Bernd had now had his taste of the West. What would it be like to live there? he wondered.
27
KÜHNE
1989
ON 7 OCTOBER 1989, a large crowd gathered on the Potsdamer Chausee in Groß Glienicke. Everyone was there: the mayor, the editor of the Chronik, members of the FDJ and Thälmann Pioneers, residents, representatives from the border patrol regiment and local media. For today was the fortieth anniversary of the foundation of the DDR, and the mood was upbeat.
The anniversary march was part of a larger four-day ‘Festival of Freedom’ taking place in Groß Glienicke. According to the programme that had been circulated by the council, the village would also host a ‘dance programme for the elderly’ at the Badewiese, a mini-football tournament at the sports fields, a concert by the band Take It Easy, along with an ‘information sharing’ event at the community hall.
Such celebrations took place within a context of growing national dissatisfaction. Increasingly envious of the economic success enjoyed by their neighbours in West Germany, and inspired by the protest movements now gripping many East European countries – spearheaded by Poland’s Solidarity trade union – many DDR citizens began to hope for political change. So, as they walked down the main street through the village of Groß Glienicke, behind banners proclaiming forty years of freedom and development, most took part only out of duty.
A few kilometres away, in East Berlin’s city centre, the DDR leader Erich Honecker stood on a platform overlooking an enormous parade. As tens of thousands of soldiers, volunteers, tanks and missiles passed by, he waved and nodded. Next to him stood Mikhail Gorbachev, the general secretary of the Soviet Union, officially in Berlin to lend support to his East German counterpart. The tension between the two leaders was palpable. While Honecker believed he could simply outmuscle the country’s growing dissent, Gorbachev was urging the socialist government to listen to their people. Warming to the Soviet leader, some in the crowd yelled ‘Gorbi, Gorbi, Gorbi’ and ‘Gorbi, help us!’
For his speech, Honecker shouted into an array of microphones: ‘Socialism is a young society, and yet it exerts a great influence on international developments. It has brought about social change and will continue to do so. Its existence gives hope, not only to our people, but to all of humankind.’
But few in the DDR still believed that socialism had brought positive social change to their country. Two days after the DDR’s fortieth anniversary celebrations, over 70,000 protesters took to the streets of Leipzig, a city to the south of Berlin. This was the largest demonstration in East German history. Angry that they could not travel out of the country and worried for their economic future, the crowd called for political reform. People chanted ‘Wir sind das Volk!’, or ‘We are the people’, a reminder that the DDR should be governed by its citizens, not by a few party bosses. Despite fears that the police would crack down on the protesters, an assault never materialised. The city authorities had been surprised by the demonstration’s size, and without clear orders from Berlin, had pulled back their forces. A week later, on 16 October – in what would become a tradition of Monday protests – over 120,000 people took part in the next Leipzig demonstration. The following day, having lost the confidence of his colleagues, Honecker stepped down as head of the DDR politburo. He was replaced by the more moderate Egon Krenz, who now disclosed that the country was facing bankruptcy.
The people were fed up with their government, and protests spread to small towns and villages across the country. Meanwhile, thousands of people attempted to leave the DDR. Pretending to take holidays, they travelled to Czechoslovakia and Hungary, hoping that they might find passage to the West. In Prague, thousands of East Germans climbed over the fence of the West German embassy and requested political asylum. With each day, the pressure mounted on the DDR government to take radical action1.
Sitting in comfy chairs in their living room, Wolfgang and Inge watched the events unfolding on the evening news with growing alarm. It was 9 November 1989, and the lead story was a government press conference that had taken place just minutes earlier.
During the press conference, Günter Schabowski, the sixty-year-old Berlin party boss and politburo spokesman, read from a statement and, to the disbelief of many, said that it would now be easier for East Germans to travel abroad. This policy had been approved only a few hours earlier and was meant to take effect the following afternoon, so as to allow time to inform the border guards. When one reporter asked when these regulations would come into effect, Schabowski paused for a few seconds, and then said, ‘As far as I know, effective immediately, without delay.’ His comments came as a surprise to his colleagues in the politburo and the security services.
Wolfgang and Inge sat glued to the news, watching with amazement, and some anxiety, as their world was turned on its head. At first, the live television feed showed hundreds and then thousands of East Berliners gathering at the city’s border crossings. By 10 p.m. a seven-kilometre-long line of Trabbi cars had formed next to the crossing at Staaken, just north of Groß Glienicke. At the Brandenburg Gate in the middle of Berlin, a crowd of over ten thousand cried out ‘Let us through’ and ‘Tear down the Wall’.
Meanwhile, Stefan Lorbeer, the kommandant of the Groß Glienicke Border Regiment 34, whose head office was based a few hundred metres from the lake house, was receiving increasingly frantic calls from his officers. What should they do? Should they let the people through? Should they push them back? Should they use force? Desperate for orders, the kommandant tried to call the central office in Berlin, but the lines were down2. He tried the telex and the secure lines, but neither of these were working either.
