Berlin: An Abnormal Island Floating Above A Red Sea

(The author, a Graduate Editor of the CRIMSON, was in Europe last year on a Fulbright Grant and spent several weeks in the Internationalen Hochschul Ferienkursut in West Berlin.)

"Einsteigen Einsteigen!" The dumpy little woman waved her green stick, the doors closed, and the elevated rain pulled out of Bahnhof Zoo.

I glanced up from my copy of the Kurier, to se the ruins of the Reichstag far to the right. Two more stops to East Berlin. It was about time to get rid of the paper: I had been warned that being seen with a West Berlin newspaper across the border could mean at least a night in jail. So I stuffed the sheets deep under the wooden bench.

You are now in the Democratic Sector of Greater Berlin," a harsh female voice boomed from the loudspeaker in the station. The scene outside was no different from the pat of West Berlin just behind--miles of pock-market buildings and gaping spaces or rubble--except that the heavy traffic was gone, and here long blue signs hung from the upper stories of many structures, proclaiming in three-foot letters:

A Newspaper and on Enigma

"Berlin Youth votes No to be was policies of the EDC!"

"Down with Adenauer and Churchill!"

"Peace and Friendship with the Great Peoples of the Soviet Union!"

The train approached Friedrichstrasse, once the home of Goering's Luftwaffe, and I walked to the door.

"Pardon me, Mcine Herr, but you have forgotten you paper."

I turned my head slowly, trying to appear nonplussed. "Your newspaper, Mcinc Herr, but you have forgotten it:" a short, poorly dressed man stood at my elbow. "No.. no, I'm finished with it, completely,"

"Ah, then I shall take it with me."

The doors had not yet opened, and I stood there until be came back, expressionless now, with my newspaper folded into a neat packet, which he had tucked under his right armpit. Finally, the door opened. It let him go first and moved down to the other end of the platform waiting until be had disappeared into a crowd of workmen and Peoples' Police.

My acquaintance of the elevated train was one more enigma in the skein of enigma that is Berlin. Berlin offers a kind of excitement to be found nowhere else in Europe. Here, the individual is suppressed by the ruin, the streams of propaganda from both sides, and by the constant awareness that he is sitting on a powder keg.

Berlin, a city of 340 square miles and 3,500,000 people, is an island. But the world has not passed it by. Instead, the forces and philosophies and fears that bat each other about the world, converge on this one spot.

An Areligious Cemetery

Nothing about Berlin can be called normal, not the acres of rubble, not the artificial economy of the western sector, not the confusion that passes for an economy in the east--least of all, the way its people live.

Both the Western Powers and Russia are pouring money into their sectors, trying to make the two cities paragons of their respective system. "The island is the wife intrigue, hope and despair. Berliners on both sides have a childlike trust in re-unification, a dream that faded when Grottwohl built his SS of People's Police, and one that will be dimmed even further when West Germany has its army. Even now, except for the rubble, the two sectors bear little resemblance to each other. Another few years of uneasy balance, and they will be completely different.

In west Berlin, an increase program for 100,000 attractive, low-cost dwelling unties already well under war, while all the East offers is Stalin Alee, a mile or so of sterile masses of leaky buildings. Party faithfuls live here. The few with money patronize the exorbitant restaurants--"Warscham" and "Budapest." Houses of Culture, statue of Stalin, and a network of loudspeakers round out the scene.

One afternoon, I listened to some of the music blaring out of the loudspeakers. A deep bass voice, accompanied by orchestra, was singing: "Labor makes you healthy, labor makes you strong. Labor makes the world go round." A battalion of uniformed 12-years olds, "Free German Youth", marched post on its way from school.

The buildings in East Berlin best reflect how similar this totalitarianism is to that just past. The speaking new Russian embassy stands just a few blocks from where Hitler's suicide bunker still lies sprawled on its side. On e of my friends, who had been on a labor crew which built the embassy and had later field to the west, confided that it, too had a bunker in the basement, with concrete walls three feet thick. The resemblance between Stalin Allee's enormous, oppressive expanse of street and structure and Hitler's own Unter den Linden is more than coincidental.

But perhaps the most frightening sight in the East is Treptower Park, Russia's war cemetery. There is not a religious symbol in the place, just green lawn, statues, and the sayings of Stalin carved into huge stone blocks.

THE PEOPLE

Of all Berlin's wonders, its people are the most amazing. It does not take long to realize that the propaganda about West Berlin's courage and democracy is based on truth--and that about the great communist spirit of he East is not. West Berliners have become virtually a nationality in themselves. the long isolation and constant tension, the presence of an enlightened city government and the protection and education of the Western Allies have made them different from both East and other West Germans.

