Twenty years after the fall of the Berlin Wall, and end to Germany's Iron Curtain, David Molyneaux returns for the celebrations. This is his fifth blog.
Behind old enemy lines, Germans have stories to tell.
Delightful cities of music and religious history, such as Eisenach and Leipzig, offer also a journey through the old East German world of hidden bunkers, secret police and a life so fearful that citizens didn't dare let their children talk at school about family time at home. They feared any talk might lead the police to arrest them for social violations or government taboos, such as watching television shows beamed from the west.
"We lived a lie," said Ralf Paesler, an environmentalist in Eisenach, about 170 miles southwest of Berlin.
Paesler said that in East Germany, when you walked out your door, talked on the telephone, wrote a letter or discussed anything in public, you presented yourself as a good, enthusiastic citizen in the repressive society of the German Democratic Republic (the GDR).
Wartburg Castle, above, has dominated Eisenach for nearly 1,000 years.
Paesler must have been persuasive, as he tested government authorities when he claimed he was a conscientious objector to war — this in a country that didn't recognize objections of any kind.
Somehow, said Paesler, he managed to get through more than a year in the army without touching a weapon. He said he learned the concept from what he heard about America during the Vietnam war.
Living between the official plan and reality
Eisenach tourist guide Cornelia Hartleb, educated in mathematics, talked about being assigned by the Communist Party to work a factory job building Wartburgs, a simple Soviet car that was a step up from the Trabant.
"Plans for making cars kept changing," said Hartleb, remembering her autoworker days. "The new plan did not work. Nor did the next new plan. The plan always failed. That's what we lived in, a place between the plan and reality."
Hartleb said that wages were low, but basic life was cheap. Once children were 3, they could go to kindergarten from 6 a.m. to 6 p.m., so when her daughter was 3, Hartleb began her job at the Wartburg factory each morning at 6:30. Her daughter later became a doctor and now lives in western Germany.
Gerhard Schneider, mayor of Eisenach in 1990 during reunification, said his toughest job was explaining to East Germans that their new freedoms meant new responsibilities. Food, for instance, had always been cheap, but after reunification, prices rose quickly.
"They didn't like it," he said, and they turned to the government to keep prices low. "I had to tell them they were now responsible for their own lives."
Dreaming about a Barbie doll
Tour guide Anja Newmann, 28, (right) remembers that all she wanted 20 years ago was a Barbie doll.
Newmann was an elementary school pupil, living in an East German town near the border with Poland. When the Berlin Wall opened and West Germany announced that all East German visitors would be given 100 German marks (the equivalent of about $60) as they crossed the old border into West Germany. "We got in our car and drove west to Berlin," said Newmann.
"Shop owners knew we were GDR because our eyes grew so big. We touched everything, amazed at the sounds and colors. I had read about Barbies. That's what my parents bought for me. My brother, 6, got a matchbox car."
I met Newmann at the museum at Point Alpha, which is worth a stop for Cold War enthusiasts. Point Alpha, about 30 miles south of Eisenach near the small town of Geisa, is the spot along the old border that military theorists believed could be a flash point for World War III, because geography made it accessible to armies on both sides of the Cold War. U.S. troops stood guard at Point Alpha from 1946 to 1990.
Museums are set up on both sides of the old border. If you do not speak German, start your tour at the museum on the west side, where exhibits (above) are labeled in English and German. You'll see a guard tower, barracks and explanations of life at the edge.
Praying on Mondays for peace
In Magdeberg, west of Berlin, I met Waltraut Zachhuber, minister of the church at the Cathedral at Magdeburg, (right) built starting in 1209, and the rallying place for peaceful local protests against the East German government in the 1980s.
Townsfolk met on Mondays to pray for peace and talk about hopes for freedom. Some were people who wanted to leave East Germany, but others were committed to working for a real democracy — first a handful of people, then hundreds, then several thousand.
The Cathedral became an oral newspaper.
"It was the only newspaper we had," said Zachhuber. "You could always hear the latest news in the Cathedral."
In september 1989, 130 people showed up on a Monday night, the next week 300, and by Oct. 9, 1989, about 2,000 filled the church.
"That's the day that all around us were the police. People had begun to lose their fears of speaking. Until Oct. 9, we never went into the streets. But everyone knew that that night something would happen. Teachers told their kids, 'Tell everyone not to go to the Cathedral tonight. There will be blood.'
Hoping dad doesn't shoot him for his ideas
Zachhuber did her best to watch over her inherited flock.
"I asked the police chief if there would be shooting," she remembers. "He said there was no order to shoot."
"I remember that night a boy in the Cathedral. He went to the microphone and said his father was in the military. He said his father was outside nearby with a gun. 'Dear Lord,' prayed the young man, 'help me so my father doesn't have to shoot me with a gun'."
"After the meeting, we all went outside and went home peacefully. And the boy learned later that his father had left his weapon
at home that night and had instead packed a bag with bandages."
Next: Memories of the dreaded secret police in Leipzig
Information on Planning a trip to Germany
Also from Berlin: Coffee at Brandenburg Gate
To read the entire series:
Back in Berlin again, 20 years after the fall of the wall
Poking about pieces of the old Berlin Wall
Guns, dogs, and fear along the old Iron Curtain
When East met West on peaceful soil in 1989
Lies and dreams east of the old Iron Curtain
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