The Border Crossers

...Every day 40,000 East Berliners go to work in the Western sector of the city—mostly skilled workers in West Berlin heavy industry, or seamstresses in the flourishing textile trade...

...Gas, water, electricity and a thousand other threads of the original economic unity have been severed...

...I happen to have a girl who lives there, an architecture student in the local high school for liberal arts...

...According to the East German statistical handbook, during the same period, all East Berlin movie box office sales were 13 million tickets...

...Then the agenda is adopted...

...Fortunately, I had a look at the huge poster of Ulbricht shaking hands with Khrushchev...

...I live in West Berlin and I'm a student of political science there in the Free University...

...They do so even if this is implicit violation of Government regulations, because they are even more afraid not to fulfill their economic plan...

...You feel that it can't be true, some 30-odd people, most of them rather shabbily dressed, obviously just back from a day's work, the majority women from 40 to 60 years old...

...ACTUALLY, I AM not a Grenzganger proper...

...We finally arrived at Number 23...

...I can't ring my girl up without paying for a long-distance call routed West Berlin-Frankfurt-Leipzig-East Berlin...

...In fact, I know some West Berliners who carefully see to it that they buy aisle seats so that they can get to the snack bar first...

...But she has to be careful not to let any Communist party member in her high school know that she's going steady with someone from the West...

...Do you know how to get to Number 23, X Street...

...The main arteries right at the border have shops and stalls where housewives can buy low-priced detergents, workers' overalls and shoes...

...With such a favorable exchange rate," they say, "it's a shame to miss the opportunity...

...And that's quite natural...

...In our case marriage is a tricky problem too...

...An East Berliner, working in the West, consequently gets only 40 per cent of his wages in West marks while a West Berliner in the East can exchange 90 per cent of his income into West marks at a one-for-one ratio...

...There are a couple of Party bigwigs who are members and they spend plenty of money...

...It is the natural result of three things...

...The owner says we don't spend enough on drinks...

...BERLIN ALMOST THREE and a half million people live in Berlin, workers, white-collar employes, officials, businessmen...

...I don't want to brag, but I think that's the result of my prodding, studying political science in the West, working half-time in an institute of journalism, and browsing through Eastern newspapers...

...If she did, one day she'd be called to the registrar and told that her scholarship was withdrawn...

...Though there no exact figures are available, most East Berlin theaters are sold out weeks in advance, which might indicate that thousands of West Berliners also exploit the favorable exchange rate to have a look at a Peking opera or at Berthold Brecht's Galileo Galilei...

...Third, West Berliners are not allowed to buy in the East because East Berlin authorities only permit the sale of newspapers, magazines, books, records, and theater and movie tickets to them...

...After a while I thought the guy was a pretty funny character, talking about the Communist "patriots" jailed in West Germany and about the campaign to release them...

...And all of this in East Berlin, under Soviet control...

...Why had he joined the SPD anyway...

...This does not hold true of those 100,000 East Germans who daily come to West Berlin to buy things, or go to a movie or theater...

...I guess the East German authorities would have moved in on it long ago and prohibited its political activity if not for the fact that those same four-power arrangements also provided for the unrestricted existence of the East German SED (Socialist Unity Party) in West Berlin...

...Again, this is nothing unusual...

...This high exchange rate in West Berlin banks has lured thousands of East Germans—especially older people—to work in the West illegally...

...When the meeting is over, you walk down the stairs—Ulbricht is still shaking hands with Khrushchev on the poster—and your Communist guide is still probably listening to a harangue on the subversive influence of "social democratism" and "revisionism" in the Communist labor movement...

...But that wouldn't help us now, would it...

...You know, it's a funny experience taking part in an SPD meeting in East Berlin...

...He says it wasn't profitable for him...

...Still, there are two almost permanent rates...

...Through this enormous sprawling agglomeration—one of the 10 biggest cities in the world—runs the frontier, dividing two worlds, cutting the history-ridden organism of the old capital into two separate parts...

...Finally, any other business...

...All are called Grenzganger, border crossers, travelers between two worlds...

