Back home to Animal Farm

Returning home to Manchester in the middle of September my life slowly began to change once more. Since the building of the Berlin Wall tensions between East and West ran high and everyone looked to Berlin as a potential flash point. Yet very few people, and certainly no one in Cheadle’s churches had visited the now divided city.
 

As a result I found myself quizzed about my trip to Berlin. Then a local Anglican curate, Peter Wilkinson, discovered that I had taken a lot of slides of the Berlin Wall and other places. So he invited me to show them to the church’s youth group.

Looking into East Berlin from the West

 This was my first public speaking engagement and could easily have been a disaster. But, because I was used to performing  stage magic I spoke with confidence and it went over very well. Consequently, I received several other invitations to speak to local Christian groups.

Although I treated my Berlin talk rather like a theatrical act there was a big difference. For the first time I had an audience that talked back and asked difficult questions. The people who put the questions to me were my age, but they read books with strange names like 1984 and Animal Farm and I was expected to compare these books to East Germany. Even worse I was asked about Boris somebody or other who had written a book they were all reading about the Russian Revolution.

To be honest I didn’t have a clue what they were talking about or how to answer most of the questions. Talking about what I saw and heard in Berlin was one thing. Answering questions about weird books was another.

Very quickly I became aware of the huge gap that existed between my own background and that of the folk I met through the church. While I was an apprentice who left school at 15 they were all the products of the elite English grammar school system. Thus while I expected to earn my living as a gas fitter they all planned to attend teacher training colleges or universities and become professionals.

Slowly it dawned on me that these people, who seemed so like myself in church and at the Billy Graham Crusade, actually belonged to a very different world where I was an outsider. In other words, although I did not realize it at the time, class differences were beginning to make themselves felt.

The wisdom of an East German Pastor

The pastor in whose home we met was, Günter Reymann. He and his wife were among a small group of dedicated Christians who had given up a relatively peaceful and prosperous life in West Germany to move to the East where they felt they were needed. Now they lived in East Berlin behind the Berlin Wall and suffered all the restrictions that brought with it. His English was excellent because during World War II he had been a prisoner of war in a British POW camp West of Edmonton in Canada. Three things he told us stuck in my mind.

The Brandenburg Gate in 1962

 First, he talked about his treatment as a prisoner-of-war in a very positive manner. The story I remember is that about a year before the end of the war the prisoners had asked permission to go on a hike up a local mountain. To their surprise the Canadian commander gave them his permission although a couple of guards went along too and they had to agree to be back fairly early in the evening.

On the hike his party lost their guards and then got lost themselves. As a result they returned to the camp very late at night expecting to be punished. But, the Canadian officer in charge understood what had happened and told them that they were lucky not to have encountered a bear. This episode impressed Reymann with the humanity of Canadians and the importance of trust in human relations something he observes was missing in Nazi Germany and the Communist German Democratic Republic.

Chackpoint Charlie one of the ways in to East Berlin

The second thing he said was that he saw Communists as members of a secular religious sect. His reason for this was simple. Sects, he said, are always teaching and rarely crack jokes about themselves. Committed communists he observed acted in the same way. Fanatics, he added, lack a sense of humour and have an urge to lecture others. At the time this observation seemed trivial. Over the years I came to increasingly appreciate its wisdom.

His third word of wisdom concerned the Confessing Church. His father, he told us, was a pastor during the Nazi era. After 1933 he became increasingly skeptical and worried by the Nazis. Following the formation of Confessing Church his father seriously considered joining it. But, the local Confessing Church minister demanded an immediate decision and told him that anyone who did not join was as bad as the Nazis. This confrontation, which was intended to jolt him into joining the Confession Church, had the opposite effect to the one intended. Although he grew increasingly opposed to the Nazis he refused to join the Confessing Church because some of its members seemed as fanatical as the Nazis.

A small discussion group in the East Berlin Church where Diedrich Bonhoeffer, one of the leaders of the Confession Church was the pastor. His photo stands in the background.

From this story Pastor Reymann drew the conclusion that in dealing with Communists, or anyone else he disagreed with, it was necessary to be patient. People must be allowed to make decisions for themselves in their own time and ought not to be pressured or condemned if they do not agree with one’s point of view.

These very humane and wise observations remained with me. After returning to Britain I kept up sporadic contact with Pastor Reymann and his daughter Jutta for a number of years, but sadly we lost touch as time passed. When I attempted to contact him again during a visit to Berlin in the early 1990’s I learned that he had died a few months earlier.

Return to East Berlin

The last time I blogged was on 5 March which is far too long ago. To cut a long story short what happened was that I got caught up with the end of term and a research trip to Germany. Normally, these things ought not to have stopped my blogging. But, I felt unusually tired. Then, after my return from Germany the unexpected happened, I had a heart attack. In retrospect it explains my lack of energy and general lethargy.

Now I seem well on the way to a recovery and hope to take up my blog from where I left off. That was in Berlin in the early 1960’s. In my last blog I told the story of my encounter with a Russian officer who treated was very kind while carrying out his orders to destroy my photographs of a military instillation which I had taken by accident.

