready to leave the country. Upon their return to the border station a week later, my wife dutifully presented the receipt for the confiscated items, to a different guard this time. The guard returned, looking rather quizzically at the telephone. My wife accepted the items, picked up the receiver of the phone, held it to her ear for a moment, and then quipped to the guard, “It still doesn’t work”.

And so it went on for nearly three decades. While worldwide tensions rose and fell without and within, the two Germanies settled into a quiet acceptance. Even as the famous Iron Curtain began to crumble from rust, both West and East German officials maintained that their countries would remain as they were.

Then the holes began to appear. Poland, after a long struggle, allowed a rival trade union to exist. Hungary opened a single border crossing with Austria, and within weeks, people were trying their luck at the Czech border. Then one day, the East German government issued an ambiguous statement about allowing their citizens to visit the west at some time, and that evening, East Berliners flocked to the wall demanding to be let through. The guards, lacking any clear orders from above, eventually stood by and let them pass, and what started as a trickle became a flood in no time.

Still, the idea of reuniting the two Germanies remained a pipe dream – officially, at least. The very idea of unrestricted travel was enough of a novelty for the East Germans, or “Ossies”, as the West Germans soon began calling them. And so the BRD government did what they could to encourage them. They organized bus trips to places in West Germany, and even beyond. Since the Ossies’ currency was virtually useless outside their own country, the BRD offered every traveler a welcome packet of West German marks to spend. People with family in the west returned home from joyful reunions, laden with everyday items they could never find at home.

That was the state of affairs in 1989, as winter set in. I sat in a McDonald’s in Hof, watching people walk in, Wessies and Ossies alike. Telling them apart was easy. There was the style of dress, of course. It wasn’t so much that the Wessies were any better dressed than their eastern counterparts, but that their outfits tended to be better coordinated, their shoes in particular.

In East Germany’s economy, production was planned by the government, and even the styles were decided upon by a central committee. Nearly all the stores were government run, and distribution was determined far away from actual consumers. As a result, if you couldn’t find what you wanted, there was no use trying a different store, since they all had the same items at exactly the same prices. People could sew their own clothing, but not everyone was a shoemaker, and paying someone privately to make you shoes could bring you both up on charges of operating a private business. So if you found a pair of shoes that fit, you bought them, regardless whether they matched or not.

But beyond the manner of dress, there was the way they came in the door. There was a hesitancy that marked the East Germans. Certainly, McDonald’s was an American icon at the time, the very symbol of the great capitalist nation they’d been told for years was out to get them. But there was something in that sense of capitalism that drew them in as well. The bright colors and advertisements were something distinctly foreign to their daily lives. The very layout of the place was a mystery to them. More than once, I almost spoke up to help direct someone to the counter to order their food.

The novelty would wear off, of course. The following autumn found Germany united once again, the DDR having joined themselves to the BRD as its five newest states. On a crisp morning in October, German TV screens filled with a scene from a military outpost in the DDR, of an East German soldier handing over his guard station to his West German counterpart.

In a few years, most of East Germany’s old socialist trappings had disappeared. The grand Palace of the Republic that the government had built for itself was found to be contaminated with asbestos, condemned and eventually torn down. Statues and monuments were packed away or broken up for scrap. The city of Karl-Marx-Stadt reclaimed its former name of Chemnitz. Even the term DDR was co-opted by an arcade game, Dance Dance Revolution, as capitalism took its last bite out of the old regime.

I left Germany in 1992, with Europe still in flux. Not long ago, I heard a phrase that rattled my brain for just a second: “Berlin Peace Talks”. It was good to hear. Germany’s gone from being a fractured prize in a geopolitical tug of war to a major stabilizing force in Europe and the world. And my memories of internal borders and a divided country are part of a story to tell the children.

That’s how it used to be when there were two Germanies. What are the chances they won’t believe me?

The End