Stealing the Future

by Max Hertzberg

  I dashed across to the clock, paper clasped under my arm, peering through the scrum that was gathering. There! A tall woman, reddish blonde hair tied back in a pony tail, holding a taz folded up in front of her, the red print of the title contrasting with her light coat. I paused for a moment, watching her scan the crowds, and feeling a smile climb onto my lips, then I dived through a gap.

  “Hi—you’ve got a taz!”

  She laughed, “Yes, I’m Annette. And you have a Berliner Zeitung, so you must be Martin.”

  She had an infectious smile, broad, welcoming, splitting her face almost in two and showing her strong teeth. It was impossible not to smile with her. She had laughter lines in the corners of her green eyes, between them a nose that was slightly bent to the left as if she’d been a boxer in a previous life. She hooked her arm through mine, her long fingers tickling the inside of my elbow.

  “Shall we get closer, so we can hear what the speakers have to say?”

  Without waiting for an answer, she set off towards the stage, pulling me along in her wake. I lost the Berliner Zeitung along the way, but I noticed that she kept a firm grip on her taz. There was a good crowd of people already, many holding banners and placards—the Watt-eater goblin from the 1950s energy conservation campaigns was a favoured motif, along with other messages encouraging a reduction in energy use.

  “Why did you suggest the demo?” I asked, not particularly interested, being too busy looking at her smiling face and shining eyes, but feeling that it might come across as rude if I stared too much and talked too little.

  “Well, it’s something I’m interested in—in West Berlin we get our electricity from you, but air pollution and water pollution are an international problem. Just because there’s still a Wall it doesn’t mean that the pollution stops at the border, or that we have no responsibility for it. Besides, I do part time research for the AL, and energy is my area.”

  Annette worked for the AL, the Alternative Liste, the Westberlin branch of the Green Party, and currently a coalition partner in the Westberlin Senate. In the past they’d been very supportive of the GDR opposition, but had been less keen to help out since we turned down the offer of merging with Westgermany in early 1990, although parts of the party still had close contact with the Round Tables.

  The first speaker had stood up, standing by the lectern. I recognised her—she was part of the Arche network, now working with Grüne Liga, and had long been involved in researching alternatives to using lignite brown coal for electricity generation. She started with a summary of how, since the early 1980s, the GDR had electrified train lines and converted most power plants to make more use of the domestically mined brown coal in preference to oil imported from the Soviet Union and the non-socialist economies. The speaker then went on to talk about the current use of brown coal.

  “321 million tonnes of brown coal were used in 1985. By 1990 this had been reduced to 260 million, and we’re on course to go below 200 million tonnes by 1997. The open cast mines that are swallowing whole villages, and even now are gnawing at the edges of Leipzig—they aren’t our only problem. In 1989 our power stations produced nearly 2 mega-tonnes of sulphur dioxide, but by fitting sulphur filters we will cut this by a third over the next two years. We are overhauling our brown coal power stations to double their efficiency. Conversion of power stations to combined heat and power stations is already providing yet more savings.

  “This all sounds very positive, particularly when we add the following facts: rationing of fuel for personal transport decreased transport related smog by nearly 60% this summer; less demand for energy from the military has reduced overall demand by a further 15%; and increased recycling and re-use decreases the embodied energy of products in circulation.

  “But the fact is we are still using open-cast brown coal, with its high sulphur and salt content. Our electrical appliances and machinery—at home and in industry—use on average 20% more energy than those conforming to international standards. At current rates it will take up to 20 years to replace these.

  “But we don’t have 20 years!

  “The following speakers will address the problems of acid rain killing our forests, smog in our cities, sulphates and iron in our water and the impact open cast mining is having on our landscape. Last, but certainly not least, we’ll talk about the fact that if West Silesia secedes from the GDR we will lose nearly half of our brown coal reserves.”

  As promised there followed a series of speeches that were both illuminating and depressing. The final speaker, an academic from the Humboldt University, spoke of the impact the loss of the Silesian coal fields would have on the GDR economy. Imports of brown coal from the Czech Republic and Poland would be required until production at our other coal fields could be increased. He remarked that efficiency savings and the building of renewable energy sources such as wind turbines on the Baltic coast will take time to realise, and if West Silesian secession happens before these measures are in place, the GDR would inevitably be bankrupted.

  He didn’t need to spell out what that would mean: the end of our social experiment, and unification with Westgermany.

  Just like in 1989 events were moving so fast that we didn’t feel we could keep up. In those days we didn’t have time to dream or strategise, only to react. We were caught up in a whirlwind of enthusiasm and energy. But this time round it felt like we may not even have any time to react.

  The first speaker took the microphone again in a bid to give the event an upbeat ending.

  “Just a few years ago we came on to the streets to protest against an undemocratic and centralised government—a government that was incapable of listening to us, the people. Once again we are here in the name of the people. But now we are in a time of change. Now we hold the power. Now it’s up to us.” The speaker waited until the cheers died down, the cries of Wir sind das Volk! slowly ebbing away as she held up her hands, asking to be allowed to continue.

  “The time when we trusted the Party—or anyone else—to take the decisions for us has gone!”