A decision had to be made. At first, orders were relayed that the border guards should locate the ‘more aggressive’ people gathered at the gates, and then mark their passports with a special stamp, thus preventing their return to the DDR, revoking their citizenship in effect. It soon became clear that this policy would not work. Many thousands still wanted to be let through.
Calling the border guards in Staaken3, Kommandant Lorbeer said that force should not be used, and that the people should be let through. At 10.45 p.m., the gates were opened, and a first wave of people were allowed into West Berlin. Lorbeer then ordered forty officers to hurry to the border crossings where they could lend their support.
At 00.30 a.m., Peter Kaminski, a major in the Groß Glienicke border patrol regiment, received a call at home telling him to come to the base ‘right away’. Hanging up the phone, he realised that he hadn’t been given any additional orders, nor had he been told the context, which surprised him. Feeling unsure and a little unsettled, he walked outside to his car and was further surprised to hear the loud rumblings of tanks from the nearby Soviet base in Krampnitz. Why were the Soviets on manoeuvres in the middle of the night? he wondered.
At his regiment’s offices, he was informed about the evening’s activities and told that they were now in a state of high emergency. His first task was to fill out the necessary paperwork associated with this increased threat level, and then return for a briefing. At 1.30 a.m., Kommandant Lorbeer met with seven of his most senior officers, including Kaminski, and told them that, ‘From this moment on, every citizen can travel to West Berlin.’ He then ordered them to lock away all their weapons, as he didn’t want anyone to get shot.
Early on the morning of 10 November, and still watching television, Wolfgang and Inge followed the journey of a DDR journalist reporting live from West Berlin. As images of cheering crowds, modern shops and tall office buildings filled their screen, they couldn’t believe their eyes. How had it all changed so quickly, and how would their lives be affected?
As soon as his step-grandson woke up, Wolfgang told him the news. Roland asked his opa if they could go and see the lake. Wolfgang said it was too dangerous, the political situation too uncertain. But, seeing the excitement in the ten-year-old’s eyes, and after checking the news once again, Wolfgang relented.
G
rabbing a sledgehammer from the shed, and with Roland jumping up and down next to him, Wolfgang walked round the house and up to the inner wall. He looked to see if he could see or hear any guards and then, when he thought it was safe, or at least safe enough, and after a brief pause to steady himself, he took a swing at the Berlin Wall.
The noise was frighteningly loud. Surely someone would come to see what was going on. But nobody came and, emboldened by the images he had seen on television, he took another swing, and then another. It was surprisingly easy, and within an hour, the hole was large enough for them to crawl through. Despite the racket he’d made, there was no jeep full of angry soldiers waiting for them, nor was there a snarling German Shepherd – apparently they had been relieved of their border patrol duties.
Now unworried about being caught, they walked across the thirty-metre-wide ‘death strip’, carelessly leaving their footprints in the sand, stepped over the border patrol asphalt path, and up to the second, taller, concrete wall. The pair were joined by Rex who had followed them through the gap in the first wall, and was wagging his tail excitedly. After a few blows with his sledgehammer, a crack appeared in the wall and before long, they were through.
And there it was, the lake, two steps from the Wall, less than fifty metres from his back door, grey, cold, its surface rippling in the chilling winter’s breeze. First obstructed but still accessible in 1952, blocked off in 1961, and unreachable ever since. While Wolfgang stared across the water, still stunned by the tumultuous events of the preceding few hours, Roland picked up a stick and threw it in the water. Rex didn’t have to be asked twice and jumped in, water splashing as he paddled towards the stick, clenched it in his jaws and returned to the shore, shaking the water off his coat and onto Roland, who shrieked with laughter.
Sensing it was time to leave, Wolfgang, Roland and dog went back through the hole. Now on the other side of the wall, there were guards waiting for them. The pair were escorted into a waiting vehicle with Rex barking furiously, and driven to the Groß Glienicke Border Regiment’s quarters. There they were taken to a small windowless room and asked a series of questions. While it was true that the political situation was rapidly changing, they were told, this did not give citizens permission to damage state property.
Two hours later, and having been sternly warned not to repeat that day’s actions, Wolfgang and Roland were released. Just a few days earlier, they would have suffered far more serious consequences. Realising how fortunate they had been, given their behaviour, the pair walked home, chastened but elated.
To reach West Berlin from Groß Glienicke, villagers had to drive to the border crossing at Staaken, ten kilometres to the north, and wait in a long line, which at times stretched for many kilometres. In the days following the first mass border crossing on 9 November, people began expressing their unhappiness that they couldn’t have their own crossing in the village. After all, they had been able to walk from the Russian to the English checkpoint in the 1940s, and before that, there hadn’t even been a border.
Hans Dieter Behrendt, the officer in charge of the Glienicke Bridge checkpoint4, and Peter Kaminski, the major in the Border Regiment, were asked to establish a temporary crossing in the village. Together with the West Berlin police, they surveyed the land and decided that the most suitable spot would be three hundred metres north of the lake house, within walking distance of the entrance of the Gatow airfield.
A 100-metre-wide section of wall that had previously barred the villagers was torn down, and a new crossing was built, complete with sentry post and retractable metal gate. Well before daybreak on the morning of 24 December 1989, over two hundred people formed a calm line in front of the border crossing, chanting good-naturedly, ‘Open up the Wall.’ They were met by smiling border guards and tables decked with oranges and bananas.