The Soviet War Memorial in Treptower Park

A few days later we were given the choice of returning to East Berlin or sightseeing in the West. I chose to go back to the East. On this trip we visited the imposing Soviet War Memorial in Treptower Park. Since I have written about it elsewhere I will not repeat myself here. Anyone wanting more information should look at my travel blog for 22 January 2011.

 At the end of this second tour of East Berlin we were asked if any of us would like to meet some young East Germans. I jumped at the chance and a meeting was arranged for the following Monday at a Pastor’s home in Tierpark. Only three or four of the group went along. At the meeting we met half a dozen East German Christians most of whom spoke good English.

The Church in Tierpark that the  East Germans we met attended

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They told horrific stories about the Stasi, East Germany’s dreaded secret police, and the way their families, all of whom were professionals, were treated for their refusal to embrace Marxism and continued allegiance to the Church. Years later the film The Lives of Others (2006) gave a fairly accurate depiction of the activities of the Stasi.

They too suffered and although they were all clearly very intelligent they were prohibited from attending university. This was a real blow because many of their parents were doctors or nurses yet they had to be content with gardening jobs in Berlin’s parks. Only if they publicly withdrew from the Church and attended the State’s secular confirmation was it possible for them to enter university.

Berlin's Stasi Museum

Consequently, a lot of our conversation was about the East German practice of secular confirmation which was a deliberate mimicking of Christian confirmation intended to instil a firm commitment to Marxist-Leninism. For these folk at least their future prospects in East Germany looked very bleak with no hope of betterment or obtaining decent work.

The fact that they chose to remain Christian in the face of such pressure was remarkable and a testimony to their very real faith.

Inside the Stasi Museum

Unforgettable Encounters

Most of us have, at one time or another, visited somewhere, or seen something, that made a profound impression on us. Then, years later we have returned to the spot full of anticipation only to find that the beautiful valley was full of disused mines and slag heaps that had marred the landscape for over a hundred years. Thus, our childhood memory of a beautiful place was more illusion than reality.

Thirty years after my first visit to Berlin I returned in June 1992. Although I told my wife that we must visit the Pergamon Museum in former East Berlin and the bust of Queen Nefertiti (1370-1330 BC) in the Ägyptisches Museum (Museum of Egyptian Antiquities) in Charlottenburg, I was deliberately subdued. To be honest, while I looked forward to seeing these sights once more my expectations were fairly low. It was, after all, thirty years since my last visit and I was sure my memories of the stunning impact they had made on me as a young man must have grown with time. Therefore, I expected to be disappointed.

Queen Nefertiti in the Egyptian Museum, Charlottenburg

It is now housed in the New Museum on Museum Island in Berlin

Nothing could have been further from the truth. Nefertiti was exactly as I remembered her only more beautiful and intriguing than ever while the Pergamon remained equally breathtaking. History had not diminished their appeal or impact. They were, and remain, among the wonders of the world.

Two other events of that original visit to Berlin are worth coming on. After visiting the Pergamon Museum we came out and walked a short distance to the adjoining Bode Museum. On the way I took a photograph of what was clearly a military building with a large banner containing a slogan from the works of Karl Marx.

The barracks with a slogan by Karl Marx over the main doors. Two Russian soldiers are just visible. They are the ones that arrested me.

As we entered the Bode Museum two Russian soldier, with rifles slung over their shoulders appeared behind us, and I was marched off into the building to fact a Russian officer who spoke excellent English. He asked me what I was doing in Berlin and why I had photographed a military installation and whether I realized that he had the power to arrest me and send me for trial.

I told him that I was an apprentice from Manchester and on a worker exchange with apprentices from West Berlin. He asked me about my trades union membership and asked to see my passport and the palms of my hands. Once convinced that I really was an apprentice he asked why I had photographed the barracks. I truthfully told him that I did not know it was a barracks and that all I was doing was photographing the banner with Karl Marx’s name on it.

The Bode Museum on the right of the photo

Then, he spoke to the two soldiers who were still standing behind me. After that he explained that they did not understand English and he had told them that I was a “worker” who had simply made a mistake in my enthusiasm to photograph one of the great sayings of Karl Marx.

This seemed to please everyone and the officer said that he understood that I had made a genuine mistake in my enthusiasm for socialism and that while he ought to confiscate my camera he realized it would be hard for me to get a new one. Therefore, he suggested that if I opened the back of the camera to expose the film. After that I could leave. Then, to my surprise, he suggested that I “wind back” the film so that I would not loose any other photos. I could hardly believe what he was saying, but I followed his instructions and was let go.

A statute of Marx, who is sitting, and Engels, standing, in the park by Alexander Platz

Once back with our group I put my lens cap on and rewound the film so that nothing was lost. As a result all of my photos, including the one of the barracks, were all preserved. Even today I wonder about that young officer who was a thoroughly decent man. Did he really think I was a socialist? Or was he a dissident who had a sympathy for the West?