by Herbie Sykes
DIETER
One night in November there was a knock at the door. When I answered there were two BND4 agents standing there, and they asked if they could come in. I said yes because I’d nothing to hide, and they started asking me about my activities in the GDR, why I’d defected, political stuff.
I remember thinking, ‘Christ, it’s happening again!’ One of the reasons I’d defected was the Stasi meeting in 1962, and now I was being questioned by the West German secret police! I had nothing to hide, but when they left I was pretty pleased with myself for having avoided joining the party.
DIETER
There was something strange, and at first I couldn’t put my finger on it. Then I realised that it was the total absence of politics. In the GDR you couldn’t escape it, because the very foundation of the society and everything was based on it and built around it. You turned on the radio and you had socialism, you bought a newspaper and it was socialism … always socialism. All the billboards were about socialism, and all the big sports events were homages to it. There were flags everywhere, pictures of Karl Marx in shop windows, streets named after Lenin and Rosa Luxemburg. There were signs everywhere telling you about how you had a responsibility to build socialism, and about how the west wanted to start another war with us. Everything was politicised, so much so that you didn’t even notice it any more. Socialism filled your life whether you liked it or not.
Here my life was empty by comparison, and I had to learn how to fill the spaces. I realised that my whole life had been spent being told how to behave, what to think and what to believe, and now all I was being told was which washing powder I should buy. Nothing was politicised, and nobody was interested.
I found it very hard to assimilate practically, but also culturally. The first thing was that the Frankonian people were different. They came from farming stock, and most of them had never been out of Bavaria. They were louder, but they were also less well mannered and less cultured. They said whatever they wanted, about whatever they wanted, whenever they wanted. I wasn’t used to that, and if I’m honest I found them a bit coarse at the beginning. They were always shouting, grabbing hold of one another, full of themselves. They talked a lot, but they didn’t seem to say anything and they didn’t seem to know anything.
It was as if they’d never been to school. People here had more of everything – more fun, more money, more possessions – but they weren’t at all educated compared to people from the GDR. They didn’t seem to value education at all, nor culture. Sometimes it seemed that they almost took pride in being ignorant.
Of course it was me that was different, not them. It was hard for me to fit in, and I was being reminded of the differences all the time. Food was so expensive here, clothes, rent … Everything cost a fortune, and I had very little money. Then there was the waste. I remember that they threw food away, and to me that was unthinkable. It would never have happened in the GDR, and I found it quite shocking.
I was having a hard time adapting, and those winter nights at the lodgings were sometimes very long. I was a German and the people around me were German, but I felt extremely lonely and extremely foreign. We spoke the same language, but at times I felt like I had nothing in common with them whatsoever.
A lot of people at the factory had communist sympathies, and they seemed to think that because I was from the GDR I would, too. They kept inviting me to political rallies, as if they wanted me to be some kind of mascot. I tried to ignore it at first, but in the end I said, ‘Look, if you agree with communism so much, why don’t you just go and live there and see what it’s like? There’s nothing stopping you …’
Anyway, I worked in the factory for the rest of the year, and they were the longest five months of my life. Sylvia and I were engaged in November, and after that things slowly started to get better.
DIETER
At first the letters from my mum had come every few days, and her anger had been directed at the authorities, not at me.
Over time the letters became less supportive. Any relationship suffers if you don’t spend time together, and in our case it was worse because of the circumstances. There were no telephones, and as time went by so we had less contact and less in common. I had the sense that it was breaking apart in front of my eyes.
SYLVIA
You couldn’t rent a flat together unless you were married, and so we couldn’t really make a start until then. We were walking past a church one day, and Dieter took me inside and proposed. Mitterteich is a small place, and everybody there knew our story. They made fun of me for marrying a guy with a bike instead of a big car, but I didn’t mind that.
DIETER
Over time it got distilled down to anger and resentment on my mum’s part. At first I suppose she hoped that I’d give up and go back, but when I got engaged that receded. As they saw it I’d rejected them, and indirectly I suppose they were right. I’d decided to start a completely different life, and because of the wall they weren’t permitted to be a part of it. That wasn’t my fault, but nor was it theirs. It was just the way it was, but they were still being made to pay for what I’d done. They were being treated like they were responsible, so when I told them I was going to get married it was almost the final straw. She started writing, ‘How could you do this to us?’
DIETER
When the letters started to become accusatory it was extremely hard for me. When I’d defected I’d known I’d lose everything I had, but that I’d gain something else. The problem now was that I wasn’t able to get on with my new life, because I was racked with guilt about the one I’d left behind. I felt like I was in a trap, and I had to find a way to get out of it. The only way for me to do that was to try to switch off from everything associated with the GDR. I wouldn’t say I compartmentalised my feelings per se, but I just put them in a box and tried to forget about them.
