The Border Crossers
NOHARA, ERIC
Berlin Dialogue-II THE BORDER CROSSERS By Eric Nohara Last week Eric Nohara, assistant editor of Der Monat and a frequent commentator on Germany, introduced the story of the Berlin border...
...All his schoolmates are members because of the social activities the Pioneers offer—excursions, sports, etc...
...I'd like people to talk less passionately and more rationally about things...
...WE LIVE A rather withdrawn life, my wife, my son and I. We had some old friends in the Western sector but we don't meet them as often as we used to...
...I only explained that the chocolate was for my kid...
...Never get involved in politics at all, that's the best thing you can do...
...I assume because we still think of any East German police or customs officer as a Bolshevik...
...I'm used to these inspections...
...Maybe I could even get a permit from the East authorities to take my furniture with me...
...That's one of the advantages of living in a city like Berlin where there's a steady flow of the best culture from both worlds...
...But when I left the elevated in the West, I was suddenly stopped by a Western customs officer in plain clothes...
...The officer asked me to open my big parcel but when he read the titles, he patted me on the shoulder cheerfully, saying, "That's good...
...If the Russians seal off West Berlin I'd have to make up my mind whether to stay in the East definitely, or move to the West...
...You're a defeatist, that's all...
...As to the West, recently I got into an argument with some of my fellow librarians about the advantages and disadvantages of owning a television set...
...And can you imagine it, I learn a lot of things I never knew before...
...I wouldn't want to leave a place of work I'm so used to...
...Man was not self-generated...
...But on one decisive point, I added, the teacher was wrong...
...They jeered: "Typical...
...I was in a real quandary...
...And we're proud of owning a TV set...
...I buy a Western evening paper which I then read on the ride home...
...And I was pretty lucky matters were settled that wav, that my case was only considered an infringement of customs regulations and not a case of illegal propaganda...
...Oh, yes, I almost forgot, and that's a real problem: my son's education...
...In the long run he would have believed me but in that case, once he believed his teacher was talking nonsense, he'd lose all his natural curiosity and turn into a backward pupil...
...And how can I help her financially if I move to the West...
...Sure, I could move to the West...
...In the first article, Nohara described the economic situation faced by the 100,000 Berliners who regularly travel across the Iron Curtain, and presented a first-hand account of one of the many West Berlin border crossers...
...In the early morning I take a subway from my flat in East Berlin to where I work in the West...
...Actually, I don't want to switch with anyone...
...Actually, I have no reason to worry...
...I was feeling brave and didn't show him my permit...
...As to travel, we couldn't get a passport to a Western country...
...And the result would have been an awful conflict for my son, between his loyalty to me and his loyalty to his teacher...
...As soon as you use the term DDR you're attacked right off...
...That's my boy's special hobby...
...I'm not interested in cars and besides I can't afford one...
...Just take my own case as a Grenzganger...
...He didn't answer but started to stare inquisitively at my new topcoat—also from the West...
...We GGs (Grenzgangers) are not liked very much either in the East or the West...
...They're afraid to visit us in the East, and it doesn't look nice if we go only to their places...
...Furthermore, I have a border permit in my wallet indicating that I work in the West and am therefore allowed to buy Western goods and carry them with me into the East...
...Talking about the cold war...
...She's too old...
...It certainly would interest me to read more about it...
...they're just too dogmatic, prescribing what people have to think and read and listen to...
...I also have to think of my relatives...
...Really, why...
...But what can I do about it...
...In the subway station I buy an East Berlin morning paper...
...They'll never turn me into a Communist over there...
...I've been crossing the border every weekday for the last 12 years, and they haven't asked me to open my bag more than eight or 10 times during that whole time...
...He must have thought I was a suspicious character though I vehemently asserted that this was only reading material for a student, and that one must be informed on such matters too...
...In the first couple of years I didn't bother to meddle with his homework, but now I always spend some time on it...
...Then I thought I'd better pull out my Grenzganger permit after all...
