Adventures in Stasiland (1985)

Adventures in Stasiland (1985)
(c) Melina Magdalena 2008

As I write this post, on Australia Day 2008, I call to mind my younger self on Australia Day 1985, as she prepared to journey to West Germany for a 12 month student exchange. I was 15 years old, and had led a politically sheltered existence. I knew very little of what was going on in the world, and was not prepared for making decisions and choices based on oppression, social justice or politics. I was travelling on a US passport. I only became naturalised as an Australian citizen in 1988, when I was 18 years old.

I'm also revelling in the return of my daughter, after a 2 month student exchange to Vannes, France. She stayed with a family and went to school there, but apparently spent most of her time wandering around the medieval city with the other exchange students. School was irrelevant and boring, and the French students weren't much interested in mixing with the exchange students. It's good to have her home, and to hear the stories she has to tell, about being a foreigner in France.

This afternoon I finished reading Where the Road Leads (2007), the memoires of Jean Calder, an Australian woman who has spent her adult life working with people with disabilities in Lebanon, Egypt and the Gaza Strip. As I reflect on what the Berlin Wall was for me, as a callow 15 year old in 1985, I am conscious of the Wall between Israel and Palestine, and the gross human rights abuses that are being perpetrated in that region of the world, a region I have never visited, but which is often in my thoughts.

Earlier this Summer I read Anna Funder's astonishing book, Stasiland (2002), which opened my eyes wide to some of what was going on in East Germany before that Wall fell. The Stasi were the State's Secret Police, made up of a multitude of bureaucrats, paid informers and unpaid informers. I am horrified by the stories Funder tells in her book, but I am not disbelieving. They set a few puzzle pieces into place for me - things that had affected me, and my family members who lived in East Germany, and things I had not been able to understand until I read the book.

It is interesting to reflect on the passage of time, how that affects the revelation of secrets, and how in turn, the revelation of secrets affects the world as it has changed through the passage of time. The things that can be told, and the things that people are prepared to hear, depend a great deal on what is considered to be acceptable at any given time. Over the past 23 years, I have often thought about what happened to me in East Germany. It is only now, after reading Funder's book, that I am prepared to accept that like so many of the citizens of East Germany, I as a foreigner also fell prey to their evildoings.

I visited my great-uncle, Immo Lucchesi, and his family, three times during 1985, but only two of these visits resulted in our spending any time together. I was rigorously drilled on the border crossing procedures; had my passport in order, and knew what I was allowed, and not allowed to do. I laugh at my younger self now - if only I'd been a more independent, adventurous teenager, I might have taken more notice of my environment. Instead, I relied solely on what I was told, and my own resources. I have no memory of what the Berlin Wall looked like, or what it was like to travel through West Berlin on my way to the East. My memories of East Germany are uniformly grey - no sepia nostalgia - neglected, cheerless and ugly, with a no frills atmosphere.

I was told at the time, that the reason for what happened on my failed visit, was the Sondermarke (special issue postage stamp) that I had chosen to put on the postcard I sent to Onkel Immo, in which I confirmed my arrival date and time to East Berlin. Even as a 15 year old I found this hard to fathom. Who would take the time to go through each and every postal item from West to East Germany; select out those items with the offending stamp; and set them aside or simply throw them away, so that the recipients never knew what they had not received?

Yet after reading Stasiland, I no longer doubt that this was precisely the kind of project to which the East German regime would have devoted a sector of its workforce. It's a shame I don't recall what was on that stamp, but apparently, it was unacceptable to the East German Government. My postcard did not reach my uncle, who was not there at the station to meet me.

A part of me wonders egocentrically whether this was a small, unplanned occurrence as part of a larger-scale effort, or whether it was a more targeted omission. Onkel Immo was well-known as a musician in East Germany. Members of his family were persecuted on many petty levels, that all added up to one big heartache. Unlike the rest of his family, he was able to travel with his orchestra. He was a flautist. He drove back from a tour of China one year, having requested payment in gold. A golden tube lay in the boot of his cardboard Trabi, wrapped in an oily rag. It wasn't detected as he crossed the border back into East Germany. He had it made into a flute, and flaunted his ability to resist the State every time he performed thereafter.

This tale was family legend. It had a huge bearing on my choice to learn the flute when I started highschool. A nice piece of synchronicity is that my second cousin Albrecht Lachmann, (the one who proposed a marriage of convenience to me during the first of my visits to East Germany that year) took me to a production of Mozart's The Magic Flute. Our uncle was not playing that night.

Christa, my exchange mother, put me on the train to Berlin, and waved goodbye from the Hamburg platform. I felt confident. I knew from previous experience that my Tante Ursul would not permit me to leave them any Western money or chocolate, and I had in my bag an appropriate (and legal) set of gifts for my family members.

It was around six in the evening by the time we reached Berlin. I got off the train and went to the area where I would meet my uncle and go home with him. But there was no one there to meet me. I tried to be patient, and work out what to do. I simply stood against a wall, expecting to see someone I knew at any moment. But no one came.

A brainwave! I could call them on the public telephone. But I had no Eastern money. I went to the money exchange desk to ask for help, and to exchange some of my West German marks for East German legal tender. There were people there behind the thick glass. I knew they could see me. One woman sat with her feet on the table, glaring belligerently at me. I gestured politely, knocked on the window, and tried to gain her attention; I had it, but there was no way she was prepared to offer me any assistance - not after hours! She kept on staring at me through the glass, unwilling even to acknowledge our shared humanness.

