by Herbie Sykes
I was growing up now, and gradually the substance of the letters started to change. We became braver in what we wrote, and they became more and more personal. We were discovering who we were, and I guess you could say that slowly they were starting to become love letters.
UDO
I hadn’t been planning on changing my circumstances, but that changed suddenly. They’d sealed off the border completely on 13 August 1961, and now they were introducing conscription.41
We’d always been taught that the GDR was a peaceful country, and that no citizen would ever have to take up arms again after the terrible events of the war. Now I understood that we’d been lied to, and I didn’t want to stay in that country.
My training partner was a guy named Peter Warzeschka. He and I spent a lot of time together, and he was the one friend I had absolute trust in. It seemed to us that the only sensible way to get out was across the Baltic Sea, to Denmark.
We decided it would be better not to mention it to friends or relatives, or even our parents. My father probably suspected something though, because we started preparing a folding kayak in his workshop.
MANFRED
They became even more paranoid after the wall. It wasn’t about performance any more, just whether or not you toed the line. My problem was the fact that I was just too outspoken.
They tried to make you join the party when you became famous, because that was worth a lot more to them than when a normal person joined. They tried with me for years, but I wouldn’t join and I knew they couldn’t force me. I said I was a Christian, and my final argument was that Yuri Gagarin hadn’t had to join the party, and he was a cosmonaut. They didn’t like that one little bit, especially after what had happened with Melichow. I got away with it, though, because my results spoke for themselves. It was a game, and while I was winning on the bike I was always one step ahead.
They started going round everybody asking whether I could be trusted to travel, and I was left out of the 1962 Peace Race. I was good enough to have been in the team, absolutely, but there had been the incident with Melichow and I was critical of the way they trained. They’d been looking for an excuse to lever me out, and they said I hadn’t followed the training plan.
DIETER
I was a candidate for the 1962 Peace Race, and this time I got in. It was a new team, and four of us were riding it for the first time. We didn’t have a proven sprinter because Weissleder was left out, then Adler was ill and for the first time in ten years there was no Täve.
The first five stages were in the GDR – Berlin, Leipzig, Erfurt, a time trial to Jena and then Chemnitz. At the Peace Race it was important that you won your home stages at the very least, but you could tell straight away that the Russians were going to be too powerful. You could see that they would dominate the race, and no matter how hard we tried we didn’t stand a chance against them. By the rest day in Chemnitz we hadn’t even had anyone on the podium.
That morning I went for a ride to Flöha with two of my team-mates. When we got back the head coach told us that the riders, trainers and mechanics had to meet in the hotel conference room at four o’clock. So we all waited there, and in walked Ewald, the sports minister. He said, ‘You have let down the entire republic, and you should be ashamed of yourselves.’ He carried on like that for ten minutes, ranting and raving like a lunatic, and then he just upped and went. We couldn’t believe what was happening. Everybody was left feeling totally demoralised.
I managed to work my way into the top ten, but then I had a mechanical on the stage to Poznań and lost twelve minutes. In the end I finished seventeenth on GC, but all things considered it wasn’t too bad for me personally. I was still only twenty, the youngest in the group, but I realised that I was capable of riding at that level.
The problem was that collectively we just hadn’t been good enough. We didn’t win a single stage, didn’t have anybody on the podium, and only managed third in the team prize. We did what we could, but we were a young team which wasn’t ready to win.
After the race we flew from Warsaw to Berlin, and there was a reception for us as per Peace Race tradition. Ewald and his cronies ‘congratulated’ us for finishing third in the team prize. They put us in limousines to take us home, but it was all false. In the papers they made out that everything was fine because ours was a new team, but in reality they were livid.
DIETER
Flöha was a different story. To have a twenty-year-old local finish the Peace Race was a very big thing, and there was a big civic reception for me. You’re talking about a small provincial town, and talented athletes or artists from places like that normally moved to Berlin or Leipzig. I was quite happy at home, though, and didn’t want to move. Riding the Peace Race had made me a hero there, and almost the whole town turned out to welcome me home. I think there were probably more people than for the May Day parade to be honest.
Afterwards the mayor came to see me, a guy called Siegfried Hense. He started addressing me using the informal du, and to be extremely friendly. He said, ‘Look, Dieter, you have to understand that you’ve bestowed great prestige upon our community. You’re an important person now, and so if there’s anything I can do for you all you need do is ask. Anything at all, you come and see me and I’ll see what I can do …’
I don’t think he was doing it for altruistic reasons, not at all. He contacted the press and had them write a story about it, because it was good for his own political aspirations. I was the local hero and he needed to be seen to be taking care of me.
I didn’t much like all the fuss to be honest. I didn’t need anything from him and I’d have been ashamed to ask. The problem was that things would turn up at home anyway. I’d get home and there would be a radio waiting for me, stuff like that.