In the end you have to make a cut, and the fact is that if I’d continued carrying the GDR round with me there’s no way Sylvia and I would have survived. There’s no way I’d have been able to function.
GERHARD
It wasn’t their fault, but they wouldn’t let his parents visit. It was terribly difficult for them.
Dieter had gone, and I had the sense that Karl was looking for another person he could bond with.
I felt that I might be playing the role of a sort of surrogate son for him.
SYLVIA
I wouldn’t say that my father didn’t like Dieter, just that they had nothing whatsoever in common. I think he’d been expecting somebody he could go out socialising with, but in reality Dieter would come home at weekends and they’d have nothing to say to one another. Dieter wasn’t one to go out drinking and socialising, and my dad wasn’t interested in sport. Dieter got on well with Roland, and for my mum he was the perfect son-in-law, but he was just too reserved for my dad. He would say, ‘He’s too insular. You can’t talk with him!’ but that’s because he didn’t understand him at all. They came from different worlds, and at times at the start it felt like my whole life was a fight between east and west. It was uncomfortable, and if I’m honest it wasn’t much fun. I loved Dieter, but it dawned on me that we’d had no idea of what being together was going to be like. I had to learn that as I went along, and I was only eighteen.
Anyway, as time passed he became less worried about the Stasi, and I’d say that within six months he felt pretty secure that they wouldn’t come after him.
NEUES DEUTSCHLAND
ORGAN DES ZENTRALKOMITEES DER SOZIALISTISCHEN EINHEITSPARTEI DEUTSCHLANDS
Ten riders are included in the candidacy for the Berlin–Prague–Warsaw Peace Race, beginning 8 May and supervised by coach Roland Elste. These are the candidates for places in the GDR delegation: Klaus Ampler, Dieter Mickein, Bernard Eckstein, Harald Dippold, Günter Lux (all DHfK Leipzig), Lothar Appler, Eberhard Butzke, Axel Peschel (all SC Dynamo Berlin), Günter Hoffmann (ASK), Rüdiger Tanneberger (SC Karl-Marx-Stadt). However, in contrast to previous years this doesn’t m
ean that other riders may not be appointed to the Peace Race team. Whoever proves himself in the spring preparatory races can earn a place, even if he is not among the candidates.
Meanwhile, some well-known riders have retired from the national team but continue to race: Günter Lörke, Immo Rittmeyer, Manfred Weissleder, Egon Adler and Wolfgang Stamm.
Reprinted from ‘Peace Race candidates’, 22 January 1965
IMMO
When I got back to the sport club they said they would be taking away my support. The result in Tokyo hadn’t been very good, but I still thought what had happened in Giessen had a bearing on it. They said it was because I was too old, but I was only twenty-eight.
EBERHARD
I went back to my BSG, but I wasn’t about to give up hope. They tried to help by giving me two afternoons a week off to train, and I carried on. I wanted to be so good that they couldn’t do without me, so in the winter I took myself off and did a training camp on my own. I cycled, did cross-country skiing and running, and got myself into the best condition I could.
DIETER
The rewards for what I’d done were Sylvia and the fact that I was now a professional cyclist.
EBERHARD
Dieter would send us a letter at the beginning of each season, with his racing schedule. I was always left wondering how I would have done had I been given the chance.
DIETER
The racing was totally different from what I’d been used to. In the GDR it had always been a fight from the gun, but here they rode tempo until the last fifty or sixty kilometres, and then it exploded. The feelings I had on the bike hadn’t changed at all, though, and in that sense it was my pressure valve. Riding was a way to unburden myself of the stress, and to be me. The riders were all fine with me, and nobody in the peloton was bothering me with questions about my having defected. Regardless of nationality, politics, all that rubbish, I was being judged on what I did on the bike. I suppose if I’d been a champion that would have been different, but I wasn’t. I was just another rider, and I liked that a great deal.
I didn’t earn much money, but it was a working wage. I trained hard in the hope that I’d do well enough to get another contract the following year, and of course there was always the dream of the World Championships and the Tour de France. Both had been denied me in the GDR, and they were scores I wanted to settle. I suppose I was still angry about what had happened, and I resented having been forced to choose. I was desperate to make a success of it, and I didn’t want them to have the satisfaction of seeing me fail.
The problem was that Torpedo didn’t have a big star, and German cycling was a bit peripheral back then. So we got to race in France, but only semi-classics and smaller stage races. We’d do Het Volk but not Paris–Roubaix, and the Four Days of Dunkirk but not Paris–Nice. We did all the big German races, and we’d ride in Holland, Switzerland and Belgium. I never did a single race in Italy, because there wasn’t enough money. Only the very best foreign teams got invited there.
