The Wall, or: You can be a refugee tomorrow!
I was born in Bonn, West Germany. Literally on the shores of the river Rhine, about a mile away from Ludwig van Beethoven:s birthplace. I lived in and near Bonn for 22 years. I had spend much of my childhood and youth in Berlin though. Mostly around the area of Charlottenburg, (thats also how we named our daughter) and mainly around Kurfürstendamm and Fasanenstrasse, because thats where my mom grew up and where my grandparents lived.
My grandfather also had a pharmacy there, Fasanenstrasse 61, the same house as the famous writer Heinrich Mann, who had fled the nazis lived in. My grandfather also was a painter and i would have loved to listen to the both men talk to each other, if they ever did. I would not know, i was too young to ask. There is also the wonderful ´Literaturhaus´ in this street and i remember as a kid, i used to marvel at the empty slot, where the burned down synagog used to stand. My grandfather used to take us to the zoo in Berlin a lot and also to the Grunewald, the Krumme Lanke and again and again: To the wall. I could feel his inner outrage every time he took us there, even though, as a kid, i never knew what it meant, for me, it had always been there.
A few years ago i was once more visiting Berlin. I still go there as often as i can and i still have friends and relatives there. This time i went to the theatre next to Potsdamer Platz, on Marlene Dietrich square, to see a rock-musical by Udo Lindenberg: ´Hinterm Horizont´ -beyond the horizon.
The musical tells the fictive story about how it was the rock singer who eventually brought the wall down, because he wanted to be with his loved one on the other side. At one point they hold up a sign in order to indicate the day the Berlin wall had been build:
´August 14th 1961´
I was shocked.
Not that i was not aware of that date, but actually because i now BECAME AWARE of what this date meant to me!
I was sitting on the very same spot where my mom had crossed the border from east to west one day later! With me in her belly!
I had made the quick math. I am born on February 8th 1962, 6 months later. I was 3 months in my moms belly on that day!
My mom had told me, how she had first met my father earlier that year. She was visiting friends of the family in Bonn and went for shopping in my fathers parents store. My dad saw her and had invited her to football. She went, but she did not expect my father to be one of the players. Neither did she expect the game to be a qualifier for the West German championship and in another town and she would be on a bus with all the team and stay at the hotel over night with my dad. She was a well educated girl, but youth and football heroes.. Well, i guess you guess..
When the visit was over she had went back to Berlin. She was studying administration and the holidays had still been going on. She went to Straussberg on the eastern outskirts of Berlin, where our Uncle had a Hotel next to the Lake Bötz. She loved the country side and the animals there, specially the two dogs, a Schäfer and a St. Bernards. Oh, the stories she told me about them. She was also helping out at the hotel. I guess thats where her great skills at decorating our house and hosting guests came from.
Anyway, she heard something was happening in Berlin. The wall was being build! She wanted to get back home immediately, she was scared. When she got to the middle of Berlin the following day, she could not get through to her parents in the west of the town. The wall had come up over night. All was guarded. Of course there were no phones either. Then she remembered my grandmothers parents house at Potsdamer Platz. A house she knew well. She went to the house and entered it through the front door, making sure nobody was watching her or following her. She went down to the cellar and then out of the cellar up the stairs leading to the houses small garden, where her mother had used to hang the laundry to dry. This was on the west side and she was free to go home!
She had never mentioned to me that i was in her belly on this trip, because she only realised she was pregnant when she got home, she did not connect the two. But i realised this now, sitting at the very same spot where she had crossed the border! It was quite a sensation involving hot and cold shivers through my head and body.
A few days later, all the windows and cellar doors had been closed with bricks on all the houses on the border. And still a little later all these houses had been torn down to make space for the ´Todesstreifen´, the ´Death Strip´ with barbed wire and machine guns.
The wall eventually came down in 1989. My mom was very ill than with pancreatic cancer. But she followed every minute of it on TV and collected all the newspapers and send me the clippings. The moment i saw that sign saying: ´August 14th 1961´ in that theatre on Marlene Dietrich Square i understood what this meant to her and i was glad she lived to see it. Somehow, i was part of this history as well.
I also was a refugee, of sorts, before i was even born. Not to compare myself though to the hardships, threats and suffering most of todays refugees have to go through. But good enough as a reminder of how easily we all can become refugees one day.
After the wall had come down, all the new buildings and squares, including theatres, shopping malls and museums had been build on the former ´Todesstreifen´ and thats where i was right then.
P.S. Yes, in my garden i have a small sized piece of the wall, hacked out of the wall by my Berlin relatives in 1989.