  Again a roar of applause and cheers. I looked at Annette, she was cheering with the rest of us, even though she was just a visitor to our revolution. But maybe she felt that she could help us with our work?

  “With or without West Silesia, we can’t rely on dirty fuel. Brown coal has to stay in the ground! We can’t afford to switch the nuclear power stations back on. Uranium has to stay in the ground! We can’t afford to use this much energy. We must use less—we have to stand our ground!” She spoke in waves, ebbing and flowing, peaking each time she said the word ground, the crowd’s cheers and cries the sound of surf crashing on the beach.

  “Go back to your neighbourhoods, back to your workplaces. Talk to your neighbours and colleagues. Discuss what you’ve heard today. We need plans to reduce our consumption. We need plans for more efficient energy use. We need plans to improve and replace high energy input machinery. This isn’t the first time we’ve had to deal with difficult questions. As a nation we are talking, sharing and discussing difficult topics: the Wall, our constitution–”

  She clearly had more to say, but a young woman had gained the stage and was talking to the speaker. It was Karo, the punk that I’d shared a beer with on Wednesday. After a brief discussion the speaker passed over the microphone. Karo took it, and stood, looking out at us, nervous, the arm holding the mike shaking. Her eyes scanned the crowd as if searching for someone she knew, then she started.

  “My name is Karo, erm, I’m from the Thaeri, a squat in Friedrichshain. I’ve just come back from the Czech Republic. I’ve been working with a group of people fighting the new nuclear power station at Temelin. They’re called the Energy Brigades, and they’re brilliant! They’ve been going round their neighbourhoods and villages, helping people install insulation in their houses and flats. And they’ve helped out with improving people’s heating systems in their homes. It sounds boring, but they’ve halved domestic energy use! Their aim is to save so much energ
y that there won’t be any need to build the new nuclear power station there. And,” she gestured to the side of the stage where a couple more punks were watching, they reluctantly came up and joined her next to the microphone stand. “These two comrades have come up from Bohemia to show us how to do it. On Monday morning we’re going to the Friedrichshain Round Table to negotiate a budget for energy brigades here in Berlin.”

  It’s not like Karo was proposing anything new, but her enthusiasm was infectious, and she earned herself a round of applause.

  “Do you know her?” Annette asked.

  “Yes, I had a drink with her a few days ago. Why?”

  “Oh, you were just looking proud,” Annette was showing her smile again, teasing me.

  “You know what? I am proud. Not just of Karo, but of all these young people. Where would we be without their energy and enthusiasm?”

  “You’re not so old yourself, and Katrin said you’re still pretty enthusiastic.”

  “Katrin? You know Katrin?”

  Annette looked sheepish, her smile turned off for a moment, her arms hanging by her side and her eyes lowered.

  “I promised her I wouldn’t tell you. She helped out at the AL over the summer, and she told me about you. I liked what I heard. I saw her the other day and she said you’d put an ad in the lonely hearts column in Zitty, so I thought why not? She encouraged me, said we’d be perfect together.”

  Katrin! She was going to get an earful when I managed to get hold of her!

  “Well, I’m glad my daughter has taste,” I squeaked, and I’m sure that I blushed.

  Annette treated me to her special smile, put her arm through mine again.

  “Shall we go and get a coffee? This looks like it might go on for a while.”

  I looked up at the stage, and I could see that a line of people wanting to take the mike had formed. I nodded. A coffee with Annette sounded good to me.

  We walked under the train tracks and over to the television tower, a tall stick of asparagus standing in the middle of Eastberlin. The lift—a small metal cube operated by a uniformed attendant—clunked and clicked up the tower, making Annette visibly nervous.

  “Does it always shake and make such noises?” she asked in a low whisper, worried about offending the attendant.

  “Probably. Haven’t been up here for years.”

  We reached the revolving Telecafé level, and waited for the Dispatcher to place us, eventually being directed to a table next to the window, looking down on Berlin below. It was still cloudy, making the city appear dull, overshadowed. But the line of the Wall was clearly visible—follow the Unter den Linden as far as the Brandenburg Gate, the Wall stretched out either side, then doubled back east, embracing the old centre before heading off into the hazy gloom. Annette stared out, past the Red Rathaus, over to Kreuzberg on the other side of the Wall, south of where we sat, but to our minds, West.

  “It’s strange. I mean, I live, what, two kilometres? Not far from here. Closer than you do.” Her eyes flicked to the south-east, towards Lichtenberg, and I had a brief sense of unease that this woman who I’d known for less than two hours knew where I lived.

  “But,” she continued, “we still live in two completely separate worlds. Different societies, at least. Just a few years ago I was glad to be living in the West. Then I wanted to be back here, with you all. Now I wonder whether it might not just be best if you joined us, if we became one Germany again. That way you wouldn’t sit shivering at home, starving.”

  Her eyes sought mine out, genuinely curious, and seemingly unaware how hurtful her words were.

  “I saw you just now, down there, cheering with the rest of us. Don’t you feel this, this… power we have, as a people? Is that not worth shivering and starving for?” I could feel my arms moving around, gesticulating, taking in Berlin that lay at our feet.

