The wall that has become a bridge A nation comes to terms with its fears and freedom Story and photographs by David Hornback Mercury News Photographer David Hornback lived in West Berlin from May 1986 to September 1987. When the wall came down on Nov. 9, he flew to Berlin and spent the next week photographing the historic events there. When the excitement had faded and the international media had moved on to Czechoslovakia, Hornback decided to find out how newfound freedom had affected the lives of East Berliners – especially people under 28 who had never known life without the wall. He went to East Berlin’s Humboldt University and met with many of the students who had been active in the protests, including Carola Ritter, a 26-year-old theology student who had been active in the student movement for several months. She had been one of several students elected by the student body to represent them before the university administration. Hornback spent two days with Ritter, watching her going to classes, working on the new student organization, attending a protest with friends and spending time at home with her boyfriend, Uwe-Karsten Plisch, 24, and her two daughters, Magdalena, 2, and Johanna, 6. Here are excerpts of their conversations: Q. Why have you become involved in the student movement? Plisch (smiling): She was trying to put off her schoolwork for a year. Next year we have our examinations and they are very hard. And (getting involved in the movement) was much easier than studying. I don’t think this is the whole reason, but I think it is one of the reasons why Carola got involved. Ritter: It is not the right reason, though. Plisch (still teasing): I think it’s to give interviews and to become famous – in this way she gets the feeling that she is needed. Ritter: Oh, but I get that at home with the kids. (She clears away the breakfast dishes while Plisch sits at the table playing with Magdalena.)
Ritter: The real reason was that in grade school I was obligated to be a member of the FDJ (Free German Youth), a Communist youth organization that proclaimed atheism. Everyone who wanted to go to the university and study must be in FDJ. And FDJ said that you must be an atheist. I am a Christian and could not agree with it. (It was more difficult for Ritter, too, because she wanted to study theology and eventually become a minister.) Now there is a chance to change everything. And now we students are getting some of our demands from the government, mainly that we are not to be treated like schoolchildren. In grade schools and high schools, you must do everything the authorities say. I think this is OK when you are young, but when people are 20 or 25 they should not still be treated this way. This kind of Erziehung (the strict manner of raising the young) is for children, not university students. University students can and must think for themselves. Q. What were your demands as students? Ritter: One demand was for the libraries to be free. Libraries in East Germany had what the people called a Giftschrank, meaning, poisonous cabinet. This was the place where forbidden books were kept. With special permission, researchers or scholars were allowed access to specific books. The books kept there were books critical of the East German government, all books against socialism, original works about fascism from 1943-45, Stalin’s writing and books critical of Stalin. Plisch: But the problem is that you cannot learn about fascism if you are not allowed to read about it. Making it forbidden makes it much more desirable. Ritter: Much of what has happened in the past couple of months is the result of student demands. The specific demands for free libraries; free studies and other freedoms demanded by the students reflect (the desire of) much of the rest of the population. The students have worked more specific demands, and because of this have had quicker successes. Plisch: I grew up with the wall – it was always there. Not just with the wall, but also the wall between the people here. We had a secret
service that wanted to control all that you did and your thinking…you could see it on your parents´ faces. When there was talk about politics they became afraid and said “Shhhhh!” Everyone with TVs could see programs from the West, but you could not talk about it. It was taboo. With friends you could talk about it. We trusted our friends, but not all our classmates, not all our comrades. The most difficult times for us were probably in the ‘60s and ‘70s, during the peak of the Cold War. Q. But how did living here affect you? Did you ever want to leave and move west? Did you ever want to see other countries? Ritter: Travel, yes, but I want to stay here. It is my homeland. I love this country. The West is (what we call) an “elbow society,” where everyone is fighting each other for a living. But everyone is very alone. Here there is more comradeship between the people. On a lower level, we have more social security. You will not see any beggars here. Cars, televisions, they are not important to have.
Q. What kind of future do you want for your children? Ritter: It is difficult to speak of future for the children without using empty and overused words like freedom and peace. Plisch: What we want for the children is for them to be able to make decisions for themselves, to learn for themselves what is good for them. They should not do what we want them to do, but what they want and think is right for themselves, even if we may not agree with them. Ritter: I thought of the children when I began with the student movement. I am working for another future.
Q. What do you like about living here? What advantages might the East have over the West? Ritter: Life here is very peaceful. In big cities in the West it is very stressful and hectic. Here there are hardly any problems with drugs. We have very little crime for a big city. It is an island of security. Plisch: With our currency so weak, you cannot buy drugs. It is a very good thing. (He laughs.) During our interview, Ritter’s youngest daughter, Magdalena, had been out in front of the building playing in the snowy yard. Occasionally Ritter or Plisch would glance out the window to watch her, but they didn’t seem to worry too much about her. I was struck by the differences between this and a big city in the West. In the West, parents would probably be too afraid to allow a 2-yearold girl to play alone in a big city. I asked Ritter and Plisch if East Berlin has problems with child abductions, as we had been having in California. They said it was extremely rare. Violence and kidnapping do occur, but not often. When something like this does happen, Plisch said that all the people turn out to help the police track down the criminal. I brought up George Orwell’s book “Nineteen Eighty-Four,” where every individual was policed by everyone else. I asked Plisch if this is what East Berlin is like. He laughed and said no, the people will only join in and help the police to this extend when there is something serious, like a kidnapping. I asked him if he knew the book “Nineteen Eighty-Four.” Plisch (laughing): Ah yes, “Nineteen Eighty-Four,” and George Orwell. We are not allowed to have it here, but everyone has read it. People like to read it too. Some things in it are similar to here, but in West Germany you have many of the same things with your computer systems. And the fact that we do have it here and can read it shows that we are not living in that same world. But of course, it was interesting to read it from here because we read it from the inside. He went on to say that they enjoyed reading it more as a thing of
curiosity. It did not represent the way East Germany is. There are no Big Brothers in the east watching over their every move; although for the older generations, who had lived during the height of the Cold War, there might have been more to fear. Ritter: Americans have strange ideas about us – they will probably be surprised to see that we live very normal lives. We hear that people in the U.S. believe that we eat our children or something. They think – if you live in a Communist land, you are not normal people.
---November 1989