A 16-year-old young man once pleaded his parents for permission to go on a trip to Germany with his high school German class. The parents really didn’t have the extra cash and $350 dollars was a lot of money back in 1974. But they gave in, scratched up the funds and thus allowed the youth to experience 10 days in Europe. It would leave a lifelong impression on the young man. The young man was me.
Besides getting an education in German beer, it also exposed my classmates and me to the wonderful history and architecture of Bavaria. Through the eyes of a 16-year-old born and raised in Pittsburgh – Munich, the Autobahn, Neuschwanstein Castle to name just a few of the sights – Germany was an exotic and unbelievably beautiful place. Plus, they spoke the language that I was attempting to learn.
Then came the trip to Berlin. As you might recall, German had been split into two different countries in 1945– East and West – and Berlin sat at a far eastern point of Socialist East Germany. Therefore, for our group to travel from Munich to West Berlin, we needed to proceed up the autobahn and cross over to East Germany and traverse much of the eastern bloc country to reach our destination. It would be an experience not easily forgotten and the contrast between west and east could not have been starker.
West Germany had been colorful and upbeat. Free expression and free speech found a home and flourish there after World War II. East Germany, on the other hand, was bleak and gray. Farmhouses were kept far from the freeway heading to Berlin to avoid interaction with westerners and the temptation to escape to the west. We of course, were harassed at the crossing into East Germany by guards who claimed someone in a red jacket on our bus had taken photographs within the restricted zone which we had been sternly warned about. Absolutely, no pictures were allowed in that area. There was no one with red jacket on the bus and after about three hours sitting there, the guards had enjoyed themselves enough to allow us to proceed.
Berlin was not a fun place, totally different than Munich, and it was also split into east and west with the Soviets taking the eastern part of the city. Much of this huge urban location had been leveled during the Allied bombing raids of World War II, and the stress of the war could still be felt in the air thirty years later. From my perspective, the most memorable thing about Berlin was Checkpoint Charlie at the wall which we stood atop prior to visiting its museum. Plain and simple it was awful. A wall built – not to keep foreigners out – but exclusively to keep East Germany citizens in. So many had fled the horrors of socialism that they had to build a wall to keep them from escaping. The term Berlin Wall did not fully describe it. East Germany was a prison, and “The Wall” had guards with machine guns willing to fire on their fellow citizens in the blink of an eye. Go a little further from the physical wall and there were landmines, barbed-wire fences and abandoned buildings so people would not jump off them into the west and freedom. The museum was a collection of stories representing successful and unsuccessful attempts to flee. Those who took the gamble to cross to the west and were caught died. To this day, I have a nondescript piece of concrete that no one would know what it is but me. It is a six-inch piece of the Berlin Wall.
Those images of East Germany and the Berlin Wall have never left me. Capitalism isn’t perfect, but no system is. Anyone promoting the benefits of socialism does not know history or is simply lying for self-gain.
Looking over The Berlin Wall circa 1974
