The party gives us everything,
The sun and the wind, always giving,
Wherever it is, there is life
We are what we are because of it.
The party, the party is always right!
The FDJ had a distinctly military cast. Learning marksmanship was compulsory, and the children had to take part in outdoor activities, such as clearing up a local park. Bernd hated the special FDJ blue shirt and frequently chose not to wear it. His teachers disapproved of his rebelliousness, but they didn’t punish him.
Some afternoons, Bernd’s parents took him and his siblings to Potsdam. While Irene and Wolfgang shopped or drank at a bar, Bernd wandered the streets with his brother and sisters, or with a friend. His favourite activity was collecting stickers found on West German cars parked in-between the more ubiquitous DDR Trabbis. Making sure that nobody was looking, Bernd would peel off the sticker – advertising Esso, or Dunlop, or Beck’s – and hide it in his pocket. Later he would add them to his collection on his bedroom wall. Bernd loved West Germany and dreamed of moving there. He was caught only once, arrested by the police and taken in for questioning. When his parents heard what had happened they said, ‘Never do it again.’ Their scolding scared him much less than the police had.
In order to purchase better quality, less readily available items – jeans, the latest chart hits – Bernd would often stand in line for over an hour to purchase whatever was available. If he didn’t like it, he could always swap it later with a friend.
When Bernd asked his parents, as he frequently did, why they hadn’t fled to the West when they’d had the opportunity, before the Wall was built – after all, they could have simply walked across the frozen lake – his mother would say, ‘We didn’t think the Wall would last so long’, and his father would snap. ‘Life isn’t so bad in Groß Glienicke,’ he’d say, urging Bernd to ‘make the best of things’.
Since the creation of West Germany in 1949, its leaders had consistently asserted that they did not recognise the country to their east. Instead, their constitution was based on the premise that the East would one day rejoin the rest of Germany. Consequently the DDR was not recognised as a country by the USA, UK, France and other Western powers either. It also meant that neither Germany was a member of the United Nations.
This impasse began to change in 1969 when Willy Brandt, the former mayor of West Berlin, was elected chancellor of West Germany. Calling for a Neue Ostpolitik he argued that a ‘normalisation’ between the two halves of Germany would benefit those wishing to see their families, it would help trade, and it would reduce international tensions.
On 12 August 1970, Brandt flew to Russia and signed the Treaty of Moscow, acknowledging the borders between East and West Germany and renouncing the use of force. A few months later, on 7 December, he signed another treaty, this time in Warsaw, finally recognising the borders between Germany and Poland that had been settled at the Potsdam Conference. These two agreements were ratified by the West German parliament on 17 May 19724. Five months later, on 16 October, the East German government announced that anyone who had fled the DDR before 1 January 1972 would no longer face prosecution and, most importantly, would be allowed to visit the DDR without risking arrest.
Then, on 21 December 1972, Brandt signed the ‘Treaty concerning the basis of relations between West Germany and the DDR’, in which official relations were opened between the two countries, despite stiff opposition from conservative politicians. As a result, both nations now acknowledged each other’s diplomatic representatives and, on 18 September 1973, they were both accepted as permanent members of the United Nations. With these improving relations, it became possible for West German citizens who had left the DDR to see their families in the East.
That autumn, Irene Kühne was shocked and delighted to receive a letter from her sister, Ursula. They hadn’t seen each other for more than fourteen years, ever since Ursula had failed to return from her ‘holiday’ in Dortmund. She and her husband had well-paying jobs, a nice house with the latest appliances, a modern car, and they could travel to France, the Netherlands and England whenever they liked. Ursula had benefited from the economic boom that had blossomed in West Germany in the 1950s and 1960s. In her letter, Ursula said that she would take advantage of the recently relaxed travel restrictions, and visit Irene in Groß Glienicke.