...Just the other day, for instance, with my son and his class, I went to a chemical plant where they produce plastics...
...Not that I have reason to be afraid...
...I mentioned the fact that in Berlin one can look at two programs, one from the West and the other from the DDR —the official Communist abbreviation for the East German state...
...But I'd better not talk about the customs any more because, obviously, I can't tell you all the tricks one can use...
...But every time the police enter the train, I can still feel my blood pressure rise...
...As a West Berliner I'd hardly ever be able to get a travel permit...
...But I happen to be a librarian and I wouldn't want my colleagues to whisper that I read the Eastern papers regularly—it might do me some damage...
...Sure reunification would be a good thing, but at the moment all the rhetoric about it adds up to nothing but propaganda...
...On the other hand, however, they often ask me to get them East German films because they're cheap and good quality...
...You may wonder why I read a Communist newspaper with all its boring propaganda...
...It's not much: a wooden two-room summer house, an orchard with some 20 trees, mostly apple trees...
...There you have the cold war...
...Still, I suppose that schools are the same all over—in the East and West...
...In other words you no longer believe in reunification...
...I guess that's one of the few good things in the division...
...In the West, policemen don't care what paper you read...
...It's like living close to an active volcano that might erupt any minute...
...He earns his money here but spends it over there...
...My mother lives in Dresden, and with my East Berlin identity card I can always take a train to visit her there...
...The kids certainly enjoyed themselves finding out how the knowledge they got in school could be applied to practical things...
...The first time we met he asked me to open my bag and found a bar of chocolate I'd bought in the West...
...In the first place, there aren't any other papers to be had, and I have to read something during the subway ride...
...Possibly Khrushchev and Eisenhower will arrive at an agreement, but here in Berlin—I really wonder...
...Originally, I didn't want him to join...
...During one customs inspection, she turned angrily to the customs officer and said, "But surely this isn't political...
...I would have had to prove it, in the first place, and that would have meant I'd have to delve into biology again—not to speak of all the many other fields in the school curriculum...
...The train stops only for a moment at the Eastern border station so the customs man only has just enough time to look for people with trunks, for elderly women with bloated pouches, or for teddy boys wearing new jeans obviously just bought in the West...
...Unfortunately, I don't have enough time...
...Frankly speaking, I'm pretty well off...
...But in the long run, it doesn't work out...
...he was a creation of God, and it was God's deliberate will that made human beings develop as they did...
...It's a luxury I just can't afford...
...She'd be very hard up if she had to live from her old-age pension only...
...When I got my job, Berlin was still one city...
...These are some of my experiences as a Grenzganger...
...I couldn't ask her to come to Berlin...
...Sometimes I also get a pack of Western cigarettes—American blend...
...When he got to the right age, I tried to enroll him in a West Berlin grade school, but the police told me it was against East German law...
...Sometimes I'm a little ashamed about profiting personally from the division of our country...
...I shy away from politics, even from political talk...
...It serves our cause...
...We've learned to adapt ourselves to the conditions...
...In a way this Communist challenge is a quite fascinating subject, even for someone like me who doesn't care too much about politics...
...I tried once, but it didn't work...
...I get a salary of about 500 D-marks...
...My brother would be affected, too, if I went to the West...
...I told him that in a way his teacher was right, that human beings are indeed made of matter and had really evolved the way his teacher had described it...
...And if I tried to sell my "estate," I'd get almost nothing for it, what with all the property regulations...
...That answer still leaves the door open for my son to turn to religious matters and spares him the conflicting loyalties...
...He pleaded with me over and over again...
...A director of one of the State-owned department stores doesn't earn any more...
...And besides, you can always find at least two or three interesting stories: an installment of a Traven novel, a report about a new sputnik or the letters-to-the-editor section...
...But we are theater fans, my wife and I, and at least once every two weeks we see a new play, either in the West or the East, wherever the best is playing—the West Berlin festival with Grundgens or the New York City Ballet, or in East Berlin the State opera, the Moscow Bolshoi Theater or the Berlin Ensemble...
