BERLIN — Nearly 20 years after the fall of the Berlin Wall, I was back in the city again, timed to see what had changed since I watched a defining moment at the end of the Cold War.
On Nov. 9, 1989, joyous East Germans and West Germans had poured over and through the hated wall in a dance of freedom denied them for more than 40 years during Soviet domination of East Germany. Easterners who had been trapped inside the Soviet bloc crossed the border like water through a dam that had sprung a leak — first a trickle, then a torrent of people who climbed over the cement wall and through holes they chipped in the concrete.
On the more recent trip, I was driving the perfect car for the occasion, a little two-cylinder 1988 Trabant 601, which was ubiquitous throughout East Germany during Soviet days. It is quite an attraction in 2009. As I putt-putted through Berlin on a guided Trabi Safari, other tourists grabbed their cameras for a souvenir picture of my pathetic little auto.
The Trabi was a symbol of decrepit East Germany. The car’s hood, roof and fenders were made of cotton, cardboard and glue. It was powered with an engine like a lawnmower’s.
On some of the Berlin streets of my guided tour, I was behind old enemy lines. In 1989, I could have been shot by East German guards. Today, the Trabi tour is a fun way to experience Berlin, seeing highlights of the modern city and lowlights of the days of turmoil.
Once upon a time, the world suffered a Cold War, a post-World War II standoff between the Soviet Union and countries of the West. After World War II, the Soviets occupied most of the European countries east of central Germany, and they built an armed border from the Baltic Sea south.
Ostensibly, the barbed fences and cement walls built by the Soviets were for protection against armies of the West, but mostly they were used to trap their own citizens who wanted to escape from the East.
This militarized Iron Curtain, as it was called, ran through the middle of Germany, a total of 865 miles.
For decades, West Germans chose jobs they wanted, talked freely on the telephone and exchanged private thoughts in letters. East Germans worked where they were told. Their telephones were tapped, their letters steamed open by secret police.
On one side of the border, Germans might worship; on the other, churches exploded. On one side, little girls played with Barbie dolls; on the other, no capitalist Barbies.
You can imagine the emotions in Berlin and across the unified country as Germans enjoy a year-long celebration of the two decades since the Berlin Wall was opened, and of the pivotal events that led to a reunification of Germany in 1990.
For travelers, 2009 presents a unique opportunity to join in Germany’s festivities, to dabble in history, talk to folks who lived it, and see where and how they lived before and after the borders opened. Celebrations began officially in Berlin on May 7 with an open-air exhibition at Alexanderplatz, a large public square in the center of the city near the river Spree. An extensive cultural program across the country leads to the biggest party on Nov. 9.
A cultural revival
With its museums, theaters, outdoor cafes, fine restaurants, youthful atmosphere and thriving cultural life, Berlin has reclaimed its position as one of the great cosmopolitan cities of the world.
But for 44 years after the end of World War II, Berlin was an enigma. The entire city — with West Germans living in West Berlin, East Germans living in East Berlin — was geographically inside East Germany, about 100 miles east of the border with West Germany. That meant that West Berliners had to travel through 100 miles of East Germany to get to West Germany.
At the end of World War II, Berlin, which had been the strategic planning center for the Nazi war machine and the massacre of Europe’s Jews, had been divided by the four Allied conquerors. The United States, Great Britain and France turned their portions over to a new free West Germany.
The Soviet Union kept its portion as part (and capital) of East Germany. Sometimes the Soviets closed the route to West Germany, but other times West German residents could travel relatively freely back and forth.
That’s why postwar West Berlin was full of clandestine representatives of every major country in the world. It was a cloak-and-dagger hangout at the crossroads of Cold War political intrigue.
And that’s why the Soviets built the Berlin Wall, as snoopy Westerners were sneaking across the city border into East Berlin, while far more East Germans were escaping out — as many as 1,000 a day until August 1961, when the Soviets began to build a fortified wall, effectively sealing East Berlin off from West Berlin.
Most of the Cold War sites are gone, but some significant remnants remain, says Richard G. Campbell, an American guide who remembers watching out his West Berlin office window near famed Checkpoint Charlie on Aug. 13, 1961, as East German workmen began pouring concrete.
Since 1989, most of the wall has been carted away and nearby buildings bulldozed, but there are 18 places in Berlin where portions of the wall still stand.
Visitors can rent an audio walking guide that explains details and past events, including where East Germans were killed attempting to escape to freedom in the West. Berlin tour companies offer walking, bike, bus and Trabi explorations. Campbell books three-hour narrated walking tours from the main train station to Checkpoint Charlie.