A few weeks later, Bernd and Wolfgang were on their way to the village shops when they saw Ursula, her husband and children waiting anxiously in their expensive-looking black Mercedes near the Potsdamer Tor. They had managed to get as far as the border security zone, but no further. Having warmly embraced his in-laws and their children, Wolfgang suggested that they keep going. Ursula said that she had never seen her sister’s house and was willing to risk it, but her husband was nervous of the soldiers guarding the border area.
Wolfgang instructed Bernd to stay behind with his uncle and cousins and jumped into the Mercedes with his sister-in-law. Taking the wheel, Wolfgang crept up to the guards manning the barrier. As he passed by several times a day, they waved him through. They didn’t notice Ursula who was lying on the back seat covered with a blanket. A few minutes later, they arrived at the house, and the sisters were reunited.
Despite presenting a united front to Ursula, and proudly showing their guest around the lake house and its garden, Irene and Wolfgang’s relationship was beginning to fray.
Not long after the Fuhrmanns left5, Wolfgang began drinking heavily again, often by himself. His liquor of choice was Apfelkorn, a drink made from 100 per cent wheat spirit blended with apple juice which he would sip throughout the day, sitting in his rocking chair in front of the fire.
Concerned by her husband’s descent into alcoholism, Irene began hiding his booze – a futile exercise, as Wolfgang found increasingly remote places to store it: the canoe in the garage, behind the fireplace in the cellar, under the beehives.
His moods became dark and bitter6, Irene later remembered. At first he berated her, complaining that she wasn’t doing enough around the house, wasn’t taking proper care of the children, didn’t pay him enough attention. Gradually he turned violent. He hit her, threw bottles at her, shoved her to the ground. It became so bad that Irene made sure that she was not in the house when he was drinking or, if she realised too late, would hide in the garage.
Seeing Irene with a bruised face and discoloured arms, her friends urged her to leave Wolfgang. She was tempted, she told them, but what about the kids? She would leave him, she said, once they had grown up.
The Kühnes’ situation was becoming desperate. Wolfgang was caught drinking at his new job, driving a truck for the city of Potsdam refuse department, was banned from driving, and dismissed. Now unemployed, he spent almost all his time at the house, which gave him additional opportunities to drink, and to abuse Irene.
Realising that staying at home was not a viable option, and that the family needed another source of income, Irene made enquiries about employment. Soon she found work at the village post office, which was situated on Dorfstraße, in a building that had once housed horses and cows. There were three rooms in all, separated by thick stone walls. In the first was a high table where customers stood to seal their post and stick on stamps. On the walls were notes explaining to the public how they could send mail to the West. Irene worked at a desk in the second room, to the left of the entrance, selling stamps, and lottery tickets – which were popular among young people – and receiving cheques. In the third room, workers sorted the mail.
Irene was also given the responsibility of receiving and transmitting telegrams. This meant she was given a telephone at home. To call out, she first had to dial 81 to reach the Potsdam operator who would then connect her. The network was very slow and there were frequent misconnections. The Kühnes were now one of only two families in the entire village with a telephone. The other family allegedly worked for the Stasi.
When the telegrams arrived at home, Irene wrote them down and handed the
m to Bernd, who ran them over to the recipient, sometimes getting a tip. Initially, the white plastic telephone sat in the living room next to the television; later it stood on a stool in the corridor. The children were ordered never to touch it. Although Irene could have called her sister in Dortmund at any time, doing so would have been dangerous as she knew all calls were monitored by the Stasi. At best Irene would have lost her job, and her family would have been moved out of the border zone; at worst she would have ended in prison.
Eventually, Wolfgang used his ‘good connections’ to redeem his driving licence7. Once back at his old job, he instructed his wife not to work any more, but despite her husband’s order, Irene continued her shifts at the post office. A détente of sorts was established at the house, with Wolfgang and Irene retreating into his or her corner. While the political situation was steadily improving, a different kind of cold war had spread to the lake house.