In May we were sent to the Tour of Holland, a five-day stage race. I was riding with people I’d grown up dreaming about, and that was a big moment for me. I found myself alongside Jacques Anquetil, and I realised that I liked being in that world. I finished fifth, and it convinced me that I was good enough. The following month we rode the Tour de Suisse. It was a big race back then, and I finished tenth.
So I was one of the best in Torpedo, and I was starting to feel like I belonged. I realised that if I got the chance to ride some stage races I could maybe become a decent professional cyclist.
DIETER
They selected me as one of the eight for the World Championships in San Sebastián, and so I finally got to experience it. I was riding for Rudi Altig, and I got round. Altig came second, but he didn’t pay us. Tommy Simpson won it.
The GDR were allowed to send a team that year as well, for the first time in four years. I thought better of trying to have any contact with them, though.
SYLVIA
We were married on 18 October 1965, but Dieter’s mum and dad didn’t come.
DIETER
No, they didn’t come to my wedding.
In normal circumstances people from the GDR could get a permit for the weddings and funerals of immediate family if the parish sent proof. Obviously it was different for me because I was a defector. There was no way they were going to grant them a permit.
My grandparents were the only ones who made it. The way it worked was that when people reached pensionable age they could visit family in the west whenever they wanted. They made out it was a reward for having contributed to the building of socialism, but it’s also true that pensioners didn’t contribute anything. They were a net cost, and some people believed they let them travel in the hope that they’d defect. My grandfather had relatives near Munich, and to be on the safe side they put in an application to visit them that weekend. It was accepted, and I picked them up from the train station so that they could be there.
SYLVIA
Imagine how he felt getting married without his parents! It was the happiest day of our lives, but there was also a deep sense of loss. It was profoundly upsetting for him, and for me as well.
SYLVIA
The saddest thing of all was that it was becoming apparent that the GDR was going to be following us around. We were trying to build a future together, but we were struggling. We came from different countries, had different cultures and values, and there was always this terrible loss in the background. We were becoming aware of the extent of the damage to Dieter’s family, and coming to terms with the fact that we were so completely different.
If I bought him a present – clothes, for example – he wouldn’t wear them. One Christmas I bought him a pair of beautiful winter shoes, but he left them in the wardrobe. It upset me so I said, ‘Why don’t you wear the shoes I bought you?’ He said it was because he already had a pair of shoes and that he didn’t want to wear the new ones until they were worn out. He’d write the date on them and keep them in the wardrobe until he needed them. And I mean needed them.
All my clothes were tailored by my grandfather, and I liked clothes. I wasn’t extravagant, but I liked to have nice things sometimes. Dieter couldn’t understand that at all, and so it was as if our two worlds were colliding.
At the beginning it was very, very hard, and I remember thinking to myself, ‘I don’t know if I can do this.’ There was no way back, though. We’d made our bed and we had to lie in it.
DIETER
The hardest thing about my new life was that I was suddenly responsible for everything I did. That may seem strange to you, but in the GDR everything had been taken care of on my behalf. The state decided everything. They decided what you earned, and they provided work and a roof over your head. Now I had to build a life for me and Sylvia, and the quality of that life depended on me and me alone. Of course there were all the administrative things, but it was more the fact that there was no safety net.
In the FRG I had to make decisions all the time, and choices all the time. I wasn’t used to that, and so life was quite daunting. The idea of renting a flat from a private individual, for example, was completely alien to me. In the GDR if you wanted a car or a flat you were put on a list, and if you were lucky you got the same one as everyone else. Here there were lots of cars to choose from, and lots of everything else. I wasn’t used to choosing, and I wasn’t used to consuming. In the GDR you hadn’t been able to buy a house, or an expensive car, and you hadn’t been able to choose to go on expensive holidays. I struggled with those things a lot, because I’d been conditioned to act in a totally different way.
It wasn’t so much that I didn’t want to spend money, more that I didn’t know how to spend it. Growing up in the GDR we hadn’t had any, and the whole of society was geared around being frugal with it. Here people liked to show that they had money, and they did that by buying expensive things. If I’m honest I didn’t actually understand that, and I found it disorienting.
SYLVIA
I moved to Schweinfurt and became a housewife, and he concentrated on being a professional cyclist. He was away a lot and I didn’t know anybody there at first, but I soon made friends. We’d have a holiday together in the winter, and after all it was what we’d always wanted. I understood that with his career we’d have to wait to start a family, and so that’s what I did. You have to get on with it, don’t you?
Anyway I loved him, and gradually I started to understand him. It had been a struggle, but we were starting to find a way.
EBERHARD
They let me ride the Tour of the GDR in a mixed team, and I did well. I hadn’t been able to train like the others, but I finished thirtieth on GC and fourth in the young riders competition. My results were actually better than a lot of the state-sponsored riders, so we appealed to the State Council again.
