In Or Aortt' Altrtin gbetto
FRANK WHITFORD
It is in high summer that claustrophobia is most likely to strike. On weekends the three- lane city motorways are thick with cars rac- ing around the perimeter like wasps caught in a jam jar; there is a thirty-minute wait for a garden table at the Grfinewald Gast- stiitten where families interrupt their walk to drink a glass of Berliner Weisse; and any- one silly enough to have to leave his tiny fleck of sand on the crowded Wannsee bath- ing beach for a few minutes (each grain im- ported from the Baltic before the war) will find it occupied when he returns. It is in high summer that Berlin seems most fenced in, and it is then most likely to occur to anyone looking over the breeze-block and barbed-wire wall into the East that he, and not the East Berliners, is in the ghetto.
At other times West Berlin seems to be a richly endowed city. From the south-west to the north a chain of large lakes, linked by regular passenger steamers and dotted with sailing dinghies, is flanked on both sides by forests large enough to get lost, and to hunt wild boar in. In the north and south small farming communities cluster around church and pub, and there are cowpats and horse manure on the narrow streets. In the north and south, too, are huge futuristic dormi- tory towns, Gropius-Stadt and the Miirki- sches Viertel, from which workers com- mute daily to the Siemens and Telefunken . factories, or drive on Saturdays to see Hertha BSC play football in the Olympic stadium, apart from the political situation almost the only heritage from Nazi days.
West Berlin seems to have everything: angling clubs, race tracks, two universities, two airports, every kind of bar from the homespun to the Chez Nous, which special- ises in transvestite cabaret, the most attrac- tive whores in Germany, and more cinemas with more changes of programme than Paris. Human ingenuity has provided what nature could not. On Lake Teufel a pile of rubbish 393 feet high has been transformed into a ski-run, complete with lift and snow-cannon for mild winter days.'
2,200,000 people, 70,000 dogs, forty-six crocodiles and Rudolf Hess occupy the 185 square miles of West Berlin. It is the only city in Germany where pubs are not obliged to close at a certain hour, and where male couples are permitted to dance in public. In spite of the strict controls, Berlin is a cus- toms-free area between East and West, im- porting about £30 million worth of goods from the Democratic Republic every year. This makes East Germany, in effect, an associate member of the Common Market.
Underground passengers travelling from Leinestrasse to Gesundbrunnen go under East Berlin. Apart from a stop at Fried- richstrasse, where the Eastern checkpoint is situated, the train glides through six dimly lit stations, closed since the wall went up, with fading posters peeling from the yellow- tiled walls.
The steamers on the lakes in the West carefully negotiate passages marked bY buoys to reach their destination. The border runs through the lakes and is patrolled by armed launches of the East German navY which hover alongside while the steamer turns round at the Glienicker Brficke, where spies are sometimes exchanged. The sailors rarely speak, even among themselves. From time to time one unbuttons his fly and urinates into the water on the Western side.
Hard by the Brandenberg Gate, in the British Sector, two Red Army soldiers watch over the Russian war memorial. At its foot a British infantryman in a pillbox watches over the Russians. Behind the memorial out of sight is a balding football pitch where military police practice.
Not far from the Wannsee, on the Teltow Canal, where, in 1918, Rosa Luxemburg's corpse was thrown after she had been murdered by the Freikorps, stands Check- point Bravo, a pillbox by a bicycle shed flanked by trees. Beyond it, a narrow road runs through a broad strip of deforested land, through tank traps, runs for guard-dogs, barbed-wire and powerful spotlights to Stein- stlicken, a community of 150 people about two miles inside East Germany. It is an ex- clave of West Berlin, to which only its in- habitants and the American army have ac- cess, and because of its isolation, it has its own policeman and fire brigade. Water and electricity come from Potsdam, in the East, and special permission must be obtained days in advance for doctor's visits and funerals. An American helicopter flies in twice a day to show the flag.
Another exclave, Eiskeller, is in the British sector. Also surrounded by barbed wire and tank traps, it is now used only by those with allotments there. Not long ago one family was in permanent residence, and the son cycled back and forth to school every day, accompanied by a British scout car. In the middle of Eiskeller a large field is fenced in. This (an enclave within an exclave) belongs to the East, and is used only by the Russian helicopter which flies in to show the flag.
West Germans and foreigners can ex- perience two totally different cultures and atmospheres on the same day. The crossing control at Fried richstrasse and Checkpoint Charlie make them like air-locks and, on the other side, even the smells are different. Westerners are stared at suspiciously, or ap- proached for cigarettes. In spite of the im- pressive new buildings around Alexander, platz and the number of consumer goods marked 'for immediate delivery' in the state- owned stores, East Berlin is drab and inhos- pitable. Out in the suberbs, where there are few shops and even fewer people on the streets than in the centre, black smoke bel- ches from factory chimneys and the greyness of the barrack-like buildings is relieved only by red slogans declaring 'Those in league with the Soviet Union are on the side of victory'. A mile or two away from the Kurfiirstendamm the atmosphere is stranger than that of New York or London, a tribute to the efficiency of the controls.
West Berliners can only cross on those very rare occasions when special passes are issued. Only West Berlin's sewage has free access to the East where it is processed for a million-and-a-half marks a year. Bus routes stop abruptly at the wall, where West Ber- lin peters out in abandoned pubs, boarded- up shops and bomb-sites rank with weeds, infested with rats and rabbits, and littered with rusted cars. Two minutes away from the KurfOrstendamm, where widows spend afternoons eating cream-cakes in the opulent cafes, Potsdamer Platz, once the busiest point in Germany, stands empty apart from the watch-towers, acres of concrete bisected by lines of tank-traps, silent except for the birds and the rumble of distant trams. The wall is beginning to gather moss now, to merge after ten years into the surrounding landscape, and the guards in the watch towers yawn and scratch themselves.
In spite of Berlin's own farms and indus- try almost everything must come in from the West along the three motorways which may be closed at any time. Every morning thirty-seven tankers bring the day's milk the 100 miles from the Federal Republic. As the day proceeds the line of lorries rolls on, bringing the city's needs from West to East, each egg, each pair of trousers listed in trip- licate on the compulsory East German form.
It would be understandable if this bizarre city were to die out gradually, if its inhabi- tants were to concede victory in the war of attrition. Figures suggest that this has been happening for some time. Twenty per cent of West Berliners are over sixty-five, and only half the population is under forty-five. Many of these young people are on the run from conscription and will return to West Germany when the dangerous age is past. Every year about 13,000 more people die than are born, which explains the bus-loads of pensioners armed with plastic water-cans who daily tend relatives' graves in the crowded cemeteries. It also explains the crowds of medical students who come to Berlin on vacation courses: elsewhere in Germany there is an acute shortage of corpses.
Berlin's town plans extend to the year 2025, but it is a city of the present with an uncertain future and a clouded past. In spite of its exemplary transport system, its archi- tectural masterpieces, its bursting stores, its internationally famous theatres and opera and enviable art collections, it remains an outpost behind enemy lines, a political and economic anomaly, supported only by the concern of the Western allies, the determina- tion of the Federal Republic and the nerves of its inhabitants. The constant unrest at the universities, the increasingly violent reaction to it of the Berliners themselves and the astonishingly high suicide rate are evidence that those nerves are not as resilient as they once were.
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