25
KÜHNE
1975
BERND HAD NOW become a serious runner. He was not only faster than all the other lanky teenagers at his Potsdam school, he was faster than anyone his age in Brandenburg. By the age of sixteen he was racking up times that were consistently in the top five for the entire country. He might even be good enough to make the Olympics.
To be the very best, he was told, he would have to continue training, build up his strength and win competitions. If he managed all that then, at the age of eighteen, he would attend the Berlin Children and Young People’s Sports Academy. This would be a major coup for Bernd and his family. Students who attended the Sports Academy received benefits that others could never hope for. They were paid in foreign currency and were allowed to purchase goods at the Intershops, which sold luxury items from the West – coffee, electronics, jeans – unavailable at the typical Konsum and HO shops. As a successful athlete, he would be taken care of for the rest of his adult life. He would be given a top-of-the-range car and a lavish house. Best of all, as far as Bernd was concerned, he would be allowed to travel to the West.
Bernd’s preferred distance was the 1,500 metres, but he was also quick at the 800 metres and 3,000 metres. He trained every day, lifting weights at the gym, doing press-ups, and running endlessly. Most days he ran a ten-kilometre loop, from his house, under the Potsdamer Tor, through the Glienicke woods and along the road to the village of Seeburg, and then back.
Bernd slowly progressed to become one of the DDR’s elite young athletes. Each year after Christmas, he attended a two-week sports camp in Tanna, a small town close to the Czechoslovakian border. Here he was instructed on nutrition and health management, hygiene and weight training, and watched films of world-class runners in action.
Every morning Bernd took a little brown pill, the size of an M&M. He had been taking these pills since he was eleven years old. His coach told him that it was a vitamin supplement. Wolfgang and Irene not only knew about these ‘supplements’ but reminded him to take them every day, believing that they would improve his performance and his chance of success. Before competitions, Bernd drank a special vegetable soup that had been carefully prepared by his coaches1. The soup would help him run faster, he was told. He was also instructed not to swim before a big race, or to stay out in the sunshine.
Bernd’s dream of Olympic glory was part of a wider obsession sweeping the country at this time. Despite having a population of only sixteen million people, East Germany consistently excelled in international sporting competitions and athletics had become a national pastime. From 1976 to 1988, the DDR gained the second highest number of medals in all three summer Olympics it took part in, well ahead of West Germany. This was improved upon at five winter games, with four second-place rankings and a first at the 1984 Winter Olympics. Their success was achieved through a combination of methodical selection of children at a young age, a training programme that was both scientific and rigorous, and the widespread use of doping.
Motivated by material success, not to mention athletic fame, Bernd continued with his schedule.
One spring evening in 19772, Bernd noticed several abandoned sacks of wheat lying in a field behind the village church. Feeling bored, and fancying a ride, he decided to tell his father about his discovery. After all, the bags would be easy to steal, and the family’s chickens would be grateful for the additional food.
Having mounted his black two-stroke Simson moped – which his parents had purchased to make his journey to school easier – Bernd set off in the direction of Potsdam where his father was working3. It was dark, and cold, and with the wind blowing fiercely as he increased his speed, he was glad to be wearing his jacket.
Arriving in Potsdam, he turned left onto Berliner Straße, the main road heading west through the city, and continued past the Bergmann Hospital, towards his father’s workplace. Suddenly, he was thrown into the air. He had ridden into a large hole where workmen had been repairing tramlines. There had been no signs or flashing lights to warn him.
When he regained consciousness the first thing that he saw was his mother standing next to his bed. She was crying. He had been in a coma for three weeks, she told him. He had been thrown, head first, into a stack of iron bars, suffering multiple fractures. Doctors had rushed him into surgery, and removed his left kidney. They had saved his life.
Bernd was stunned. He couldn’t remember the accident, and was confused by what his mother was telling him. The last thing he recalled was being on the bike on the way to see his father. For the next few weeks he remained in hospital, unable to walk and groggy from all the pain medication.
