November 2009

The anniversary of the Berlin Wall’s fall did not prompt any comment from China. It was hard not to draw parallels with the quiet time just before the toppling of Marxism in Eastern Europe, with the apparent permanence of communism in China, with that country grappling with its insistence on adhering to traditional Marxism in the face of an increasingly disgruntled and outspoken population. The anniversary of this ideological disintegration was particularly relevant to the prevailing communist party in China and its attempts to prevent such a thing happening in the motherland.
   The anniversary of the fall of the Berlin Wall resounded with me as it brought to mind the visit I had made to Berlin in 1988, when unbeknownst to everyone, European communism was on the brink of collapse.
   I stood at the stern of the cross channel ferry as the screws churned the sea into submission. An empty wine-cooler skidded over the wave tops. Beside me in the night was the dark-clad blonde figure of Michelle who had attached herself to me on the coach. She had told me all I needed to know about her, which included that her native land was New Zealand and she was on her way to Berlin to meet her boyfriend. Her plummy cut-glass English accent had been slowly slipping away since this first introduction, and by the time we were on the ferry it was disappearing fast under her New Zealand brogue. I had immediately perceived her intent on the coach. The best way for an attractive woman to repel uninvited attention from marauding males would be to attach herself to a hopefully harmless one in a semblance of companionship. The gullible male normally feels helplessness when a woman appears to take interest in him, and is unable to decline. With the next few moments that contain the exchange of one or two sentences, the man has no choice but to accept the fact that he has a new travelling companion. He then faces the tasks of showing that he is chivalrous enough not to try to take advantage of the situation, and try to hide the credulity that allowed him to think the attention had been because of genuine attraction.
   We came to the East German border where a Russian T34 tank on a platform loomed over the wall. Darkness fell, which added
to the monotony of the Berlin Ring. The bus finally reached the terminus, where Michelle promptly disappeared leaving me feeling briefly as though I had misplaced a piece of luggage.
   A couple of phone calls eased my route to a flat at Gesslestrasse. My arrival there coincided with most of its residents trooping out on their way to a party, leaving me with an after image of a procession tramping Doc Marten boots and figures clad in black leather. I settled down for an interminable read of Norman Douglas’ South Wind in the deserted women’s commune. Two tough-looking women in denims later returned to the flat, who greeted me with appalled, disbelieving expressions. ‘What is a man doing in the flat?’ one asked as the other went to a phone.
   ‘I’m a friend of Ellen Turner,’ I said. ‘She asked me to drop by.’
   ‘But Ellen’s in East Berlin.’
   ‘What’s she doing there?’
   ‘Trying to help friends arrested by the Stazi.’
   ‘I’m very sorry to hear that. Have you heard any news?’
   I calmed their incipient hostility and outrage with calm and impeccable politeness. I courteously let their initial bluster pass harmlessly by me, and I replied with urbanity. By the time Ellen got back she found us gossiping and chortling happily like an assemblage of long lost buddies.
   Ellen told me that she was getting ready to go to South America to learn Spanish and get involved in women’s issues there. ‘My Friend Sylvie’s done a slide show about the time she spent with women in Nicaragua. We’re showing tomorrow at the Amnesty International Centre. You can come along,’ she said.
   Nicaragua’s revolt in 1978-9 was led by the Sandinistas, the socialist party named after Augusto César Sandino. Sandino, labelled a ‘bandit’ by the USA, who was assassinated by General Anastasio Somoza Garcia, a de facto dictator who established a forty-year family dynasty in the country. Garcia’s rule, known as the Somoza regime was notorious, even by South American standards, for its corruption, brutality, fear and oppression.
   The Sandinista National Liberation Front’s revolution saw a dramatic escalation of feminist ideology as women had endured a double burden under the Somoza regime. There was the political and social repression that everyone suffered in addition to the intense male chauvinism of traditional Nicaraguan society. The Sandinistan Revolution saw women emerge as active participants and armed leaders. Women made up about thirty percent of the army and were fully involved as organisers, suppliers, providers of safe homes for other rebels and persuaders for their husbands to join the revolution. Women saw the revolution as a way to oust the corrupt Somosas and to dramatically improve the status of women in their country.
   Sylvie explained what she had done during her stay in Nicaragua and showed a series of beautifully photographed slides of the people she had worked and spent time with. I left the women talking to a representative of Amnesty International.
   It was time to go to the Berlin Wall. I walked around the Berlin Wall, near Checkpoint Charlie. Colourful and histrionic graffiti occupied most surfaces of the wall. Unfortunately most of the slogans and writing were embarrassing, at best trite. A climb up some steps afforded a view of the ‘death strip,’ the area between the walls. An English family clambered up beside me. The father hoisted his little girl up on his shoulders and pointed to the other side. ‘See that wall over there?’ he said. ‘The people over there can’t come over here.’
   I passed through Checkpoint Charlie, compulsorily changing money for twenty five East German marks. Entering the East German side felt like being dropped onto a construction site. There were no signs; cold rain drenched the roads. I noticed that on a majority of the buildings, shell, shrapnel and bullet holes had been left as they were. On Under Den Linden one of the buildings revealed the flicker of a memorial flame. This was the Mahnmal fur die Opfer des Faschismus und Militarismus, one of the ubiquitous kinds of memorial in East Berlin. These commemorative places were dark, quiet hymns for fallen Soviet heroes and Germans who had been wiped out. A great proportion of the Museum of German History’s space consisted of a comprehensive account of Soviet losses in the Second World War, illustrated by series of maps that became increasingly red with the spread of communism at the end of the conflict. There was no mention of Stalin.
   I went through the Marx-Engels Forum to the Palast der Republik. This modern building contrasted with the remaining classical architecture in East Berlin. The Palast der Republik had mirror glassed walls, and had been built from 1973 to 1976. East Berliners would sometimes refer to it as ‘Erich’s Lampenladen’, or ‘Erich’s Lamp Shop’ after Erich Honecker, leader of East Germany and the person in charge of building the Berlin Wall. The Palast der Republik served as the seat of the German Democratic Republic. It appeared that the East German government was keen to give their administration associations with leisure, as the legislative building also included auditoria, art galleries, a theatre, restaurants, a bowling alley and a disco. The electro rock group Tangerine Dream had even played there in 1980, instigating their great popularity behind the Iron Curtain.
   On the day I visited, it was hosting an unlikely combination of a fashion show set to disco music while nearby a young woman walked up and down a line of tables playing ten simultaneous chess games. In the street outside this place a man asked me in good English if I would consider changing East German marks for some other currency. I had seen shutters come down rapidly as many shops closed down early for the day, not having anything to sell. It was looking as though I would have difficulty disposing of the twenty East German marks I had, so I was not in a hurry to acquire even more.
   I wandered away from the disappointed currency dealer towards the Spree River, where a police launch was prowling around on the water about a hundred metres away. One of its crew was observing me though a pair of binoculars.
   Almost exactly a year later, people could walk freely through Checkpoint Charlie in either direction.