DIETER
A week or so after the Peace Race I was out on my bike and a big EMW42 car came by me as I was climbing a hill. It braked suddenly and five blokes in leather coats jumped out. They told me they needed to talk with me and that they’d follow me home. I was very scared, as you can imagine, because I knew instantly that they were Stasi. I told them there was nobody at home and that I didn’t have a key. It wasn’t true, but I didn’t want people to see them coming to my house. I met them at a restaurant nearby instead.
I was convinced they were going to quiz me about the letters to Sylvia. Instead they started by asking me whether there had been differences of political opinion within the Peace Race team. I told them there hadn’t, because there hadn’t been any political opinion – we were a bunch of cyclists doing a bike race. They were wanting to know why the results hadn’t been good enough, and I said that we were a new team and that the Russians had just been stronger than us. They made a big thing of whether the coaches had stuck to the training plan.
It lasted about forty-five minutes but it seemed like an eternity. You could probably describe it as an interrogation, yes, and it was certainly a harrowing experience. To the best of my knowledge it was the one and only time in my life I had a direct conversation with the Stasi, but I could be wrong.
DIETER
Neues Deutschland published almost nothing about the 1962 Tour de France. Two years earlier they’d invited the professionals to the GDR for the Worlds, but now it was as if they didn’t exist. It was almost total blackout, like they’d drawn a veil over everything that happened on the other side of the wall.
People had always made comparisons between the Tour and the Peace Race, but in most respects they were worlds apart. The Peace Race had a lot more spectators, and of course there was a lot of symbolism attached to it. It had the best cyclists in the Soviet Bloc, but they were competing against amateurs and under-23 riders from the west. For the Belgians, the Dutch and the French our great race was really just a finishing school. They knew that the Peace Race would be tough, and that if they did well it would go a long way towards earning them a professional contract. So for them it was a means to an end, whether we liked it or not.
The T
our was more important because it had the best riders, the biggest mountains and the most prestige. Everybody knew that it was the ultimate for a bike racer, and yet to articulate that in the GDR was regarded as a heresy. Täve, for example, always maintained that Peace Race was bigger, and you couldn’t convince him otherwise. Anyone who knew anything about cycling couldn’t fail to see it, and yet everybody was forced to play along with the charade. The evidence was irrefutable, but everybody seemed to be turning into a big lie. Rainer Marks, a famous DHfK rider, was actually thrown out for saying he thought the Tour was more important than the Peace Race.
EBERHARD
When they let me give up my job and ride full-time I was very successful. I won a lot of races, and in 1962 I was part of the Wismut team for the GDR junior team time trial championship. We won it, as had Dieter with the seniors. I won a lot of other races as well, and we won the championship again in 1963.
So, yes, in answer to your question I’d say that I was one of the best juniors in the country.
DIETER
In the GDR they cultivated the idea that the government in Bonn was our enemy, so a party member would never have sent letters to the west unless they were to family. It wasn’t forbidden to send letters, but it was certainly discouraged. They were of the opinion that too much contact with the western bourgeoisie contaminated socialism.
My writing to Sylvia wasn’t a way of rebelling as such, but I was conscious of the fact that I was exercising a basic human right. I hadn’t intended it to be like that, but nor had I created the political situation. I figured they were probably being opened, so in some respects it was a bit of a game.
For example, on a Wednesday night Sylvia and I would both listen to the West German hit parade. You could receive it in the GDR, but technically you weren’t supposed to listen to it because it was ‘western’. Lots of people did, though, and she and I would write about the songs we’d heard. In itself it was something you could get away with. They tolerated it, but only if you were discreet about it and didn’t publicise the fact; they didn’t want an epidemic of people enjoying themselves, you know?
Anyway, as far as I was concerned I wasn’t going to give it up for anybody.
NEUES DEUTSCHLAND
ORGAN DES ZENTRALKOMITEES DER SOZIALISTISCHEN EINHEITSPARTEI DEUTSCHLANDS
On 13 August last year the eyes of the world turned to Berlin. Everyone thought that a decision of far-reaching implications had been made. Few people, however, truly understood. What happened that day was no more or less than the salvation of peace.
Let us remember what went on last summer! The hooligans in Bonn, in their megalomaniac delusion, decided that the time had come to introduce strong-arm politics, and to force the GDR to roll over. On 11 July 1961, Adenauer’s CDU government met and proclaimed in a policy statement that the German question need be solved, and the ‘zone’ integrated into the NATO area. They intensified their agitation against our republic to extreme levels. They spared no effort, and no crime aimed at creating panic and confusion among citizens of the GDR. Thus they attempted to make the GDR ripe for storming. It was thought that this military provocation would be followed by an all-out attack. The autumn of 1961 threatened war. On 13 August the government of the German Democratic Republic, in full accord with the other states of the Warsaw Pact, took the necessary measures. Thus, at a stroke, the diabolical programme concocted by the hooligans themselves was thwarted. Peace was saved not only for our workers and farmers state, but also for West Berliners, West Germans, perhaps for all the world. […]
Reprinted from ‘Here’s to 13 August’, 13 August 1962
DIETER
The Tour of the GDR began on 14 August, and it was eight days. It was a big race in its own right, but still more so this time. The World Championships were being held in Italy the week after it finished, so in effect it was a qualifier for that. My form was really good, and before the race I was summoned to Berlin to arrange travel permits for Italy. Then I went on to Magdeburg for the opening stage.