When the traveller goes from Bahnhof Zoo to Friedrichstrasse the violejnt change of atmosphere is not so much physical as in the attitudes of the people. "Hauptmann von Koppenick", a bitter satire on German militarism, plays to packed houses in West Berlin's new Schiller Theatre. The evening I attended the spirit of the West Berliner expressed itself in someting more powerful than words.

The play approached its climax. The hero who had borne the Stat's oppression silently until now, could take it no longer: "Man is a human being above all else! To the devil with 'order!' " he shouted. The audience jumped to its feet as one and applauded furiously.

Freedom has a special meaning for these people. this one city suffered a sixth of the damage--2,625,000,000 cubic feet of rubble--inflicted on all of Germany. Destruction was a chastising lesson in itself but since the war the West Berliner has had newer reminders of totalitarianism right in his own yard. He can never forget that he is 200 miles from the nearest western outpost, that sudden disappearances are commonplace, and that 350 refugees pour into his sector every day.

Goose-Stepping and Dead Nazism

Nazism is nowhere deader than in West Berlin; the city has elected Jewish widow, whose husband and children died in the concentration camps, as a delegate to the Bundesrepublik's parliament. the miniscule German Party's anti-Semitic rally of a few months ago drew immediate and hearted public protest.

And yet transition to democracy has its confusion too. The memories of '33'-45 are repressed, but poignant, and they sometimes come to the surface in weird ways.

One evening, a group of us foreign students saw a film history of the city. In the back of the room sat a number of professors and German guests. Halfway through the action came a Chaplinesque scene of soldiers goose-stepping down Unter Den Linden to 3 rally. "Hah! Hah! Hah! Hah!" sounded from the rear and lasted until the scene was over. The laughter was neither pleasant nor bitter. It was something eerie to be turned on land off at a signal.

West Berliners feel the collective guilt for Germany's past deeply, but at the same time show a sincere desire to rectify this in the eyes of the world. Rarely does and find a person who denies association with the Nazi evil, even though he himself had no part in it. This is not the case in Western Germany, where many will disclaim any knowledge of the concentration camps. As one Berlin girl said to me: "Why don't you hate us all for what we have done." Her family had been wiped out, all good party members. She and others talk long and vehemently about building a changed country from the ashes.

ANTI-AMERICANISM

Anti-Americanism, does not raise its head in west Berlin. Our air-lift and reconstruction funds have done much for her, and we are her only protection against being swallowed up by the Kremlin. she is more than grateful. Perhaps through this utter dependence on America, the Berliners have absorbed much of our system, and have reached independence in their thinking. The magnificent glass-and -concrete Free University, put up by a Ford Foundation, is as much a monument to America's influence as is the Air Lift memorial.

It is difficult to se how gaiety can flourish under so much tension, but the West Berliner plays as hard as he works--almost with desperation. theatres, night-clubs, and smoky jazz joints are jammed. so are the great sport places and the beaches of Wansee. The shop windows and the passing women along Kurfustendam are among the most stylish in Europe. Even the ladies of leisure on Joachimstalerstrasse take great pains to make themselves intriguing and attractive.

A FAMILY IN THE EAST

My friend who had moved to the West still goes home once a month to visit his parents. He is always afraid something amiss will happen, but one day Erich took me with him. The Mullers did not know an American was coming, and they were frightened when I was introduced but very gracious. The table in their dingy living-room was soon filled with cakes and cookies, and we began to talk.

"Sadly Mouthing Phrases

How wonderful it is to have an American here." the father said. "We expect such great things from America." The conversation proceeded in generalities. Each time I tried to ask a question about living canditions or politics they ignored it and kept repeating "peace" and "friendship" and "great things from America." The Mullers would not let us leave. They wanted me to sit there and listen to them sadly mouthing phrases over and over again, evidently hoping that I understood what they wanted to say and could not.

Finally we broke away. In the street I looked up to see the whole family crowding the window and waving, leaning out and waving until we were out of sight.

On the way back we tried to get a look at the East German parliament's office building in Pankow but couldn't get with in a hundred yards of the place. The road was barricaded, and a squad of Russian-uniformed Volkspolisel stood there armed with sub-machine guns.

To Weed out Spies

Tension between the sectors is mounting. while the west is back to 80% of its pre-war industrial production, the East is floundering miserably even after reforms brought about by the revolt of June 17, 1958.

The refugee problem is one of the biggest the Allied sector has to handle. No one is turned back, but all are carefully screened to week out spies. Lucky ones can find work in the Bundesrepublik but most are fated to exist on dole and live in camps. Two hundred thousand West Berliners, mostly refugees, are unemployed--one-fifth of the labor force.

Berlin is a social and political aberration. When it will be restored to normality is anyone's guess, and the chances are growing slimmer as the two powers which occupy it draw father spart.Student boating on Wannsee