...I doubt you could find such a meeting anywhere in the Eastern bloc outside of East Berlin...

...Many of them were party members before Hitler came to power so they are used to the humdrum techniques of the democratic process in smalt groups...

...In 1959, for example, some 11 million cinema tickets were sold to persons with East German identity cards...

...First the lecture, then a discussion, and third the election of a new treasurer, the last one having recently died...

...Second, whenever there is a bottleneck in the supply of finished products or raw materials in East Germany, the industrial managers there buy their goods in the West...

...Sure we are," he replied...

...But after a couple of months or a couple of years, she'd get a letter telling her that the application was turned down...

...The Communists have been putting pressure on the owner again, eh...

...I'm a member of the Social Democratic party, which is the main reason for my being a member of the "travelers-between-the-two-worlds-club...

...The West German Government generously subsidizes the cultural needs of the East zone people, and hence East Germans can go to movies, theaters, museums, libraries and concert halls at the same entrance fee in East marks as a West Berliner would pay in Western currency...

...Each rendezvous has to be arranged as carefully as in the age of the horse-drawn carriage...

...But with these people, it's just routine...

...When an election to the city council comes up, most of them spend three to four evenings a week in the West, distributing leaflets, doing their share of door-to-door campaigns and speaking at public meetings...

...She could never get permission to leave East Berlin legally...

...First, there are innumerable East Germans who buy higher-grade Western consumer goods, such as textiles, shoes, coffee, cigarettes, etc...

...On the stairway he opened the door to let me in...

...We started to talk...

...On the other hand, only 13,000 West Berliners still work in the East, many of them employees of the East German railways...

...Sometimes it's hard to find the place, especially during winter when it's pitch dark at 7. Once, I was completely lost so I asked a passerby...

...Western economists estimate that the West mark's actual buying power is only 30 per cent higher than the East mark's, but the high exchange rate in the West is not manipulated...

...Well, you just join me, Comrade, we're going to the same place...

...They are well aware that the average West Berliner is unlikely to exchange his valuable West marks at a one-for-one ratio to go to the theater in East Berlin, if he can get four for one in West Berlin...

...It may sound like a paradox, considering all the political controversies and crises in this town, but I think it's the only place where the term "active coexistence" has a practical meaning...

...It turned out, finally, that he was heading for a meeting of the Communist-run National Front which also had its offices there...

...the SPD met on the second floor...

...An East Berliner who gets a daily wage of 20 marks in the West has about as many East marks after the exchange as he would earn in a week in the East zone...

...The second is more personal...

...Why do I cross to the East zone...

...There are innumerable openings for university-trained people in our country and the secure prospect of a wonderful career...

...The meetings usually take place in the district party offices or in the back room of a bar...

...In East Berlin, the state banks trade one East mark for one West mark...

...they take the elevated or use private cars...

...The election of the new treasurer takes more time than originally planned...

...My girl doesn't happen to be a Communist though she always gets the highest marks in her Marxism-Leninism exams...

...West Berlin authorities have therefore, established the so-called wage-exchanges which provide a more equitable balance...

...What are the consequences, then, for people who work in one currency area and live in another...

...Because of the four-power arrangements on Berlin, the SPD in East Berlin is still permitted to operate in an atmosphere of semi-legality...

...You just can't help getting the knack for Communist lingo...

...There, it's cosier," he said, "and you can order a beer...

...At least once a week I set a call from our West Berlin party headquarters asking me to lecture on some political subject at an SPD district meeting in East Berlin...

...A West Berlin worker, however, earning 20 marks in East Berlin would, after exchange, have only five West marks, or the equivalent of about two hours of wages in the West zone...

...They go by foot, by subway...

...My talk was on the economic problems facing us in the next period—there was no need to point out that us, in this context, meant the SPD city administration in West Berlin, because all the participants think of themselves as West Berliners, at least with respect to politics...

...Still I wouldn't want to miss living in Berlin...

...Naturally, she's entitled to apply for a sort of emigration visa...