After four stages I was lying comfortably second on GC behind Ampler, climbing solidly and recovering really well. I was earning my ticket to Italy, but then at Zschopau an official came up to us and told us we wouldn’t be going. Apparently when the federation had applied they’d received a letter back which said, ‘Please refer to the NATO agreement to understand why you are unable to participate.’
It was absolutely devastating. You knew that as a GDR amateur you’d never be able to ride the Tour de France, but you wanted the chance to be part of the World Championships. You wanted to see the great Belgians, French and Italian professionals at close quarters, and to ride on the roads they did.
It was the GDR politicians who had built the wall, nobody else. They had turned the country into a prison, but then they were outraged because NATO didn’t accept that sportsmen should be treated differently to ordinary people. They said, ‘Politics shouldn’t interfere with sport’, but that was totally disingenuous. The only cyclists precluded from riding were the GDR ones, and it was GDR politics which stopped us from being able to compete.
NEUES DEUTSCHLAND
ORGAN DES ZENTRALKOMITEES DER SOZIALISTISCHEN EINHEITSPARTEI DEUTSCHLANDS
In gross disregard of all sports practices and of the Olympic ideal, the Italian government and the Bonn-influenced Allied Travel Office,43 has refused the GDR team entry to the World Cycling Championships in Italy. The refusal of entry for the team built around the two-time world champion Gustav-Adolf Schur is a blatant violation of the recommendations of the International Olympic Committee to hold World and European Championships only in countries which guarantee all participants unrestricted travel.
Reprinted from ‘Visa refusal for GDR cyclists’, 19 August 1962
DIETER
I just wanted to be able to race my bike, and to feel like I had the same chance as everybody else. Now it really dawned on me that I didn’t, and probably never would have. From here on in there’d be no Worlds, and we’d be limited to riding in non-NATO countries. I finished the Tour second behind Ampler, and in some respects that made it even worse. I’d earned the right to go to Italy, but instead I went back to Flöha in a state of shock.
UDO
It had taken us four or five months to prepare everything. We had to paint the kayak black, and then we had to learn how to use it. We also had to learn how to master the water and the waves, so we trained a lot.
In August we took the kayak to a place called Graal Müritz, on the Baltic coast. We set off in the dead of night, rowing towards Gedser.44 Of course we were terrified because there were Coastal Defence boats and we could have run into one any time. Eventually we saw a ferry, and we got it to stop by using light signals. We climbed aboard using a rope ladder, and luckily it was headed for Travemünde, in the FRG.
UDO
Warzeschka and I went to Cologne after we’d left the GDR. People were always looking for tradesmen there, so you could find work without any problem.
I had no contact whatsoever with former friends, work colleagues or acquaintances. I had mail contact with my parents, but only very rarely. It was well known that anyone who received mail or calls from the FRG was targeted by the Stasi. My family didn’t suffer any visible reprisals from the defection, but I know that the endless interviews and interrogations were extremely unpleasant for them.
DIETER
That winter was brutally cold. One day it was –20°, but the training plan stipulated that we had to ride sixty kilometres. It made no sense, so we all agreed it would be better if we played ice hockey on the lake instead. That way we figured our hands and feet would be less cold than if we were sat still on our bikes, but suddenly a guy from the federation in Berlin arrived. Me, Weissleder and Immo Rittmeyer, the three Peace Race candidates, were picked out, and summoned to the Kienbaum sports school in Berlin. That was where the teams for the Tours of Tunisia and Morocco were training, the younger guys. We had to stay there for three weeks, and o
f course that was humiliating both for us and for the club.
So I’d had Ewald’s verbal assault at the Peace Race, then the ‘meeting’ with the Stasi, and finally we’d been refused travel to Italy because of the wall. Allied to all of that you had the fact that the Peace Race – the symbol of global fellowship through sport – now took place in what was effectively a prison. Then just before Christmas I was appointed a ‘Master of Sports’. It was one of the highest awards in GDR sports, and I got it for having honoured my country at the Peace Race. It was becoming totally schizophrenic, and I guess it’s hard for somebody who never lived in the GDR to understand it. To be honest I struggle to make sense of it myself sometimes, even fifty years later.