Later, people asked why I didn't just hop on a taxi with the understanding that my uncle would pay the fare when we reached his home. This idea never occurred to me. I'd never caught a taxi alone before, would never have presumed that my uncle had the money to pay anyway, and was not prepared to get into a taxi with a strange man, when I did not have legal money to pay him with.

So I stood around some more, whilst commuters flowed around me. I felt resentful. They had someplace to go. What was I going to do? Eventually, my gaze fell upon a sign that showed the train timetable. Ah - there was a train back to Hamburg that evening. I could catch it, and at least when I got back to West Germany I knew how to get home from the station. And yes, there was time for me to figure out where to catch it.

I gathered all my courage and approached a middle aged woman. I asked her how to get back to the western side of the station so that I could catch another train. She explained the pathway. From memory, I had to go down some steps, through a short tunnel, around the corner, and up another set of steps. Something like that. I presented my passport and my return train ticket at the counter, as requested. The officers, in their green uniforms, took it away and left me standing there.

After a while, a uniformed someone came onto my side of the counter, and led me into a small room. It had no window, and was furnished with a desk and two chairs. A naked light bulb swung from the ceiling. Unschooled and naive as I was, I still recognised the cultural conventions of an interrogation chamber. He fired questions were at me in rapid German. I struggled to cope.

First, to confirm my personal details, as set down in my passport.
Secondly, to establish my reasons for coming to the GDR (East Germany). Who was I planning to stay with, what was I going to do there, and why hadn't I gone where I was supposed to go?
Thirdly, the bureaucratic necessities, and my failure to observe them correctly. Why hadn't I registered with the police as a foreigner was supposed to? Why had I not exchanged my West German money for East German marks?

While all this was happening, and for years thereafter, all I could see was how these soldiers or police - these human beings, for crying out loud - WHATEVER their role, had all the pieces of my story in front of them. Why couldn't they have taken the small leap of intelligence to assist me in my distress? What would it have taken, to call my uncle for me, and have him not only confirm my story, but also give him the opportunity to pick me up and take me home as planned?

Now I understand - they no doubt saw me as a bona fide East German citizen, posing as a US citizen, trying to make my escape to the illustrious West. I thought my story was straightforward, and my German bad. Perhaps it was not bad enough? I don't remember their searching my luggage. Funder mentions that some would-be escapees placed western goods in their bags in an effort to look like Western tourists. People were also told to cut the tags off their garments "so that they did not read 'People's Own Manufacture" (page 210).

Eventually, my interrogator left the room and returned 10 minutes later with my passport. I ran up the stairs to the platform to see the train to Hamburg just chugging out of the station without me.

The petty meanness of this deliberate act cut me to the quick, but I was determined to be strong, and not let it get to me.

The next train was in 12 hours time. I had a whole night to wait, and nowhere to go. I was hardly your streetwise 15 year old. What could I do? The platform was deserted, so I sat down on a bench and took out my novel to re-read. At least that would help to pass some time. I tried to read slowly.

After a couple of hours, when it was nearing midnight, I was still reading slowly. A trio of soldiers paraded intermittently along the high catwalk that spanned the East German platform. I suppose their role was to look for potential defectors, and that from so high up, they could see just about everything. I heard them shouting and talking amongst themselves, but I tried to ignore them. Eventually, I realised they were trying to get my attention.

"You can't stay here all night!" they shouted sown at me.

"Why not?"

"You just can't."

"Well, where am I supposed to go then?"

"To the West. That's where you belong!"

They laughed at me, and I felt the impact of their derision. At the time I felt sorry for them. I thought perhaps they resented my freedom in comparison with their repression. Now I'm not so sure. Maybe they were just poking fun at me.

I took them seriously, and put away my book. They were armed and dangerous, after all. I asked them how to get to the West, and they told me the route. It involved more steps and more tunnels to get to another train platform in the same station. Uncertain of what I was going to do once I got to the West - would I, for example, be able to get the morning train to Hamburg from the same platform - I left East Germany, and boarded a busy West German subway. I didn't have a ticket, and almost hoped I would be caught. At least then someone would listen to my story, and perhaps assist me.

BErlin Zoo Station - lots of people were getting off, including an elderly woman with her shopping trolley. I followed her out of the train. I must have looked rather lost, because she spoke to me, and asked whether I had anywhere to go. She directed me to the Red Cross office, which was in the station. I later found out that Berlin Zoo was notorious for its drugs, prostitution and other manifestations of homelessness and dysfunction.

I knocked on the window, though it was obvious to me the office was closed. But somebody answered! The shelter was full, but the worker took pity on me, and found a chair for me to sit on, around a table that was crowded with people who were all valiantly trying to sleep, sitting up. Were they all victims of the Sondermarke?

In the morning, we were all given tea and a roll. A worker accompanied me to the correct platform so I could board my train to Hamburg. I thanked her profusely. I can't remember the journey, but I remember wishing I was there already.

I got off the train and ran into Christa's waiting arms. She knew I hadn't reached my destination, and had had no way of knowing where I was in the meantime. She had waited to contact my parents on the off-chance that I might have found my way back to Hamburg on the morning train.

That intuitive optimism saved her a long-distance phone call to Australia! And I had an interesting story to write in my next weekly letter home.

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Jean E Calder (2007) Where the Road Leads, Hachette Australia
Anna Funder (2002) Stasiland, The Text Publishing Company, Victoria, Australia.