...the address given to me in the West...

...only the ties between the inhabitants of the two parts of the city have not been completely cut...

...Certainly not out of Communist sympathies...

...Actually politics is only one of my reasons for visiting the East regularly...

...East German authorities also provide indirect subsidies in the same field...

...If she pressed for a reason she'd be informed that the workers' and peasants' state has no intention of supporting students who, in the long run, will not be of any benefit to it and who will simply leave after marrying someone from the West...

...There's not much use in meeting her in the East unless you're prepared to take some sandwiches along, or you re invited to her place, because no meals are served to West Berliners in the restaurants even if, formally, she'd be willing to foot the bill for both of us...

...We're certainly not meeting in this room," I gasped...

...Among them are tens of thousands still economically a part of the other section of town...

...And the closing paragraph would, in all likelihood, read something like this: "However, we would welcome it if your husband should decide to join our ranks...

...there must be thousands of couples with the same problem...

...A two-part article, THE NEW LEADER presents the West Berliner's story in this issue and in the next, the East Berliner tells how he survives under Communism...

...There's only one exception...

...Two big photos of Lasalle and Marx...

...Regular trips to East Berlin make one a little blind to visual propaganda of all kinds...

...But how is the rate of exchange fixed if there is hardly any trade between East and West, if there is no integrated market which might automatically regulate the exchange rate...

...The Communists know that any attempt to eliminate the SPD in the East would bring retaliation on the SED in the West...

...I would now like to present two Berliners, one from each sector, who have but one trait in common: For different reasons they belong to a group who daily cross the border, the great divide between two worlds...

...The actual rate of exchange, for all practical purposes, is one West mark for four East marks...

...Then I take the subway or the elevated, equipped with notes and newspaper clippings...

...So he leased the room to the local branch of the society for sports and techniques...

...Every week, from both sides, approximately 100,000 Germans travel across the Iron Curtain—a curtain which, fortunately, is loosely drawn in Berlin...

...Before I leave home I check carefully to see that I have my identity card, my membership card and some East marks with me...

...In the lounges of most theaters West Berliners may buy hot dogs, drinks or cold meals during intermission...

...In short, the average East Berliner went to West Berlin's movies almost as often as to his own...

...Their wages and salaries are in one currency but they buy in another and so must exchange their money...

...Once a date is made, you can hardly change it...

...Very often, however, supplies run out before all the demand has been satisfied...

...Two and a quarter million Berliners are, for all practical purposes, citizens of East Germany...

...One of them, in the uniform of the city transit company, asks the district secretary why the meeting isn't around the corner in the restaurant, the way it had been...

...For West Berlin's banks and money-vendors the rate is approximately four East marks for one West mark...

...The members of this district are almost evenly divided between right and left wing so any election, however unimportant, is bound to become a show of strength between the two...

...People know this so the moment the curtain comes down they rush for the doors...

...Eric Nohara, assistant editor of Der Monat and a frequent commentator on the German scene, not only gives us a brief essay on their problems, but also unique insight into their lives, by letting two of them speak in their own words of their work, their problems and their attitudes...

...A letter would take at least two or three days, and a telegram won't reach its destination less than 24 hours after it has been posted...

...And I shall let them speak in their own words...

...Apart from their employers, almost everyone in the West tries to get rid of them because they evade taxes and bring wages down...

...You catch the next elevated going West and somehow have a feeling of immense relief when you cross the frontier again, with the neon lights, the street hawkers selling the latest edition of a paper, and a couple of prostitutes pacing restlessly around the entrance to a juke-box joint: You're back again...

...So there's no way out for her but to defect and leave most of her property in the East...

...The meeting has not been officially opened so the people stick together in groups of four or five, exchanging tips about grocery stores where you can buy oranges or apples, and talking about their vacation plans for the summer...

...Divided by ideology, the city is joined not only by its history and geography, but also by a singular group of border crossers—the Grenzgangers or GGs—who daily go from their homes in one sector to their jobs in the other, and then back again...

...No," the secretary answers, "just the other way round...