  “But is it really, or are you just being idealistic? It’s not going to work, is it? Really?” Again her words stabbed at me, and I wondered whether it was my pride or my hope that she was wounding.

  “I think it will, if we’re given the chance. But what did you mean? When you said back here?”

  “I was born here. My parents came over here in the ’50s. Full of hope. They wanted to help build the better Germany. Idealism, it was, a sense of duty. Just like Bert Brecht and Maxie Wander and all the others who came here to take part in the great experiment.”

  “But they left? They didn’t stay, and nor did you?”

  “No. We went over to West Berlin when I was still little. Just before they built the Wall. My parents said it was all a sham, they couldn’t be part of it any more. A power game run by Moscow and the Communists. And now I wonder whether this is just a rerun of those first, naïve years. I wonder whether my parents would have come back again?” She was still looking out at Kreuzberg. The revolving bulb in the tower, the restaurant we were sitting in, had turned further, and she had to look back over her shoulder.

  “Where are they now?” I asked.

  “Dead. Both of them. I think they died of broken hearts, broken dreams. My dad had a heart attack, and my mum went soon after.”

  “I’m sorry. But you know what? I think they’d see the differences this time.” Why is it always so hard to find the right words when people talk of death? I avoided her eyes, preferring to watch the toy trains running into and out of the station far below. The green and black carriages of the long distance services, and the off-white and red of the local S‑Bahn, stopping to pick up passengers.

  “Would they?” She was looking at me now, intensely. Staring into my eyes, as if she could find the answer there. “Has that much changed? You still have the same propaganda, the same exhortations to work hard, to go without for the good of the country.”

  “I think it is different. I think your parents were right back then. At that time it was all a sham, it was all about control and blindly following a broken ideology, no matter the cost. But we’re doing it differently this time round. There’s no ideology, other than listening to each other, working together. There’s no leadership of the Party, no dictatorship of one class over another. The days when the Party was always right, they’ve gone for good.”

  “So how’s it different? Because from where I’m standing it doesn’t seem all that different.” She was still looking deep into my eyes, searching for answers, perhaps hoping I could persuade her.

  “Well, look at the way we work now, and live together.”

  “Ah, yes! The famous collective decision making process! You should see the stories about that in our newspapers!” She laughed, but I didn’t find it funny. For me it was all deadly serious.

  “Well, it’s not easy. But if we can build our society on the basis of active participation, where everyone has a part to play in deciding about the things they’re involved in, that’s got to be better, hasn’t it?”

  She saw now how earnest I was, suppressed the smile on her lips and changed the subject.

  “What is it you do again? Katrin mentioned something about diplomacy,” she looked confused.

  “Well, that’s part of it. But I’m in a team that keeps an eye open for anything, or anyone, who is trying to undermine what we’re doing here.”

  “And what do you do when you find something out?” Annette was looking sceptical now, call it paranoia if you will, but I was sure she was thinking Stasi.

  “We’re not police, and we don’t have the power to prosecute—that’s one thing we learnt—we don’t want to be like the Stasi,” I said defensively. “We tell the people who are affected, so that they’re aware of the problem. So, for example, we suspect that investors are coming over from Westberlin, trying to persuade people to vote to allow their flats to be privatised. Presumably these Westerners see some way to buy in and make a profit.”

  “So, what do you do when you find this happening?”

  “We work out what’s going on then if there’s a problem we’ll go to a residents’ meeting, and tell them what the
Westerners are up to. If we suspect anything illegal then we’ll pass it on to the police.”

  “And this is really happening? Why isn’t there a law about it?”

  “We’re having to change our whole legal system: it’s a massive job, it’s going to take time. Some of our law dates back to the nineteenth century—even the Party didn’t get round to changing all of our laws, even though they had 40 years to do it in! We have to look at each law, see whether it’s democratic. And anyway, we’re just not used to all these capitalist tricks; our laws are so full of loopholes that anyone who’s out to make a fast buck can practically do what they want.”

  Annette looked thoughtful. “I see. I hadn’t thought about it that way. We’re so used to people trying to sell us stuff and rip us off we don’t even notice it any more. What else have you had to deal with?”

  I didn’t want to talk about what I had been thinking about so much over the last few days, so I told her a story about how confused we were about pyramid schemes when they first cropped up. We’d needed to get an expert in from the West to help us get our heads round them.

  Annette laughed, showing her teeth again, the laugh subsiding into a big smile. It was impossible not to laugh with her, even though I suspected she was laughing at our naïvety.

  “And what’s happening in West Silesia? It’s never out of the news, but I’m not sure I understand it at all.”

  “I don’t really know what’s gone wrong there. We’re hearing lots of rumours, the West Silesian Round Table is saying that the administration there has sidelined them.”

  “Yeah, I read about it in the paper, but I didn’t understand that either, I mean, I’m not even sure I know what a Round Table is.”

  “It’s just another way for people’s views to be represented, parallel to the Regional and national parliaments. Each level of Round Table and Works Council sends delegates to the next level up. They’re there to keep an eye on what the elected representatives are doing, provide a sounding board, and a way of passing information and ideas to and from the grassroots.”