As soon as his mind cleared he realised the consequences of the accident: he would never be able to compete again. Devastated, Bernd asked the doctors if there was anything they could do. They said that he had been fortunate, lucky to have survived. If the accident hadn’t been outside the hospital he wouldn’t have made it.
A year later, after graduating from school, Bernd found a job driving trucks for a state-owned company based in Potsdam. He was soon transporting car parts manufactured at the Groß Glienicke Max Reimann factory as far away as Prague.
Though employed full-time, Bernd continued to live at home with his parents. For entertainment, he and his friends drove over to Potsdam, which boasted a better range of bars and restaurants than Groß Glienicke. One day he travelled with a friend to the Pressefest, the annual party thrown by Potsdam’s newspaper in the Pfingstberg park. There, walking across the lawns beneath the old royal palace, Bernd spotted a beer stall. As the queue was over fifteen metres long, he wandered to the front and spotted a pretty girl with blonde hair and blue eyes. ‘Hey, doll,’ he called out, ‘can you grab me a couple of beers?’ To his surprise, she replied, ‘OK.’ A few minutes later they were sitting under a tree drinking together.
They talked for hours, late into the evening. Her name was Gabriella, or Gaby, as she said everyone called her. She was seventeen-years-old, friendly, energetic and fashionably dressed in tight-fitting Levi’s and a T-shirt covered by a Wrangler jean jacket. She told him that she worked at a petrol station, and sometimes received tips in Western currency, which she spent on luxury items at the Intershop.
Intershop, East Berlin, 1979
They started dating. Since she didn’t have a permit to enter the border security zone, they mostly met at her parents’ house in Potsdam, or at one of the city’s many pubs. Sometimes they went to the Saturday-evening disco at the Badewiese in Groß Glienicke, which was still the village’s most popular gathering place for young people. From the dance floor, they called out for their favourites, songs by Western groups such as AC/DC, the Beatles, Queen and Abba, as well as DDR bands, such as City and Puhdys. Always aware that there were likely to be Stasi informers in the room, the DJ made sure that there was a balance between the Western and Eastern songs.
As they became more serious, Bernd told Gaby that he wanted to take her to his home, but was worried about the risks. After much discussion, and not a little alcohol consumption, they decided to try.
Having grown up in the border security zone, Bernd knew the patterns of the guards who stood by the barricade at the Potsdamer Tor, especially when they were likely to be most vigilant. Taking Gaby by the hand, Bernd guided his girlfriend along the Potsdamer Chaussee, past the entrance to his house, past the Munk property, and then into the Kunows’ garden. This way they could avoid having her papers checked. Careful not to attract attention, they snuck along the edge of the property towards the Wall, and then turned left, clambering over the Munks’ fence, across their garden, and then across the fence to his own house.
Once inside, and by now laughing with excitement and relief, Bernd showed Gaby around the house and introduced her to his family. Wolfgang and Irene were not too pleased. They told Bernd that if he was caught, it wouldn’t be just him who would pay the consequences – arrest, interrogation, losing the house, or worse – it would be them as well. Despite their admonishment, Gaby spent the night at the lake house in the Blue Room with Bernd.
The next morning at breakfast Wolfgang was friendly, asking what Gaby did and about her family, but Bernd’s mother and sisters were cooler. In front of Gaby, Irene told Bernd not to bring her back to the house. Bernd replied that he would do what he liked, and told his mother to mind her own business.
Over the next few months, Gaby often stayed at the house, always sneaking through the Kunow property, and always careful not to be caught. Relations with Bernd’s mother did not improve though. She would tease Gaby about her appearance or manners. For instance, when Gaby placed her shoes in the wrong place, she asked why the girl didn’t know how to behave properly. Bernd defended his girlfriend, but Irene’s comments were unrelenting. After a few of these family rows, Wolfgang took his son aside and reassured him that things would get better.
The House by the Lake Page 24