...I carry some sandwiches for lunch because I can't afford to eat lunch in a West Berlin restaurant...
...That's a lot of money...
...Some months back, a student in the West, a refugee, asked me to buy some Marxist literature for him which, apparently, you can't get in the West...
...My wife buys fashion magazines in the West regularly...
...So there's nothing I can do even if I wanted to...
...Well, there isn't too much to tell...
...Here Nohara gives an East Berliner—one of the 40,000 who work each day in the Western sector—a chance to describe in his own words the complicated life and intricate problems of a Grenzganger under a Communist regime...
...I contradicted him but he wasn't to be convinced...
...The officer, evidently what they call a good Marxist, replied, "I don't know of anything unpolitical...
...I don't think so...
...Otherwise you can get into trouble with the border police or customs officers who sometimes inspect the trains...
...Some time ago, I showed them a new Leica made in East Germany which had cost me the equivalent of a 150 West marks...
...Otherwise I might have been arrested...
...Reproachfully, he said, "Why are you people afraid of us...
...But the problem is the ideological training...
...Berlin Dialogue-II THE BORDER CROSSERS By Eric Nohara Last week Eric Nohara, assistant editor of Der Monat and a frequent commentator on Germany, introduced the story of the Berlin border crossers—the Grenz-ganger—who move back and forth daily between the two sectors of their divided city...
...The teacher had told him that according to the scientific theories of Darwin and Engels, man was a direct descendant of the apes...
...politics is not my cup of tea, you know...
...Most of the time they talk about the new car they're planning to buy, about their vacation plans, whether to go to France or Italy...
...But I'd be pretty unhappy if I couldn't go there for the weekends...
...So what should we hope for...
...Marx for the West...
...Otherwise, I might be questioned by Western customs too...
...Once the subway enters the East sector I switch the Western paper for the Communist one...
...He works in the East German finance ministry and has already told me that they'd probably fire him if a close relative of his decided to defect...
...Anyway, the books were confiscated...
...BERLIN YOU ASKED ME to give you some glimpses of the life of an East Berlin Grenzganger, of someone who regularly crosses the frontier...
...What can I say...
...Should I have told him that all he learns in a Communist school is liable to be propaganda and therefore false...
...But what was I to do...
...Before I get to work I always put the Communist paper into my bag...
...Aside from some minor details my life isn't very different from that of any white-collar worker in a big city, is it...
...Whatever happens on the political seesaw about Berlin immediately affects us Grenzganger...
...First I was stopped by East customs...
...Recently, however, they've introduced a thing called polytechnical education in the school and the kid is getting manual training in industry...
...Do they sound exciting...
...If my wife wears a pair of new shoes, Italian style and bought in the West, the other tenants in the house are envious, and say: "Naturally, she can afford it, with her husband working in the West...
...And also our interests are no longer the same...
...Since 1948 I've been working at the same public library...
...One customs fellow always says hello to me when we meet...
...I'm not too conversant with biology, even less than my son is, I must admit...
...He certainly had learned the text: Human beings, he repeated, are the product of long development from monocellular to multicellular creatures...
...As a Grenzganger I can pick the best of both worlds and use it for a world of my own...
...It took a lot of thinking but I believe I found a sensible solution...
...My co-workers know photography is my hobby...
...With all the exchange regulations, this amounts to about 1,500 East marks a month...
...But I own a small plot of land in East Germany proper and that's something I couldn't take...
...This type of education doesn't run counter to my intentions...
...What we need is legalization of our status...
...It was quite a long list: Lenin, Marx, Plekhanov, Mehring...
...So now he is getting a Communist education...
...That's something we didn't get in our time and it doesn't exist in the West either...
...He's a young Pioneer, a member of the East German youth organization...
...Recently, my son came home all excited about his last biology lesson...
...And in the evening...
Vol. 43 • May 1960 • No. 18