Along the Iron Curtain
Some of central Germany’s Cold War sites are an easy day trip, about 100 miles west from Berlin by train. Among these are the Cathedral at Magdeburg, built starting in 1209 and the rallying place for peaceful local protests against the East German government; the Zonengrenz Museum in Helmstedt, where exhibits show how the fortified border grew from a fence with barbed wire in the mid-1940s to a series of walls with motion-activated machine guns and other armaments; and nearby Hoetensleben, where the old border fortifications have been preserved — a system of fences and no-man’s lands. The Soviets built and patrolled the border in what they called “anti-fascist protection,” but most of the weapons were pointed east, at their own citizens.
Near Helmstedt is Marienborn, the former highway checkpoint to the road through East German territory into West Berlin. Because most of the east-west traffic flowed through Marienborn, it was known as the “eye of the needle.” Vehicle booths and the two-story headquarters building at Marienborn station now are a museum where visitors can get a sense of the old fears and tensions.
In the bad old days, if you were on the West German side, driving east toward Berlin, at Marienborn you handed over your passport, which disappeared into a red pouch and moved indoors on an elaborate series of belts. Upstairs, security officers whipped through picture books and lists of names to see if you were a suspected enemy of East Germany. Meanwhile, some passports were being copied by the Soviets to make fake ones for spies.
If you were traveling west, out of West Berlin and headed for West Germany, police were looking for forbidden photos or sensitive documents or anything that aroused their suspicions.
Police inspected gas tanks, cut cakes in half to see what was inside, dumped coffee beans from sacks, looked under cars with mirrors and, at one point, used a heat sensor to estimate the number of bodies inside the car, comparing that count to the heads the guards could see. Vehicles had been modified to create secret compartments to smuggle people through the border.
Behind old enemy lines
In November 1989, I joined West German residents who lived near the old East German border in central Germany as they streamed through new holes in border fences to find neighbors and villages they had not visited in decades. East Germany 20 years ago looked as if someone had turned off the color television set and fired up an old black-and-white model.
My ride on an old East German bus, into the countryside from the border, was like a time machine, taking me backward several decades to a postwar land of shabby buildings and dour inhabitants. Farms and houses were gray, covered with soot from coal used as heating fuel.
In many villages, shop windows were empty. I walked into an empty restaurant where each table held a “Reserved” sign. I was told later that the restaurant put up the signs because it had no food to sell and didn’t want to admit it.
Twenty years later, color is as plentiful in eastern Germany as in western Germany. House painters put the grays away. Shops and restaurants are full. Except for some remaining Soviet-style drab apartment buildings, you wouldn’t know West from East, externally, though eastern Germany’s economy still lags behind western Germany.
Behind old enemy lines, people 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 for fear of violating a government taboo, such as watching television shows beamed from the West.
The Leipzig police
Residents of the city of Leipzig are proud of its museum dedicated to the horrors of the East German secret police, the Stasi. The Stasi Museum is operated by a community group that works to save records and keep the past alive, making certain that nothing from the secret days is hidden from the public.
During the past 20 years, wives and husbands have found out about spouses who were spying on them for the Stasi; parents have discovered their children kept tabs on their anti-government feelings, and that neighbors sneaked peeks when window shades were not drawn, when, perhaps, residents were watching TV shows from the West.
Visitors can see how mail was intercepted and envelopes steamed open, their contents read, then resealed and placed back in the mail.
David Molyneaux, editor of , was on assignment in Germany for The Cleveland Plain Dealer in November 1989.
Insider’s Guide
Germany’s travel website, , has information on trip-planning, including a map, brochures, a free newsletter and a detailed explanation of celebrations of the 20 years after the fall of the wall.
Other useful links on the site include: castles, parks and gardens; saving money; religious travelers; and young people. Or, call the German National Tourist Office in New York at 212-661-7200.
When websites come up in German, look for the word English or a flag of the United States or Great Britain, and click for English.
Berlin has its own website, visitberlin.de. For tours, consider walking (mauerguide.com), biking, the underground, and riding in a Trabi (trabi-safari.de). The Trabi holds four people, but not four big people. If you want to drive, you’ll have to be able to handle a loose standard transmission on the steering column. Price for a one-hour tour is $38-$50 depending on the number of people in the car.
Other Cold War sites in Germany include Eisenach (eisenach.info); Magdeburg (www.magdeburg-tourist.de); Point Alpha and other sites in the state of Thueringen (www.thueringen-tourismus.de).
Other top events in 2009 are Leipzig’s celebrations for the 200th birthday of Felix Mendelssohn (leipzig.de); Halle’s festival for the 250th birthday of George Frederic Handel (www.halle.de); the opening of the Porsche Museum in Stuttgart (porsche.com); and the 90th anniversary of Bauhas design in the town of Weimar (germanoriginality.com and www.weimar.de). In November, New York’s Museum of Modern Arts will exhibit Bauhas design (moma.org).
David Molyneaux
