Two Berlins
Keith Kyle
Reichsbahn': The anachronistic sign of the Imperial Railway hangs on every station of the old-fashioned, rackety overhead line which carries you everywhere in West Berlin for 50 pfennigs (10p). To a British visitor, for whom even the most trivial thing in Germany is fiendishly expensive, the S-bahn, as it is invariably called, is bliss. It carries you with sufficient speed practically everywhere you want to go, you do not have to go on showing tickets as in a London tube, and you have a sense of experiencing one of the few surviving romantic symbols of old Berlin. You would however be making a mistake in supposing—as viewers of Michael Frayn's television film might have supposed—that in travelling the S-bahn you were doing as Berliners do. Only 7 per cent of Berliners patronise the system.
The Reichsbahn is run by the East German authorities. Allied troops, and anyone in Berlin under military discipline, are not allowed to travel on it after 5 p.m. on the theory that at that hour they might be drunk, or just tired, and find themselves carried all unknowing into Communist hands. At one point, the Friedrichstrasse, Western passengers do indeed regularly pass through East Berlin and even alight there for the purpose of changing trains.
It is partly because the S-bahn is East German-run that so few Westerners use it. At the time the Wall was built it was boycotted and the decision made to extend the U-bahn, an underground system which interlocks with the buses. There is no longer a boycott but people have lost the habit; and anyway, they say, the S-bahn is unsafe (having virtually nothing spent on its maintenance) and dirty (though less so than the London Underground).
Recently there appeared in the exceedingly dull pages of Neues Deutschland, the official organ of the DDR (the German Democratic Republic), a suggestion that the West Berlin Senate might, perhaps, care to lease the S-bahn. This set alarm bells ringing in the three allied military governments in the West. There is a perpetual low-level boring away by the East in the undying effort to undermine the foundations of the Western position. Since the four-power agreements on Berlin there has been a succession of bilateral negotiations between East and West, the DDR in some cases dealing with the Federal Republic and in others with the allied authorities or, subject to their permission and supervision, with the West Berlin Senate. For example, the autobahn route between West Berlin and Helmstedt, which is the Berliner's chief link with the Federal Republic, is getting a desperately needed facelift, the Federal Republic paying 60 per cent (£52 million) of the cost and at the same time increasing its annual payment for the use of East German transit roads. Another £10 million is to buy an improvement in the train services from West Berlin and talks have been going on for some time about reopening to barge traffic the Teltow Canal, which is bisected by the Wall. A garbage agreement has been reached, whereby West Berlin garbage can be exported to the East and automatic telephone dialling has been restored between the two Berlins.
The case of the S-bahn has sent the allied authorities, as so often in the special world of Berlin, searching for first principles. Who
owns the S-bahn ? If the dead, departed Reich, then how can it be leased ? The DDR, of course, claims sovereignty; the western allies refer to an allied directive of 1945 which treats ownership as being in suspense and confers responsibility for technical operation on the old railway headquarters; which was in the East. But the West Berlin Senate is preparing a tough answer if the allies refer the question of substance to them. The State Secretary in the Department of Economics and Traffic told me that even if the Allies authorised talks I West Berlin would not be interested.
West Berlin is in no mood to be openhanded. There is much grumbling alreadY at what past deals with the East are costing and at the optimism of some grandiose projects of its own. West Berlin has its own Centre Point, a huge, empty, uncompleted office block and shopping centre whose owner eventually went bankrupt, leaving his monument to the embarrassed Senate. But the really controversial Berlin building is the Congress Centre, which when it is, completed in 1979 will be able to house and provide elaborate facilities for conferences of up to 10,000 delegates. ('Have you ever heard of a conference with 10,000 deice gates ?', asked a sarcastic Berliner.) After the last election the one-party (SPD) Social Democratic government of the city (Which seemed to have lasted for ever) gave way t° an SPD-FDP coalition, the Liberals (the FDP) took over the Department of Econn" mics. They went over the plans for Congress Centre and tried to find ways of substituting a more modest version. But like our 0nw.11 Concorde the Centre escaped through their fingers. It had reached the stage when lt would cost more to change the plans than to plough ahead with the original ones. West Berlin has always seen itself as the 'capital of East-West trade' if it can he capital of nothing else. This trade does not so far amount to very much. OptimisticallY, the West Berliners say that East GermanY, having a more advanced economy than, others in the East and a relatively small population, must purchase advanced tech-, nology from the West. But circumstances in the final breakdown of the long-runnitl,g negotiations between the Federal Republ.l.ct and the Soviet Union for German-bull nuclear plant at Kaliningrad (formerlY Konigsberg in East Prussia) with tra mission lines running through West Berlint to the Federal Republic, strongly sugges that the East German Government been unalterably opposed to such link. If reports from the East are correct tt East German Government are probah',Yr still feeling sore at the outcome of theit publication in full of the Helsinki Final Ace to the European Security Conference in til pages of Neues Deutschland. Since that ch4
of
there has been an unparalleled flood
applications from citizens of the Gerrntt" Democratic Republic seeking to availthen: selves of the delicious fruits of frecd°"' suggested by the 'third basket'.
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