Border crossing opens at Groß Glienicke
At 8 a.m. the barrier swung open and the Gross Glienicke villagers rushed forward, across a fifty-metre-wide wasteland – which until a few days ago had been the ‘death strip’ – to a large crowd of West Berliners, who greeted them with cheers, shouts and laughter. Television crews captured the scenes: reunited families hugged, strangers danced with each other, hundreds of men and women climbed on top of the Wall and symbolically chiselled at the concrete. Later such people would become known as Mauerspechte, or wall woodpeckers.
The mayors of Groß Glienicke and Kladow made speeches as brass bands played traditional songs and people danced in the street. A sense of amazement and excitement hung in the air. At six that night, the police declared that they would be closing the border again. The government had announced that the border would be permanently opened in the new year, but for now, they pleaded, please would everyone return home?
Much like his father, Bernd was unwilling to wait. With a sledgehammer in his hands, Bernd Kühne walked to the bottom of his garden, and started pounding at his section of the Wall. After an hour or so, he broke through This was an extraordinary feeling, for a man with no memory of life before the Wall – Bernd had been only two when the first border fence had been built.
Bernd Kühne’s child on border path
It did not take long for Bernd to begin marking the territory as his own. His children carried their scooters to the bottom of the garden and rode them up and down the border patrol path. The family took photographs of each other posing in front of the Wall, and of a smiling Bernd leaning out of one of the control tower’s windows. Then, using red, blue and yellow, they spray-painted across the inside of the concrete barricade – which only days before they had been forbidden to see – with slogans such as ‘9.11.1989’, ‘Viva’, ‘Peace’ and ‘Hier ist nicht’.
For Wolfgang, Inge and many others of their generation, the dramatic changes were received with a mixture of shock and apprehension. What would this mean for their jobs, their houses, their pensions, their food? Everything they owned they owed to the DDR government, they felt. While at times they had criticised the state for its lack of efficiency and intrusiveness, at least they had never gone hungry. Now in his late fifties, and suffering from acute liver disease brought on by drink, Wolfgang was extremely worried.
His son, in contrast, was overjoyed. For Bernd and many of his friends, the Wall coming down meant opportunity, better pay, an improved standard of living and choice: over where to live, what to listen to, how to run your life. He was also thinking about the lake that had been tantalisingly out of reach for as long as he could remember. At last they could swim.
The following spring, Bernd built a little jetty from the shore at the bottom of his garden. The air was warm and the water tempting. Smiling, he watched as his son put on his swimming shorts, tore off his shirt and jumped with joy into the Groß Glienicke Lake.
28
KÜHNE
1990
IN THE DAYS following the the Wall’s collapse, hundreds of thousands of East Germans crossed into West Berlin. Some stayed just for a day, marvelling at the luxurious shops and the bustling streets. Others arrived for good, hoping to make new and better lives for themselves in the West.
In the meantime, as soon as the Wall came down, West Berliners began arriving in Groß Glienicke. The locals had hardly enough time to digest the seismic political changes before they had to worry about whether the roofs over their heads would be snatched away.
Long-term Groß Glienicke residents now found strangers trampling through their vegetable gardens1, declaring ‘this land used to be mine’ and ‘we need to talk to the lawyers about getting it back’. Black Mercedes saloons cruised the village streets, slowly pulling up to houses as windows were wound down and photographs were taken. Such activities seemed predatory and destabilising. Some of the locals felt they were being taken advantage of by their cousins from the West.
The four decades since the war’s end had been good for the Meisel family. Once he had finally been given a licence to work, six years after his initial application, Will Meisel had transformed his
company into one of the strongest music publishing houses in Europe. His efforts were recognised in November 1962, when the German government awarded him the Federal Cross of Merit2, and then again in September 1964, when he was presented with the Paul Lincke Ring. In an interview with the Telegraf at this time3, when asked if he had any regrets, Will said: ‘I am not someone who lives in the past. Yet, as with many others, we have lost so much.’ He then paused, and added, ‘We used to own a big property in Groß Glienicke on the water with a tennis court and a boat. Maybe my sons will get it back one day.’
Will Meisel never forgot the lake house. In May 1965 he had asked his lawyers to make a financial claim under a West German scheme established to compensate those who had suffered economic loss following the Soviet occupation of East Germany. The Meisels’ argument was persuasive: they had purchased the house and its contents from the tax office in 1940; they had purchased the land from the state in 1948; then in 1952 they had been dispossessed by the DDR.
However, on 16 December 1968, a representative from the Düsseldorf-based department that handled such applications wrote back saying that the Meisel claim had been denied. Their investigation had found that the Third Reich had seized the property from the ‘racially persecuted’ medical doctor Alfred Alexander, and then sold it to the Meisels. ‘As far as the files here are concerned,’ the bureaucrat wrote, ‘there is nothing relating to the plot of land in Groß Glienicke which Meisel is said to have acquired.’
The House by the Lake Page 26
