Forty Autumns

by Nina Willner

  The decisive new Inner German border between East and West Germany marked in no uncertain terms Europe’s division into two rival political camps, and became the foremost frontier where capitalist liberal democracy stood face-to-face with its communist nemesis. Winston Churchill’s reference to an Iron Curtain descending across the continent had symbolized an ideological separation of East from West, but now an actual physical barrier scarred the landscape, perversely separating the two sides in a concrete manifestation that would become the defining symbol of the Cold War.

  Oma tried to ignore all the talk of border lockdown. She was consumed with the welfare of her children and baby Heidi. From time to time, before she went to sleep at night, she allowed herself to think about her oldest daughter, but by morning she always put aside her melancholy to face the new day with renewed vigor for the rest of the family, especially the baby. She refused to give up hope of ever seeing Hanna again, and so, in late 1952, after my grandparents had not drawn any negative attention to themselves in over a year, she applied again to travel to the West.

  In the West, Hanna’s English had improved and she was hired as a bilingual secretary at the U.S. Army headquarters in Heidelberg. She wrote a letter in which she told her family that she had landed a dream job with the Americans.

  Now easily able to pay her bills, she found a flat in a better neighborhood across the Neckar River and had even begun to travel a bit. In a letter to her parents from London, she wrote about seeing the River Thames and Big Ben, beefeaters and Windsor Castle, recalling photographs from Opa’s picture books.

  In the East, Oma received that letter, but noticed that it had been opened before it had reached the family. Nevertheless, she was at peace knowing that Hanna was standing squarely on her own two feet and finding her way.

  Police authorities continued to keep a close watch on the family, in part by scouring their inbound and outbound letters, opening, reading, and not bothering to close them, or simply not allowing post mail to go through to the family. Opa poured himself into his work, trying to make up for his disappointments to the state, but he now had at least two major strikes against him. Besides his guilt by association with an escapee and enemy of the state, he knew he had angered the regime with his ardent support for the farmers.

  (Clockwise from left:) Kai, Helga, Tutti, Heidi

  Courtesy of the Willner family

  As the family faced an uncertain future in the East, the house was alight with a bright and shining spirit.

  Heidi was an unusually happy child. She had an infectious laugh, was incredibly inquisitive and spirited, and the family lavished attention upon the last-born, the little darling of the family.

  As she grew, Heidi learned about her oldest sister from her siblings. By the time she was four, she could recognize the sister she had never met from photographs and took to calling her Hanna-she-went-to-the-West, which is how her brothers and sisters identified their sister from photographs when Heidi asked, “Who is that?”

  Occasionally Oma would watch Heidi, contemplating her purity and innocence as she lingered over, or ran her finger along the length of, her oldest sister’s image.

  7

  “WE WANT TO BE FREE”

  A WORKERS’ UPRISING

  (1953)

  When injustice becomes law, resistance becomes duty.

  —President Thomas Jefferson

  In March 1953, Stalin died in the Soviet Union. By June, there was rebellion in East Germany.

  Propaganda continued to seep into every aspect of society, extolling the virtues of communist life. Though conditions remained dire in the East, socialist realism portrayed everyday life in East Germany as a worker’s dream in a country that was flourishing and prospering. Posters and statues romanticized communism, featuring sculpted tool-wielding peasants and robust factory workers with taut muscles and determined, eagle-browed gazes, radiating confidence as they proudly faced the sun, stirring their countrymen to join the revolution.

  Bold schoolchildren bedecked in scarves and uniforms with badges, saluting or carrying flowers, smiled down from colorful posters, inviting their peers to come along and join their ranks. Print media and state-produced films portrayed East Germans as profoundly dedicated and highly motivated to contribute to communist society and serve the regime. By the looks of the propaganda materials, East Germany was a workers’ paradise. But that picture was far from accurate, and, in fact, things were about to get a lot worse.

  By 1953, more Stasi agents were being dispatched to towns and cities throughout East Germany to spread their net wider and increase their monitoring of the population. At the same time, the regime directed East German citizens to “agitate” in their communities. Everywhere people turned, proclamations called for them to fully commit to the struggle for communism and incite others to follow, to demand more of themselves and their fellow workers than they ever had before. On factory walls, in plants, schools, and hospitals, in leaflets, newspapers, and on the radio, the leadership called on every citizen to become a poster-perfect model worker for the state and to finger those who fell short of the ideal.

  Pamphlets distributed by the state gave the public specific examples to follow:

  Comrade Paul Wilk is an agitator at Thälmann Plant I in Suhl. His previous work has shown that he understands how to present the policies of the party and government in a simple, forceful, and consistent way. He knows how to inspire the masses, and persuade them to join us in realizing our great goal of building the foundations of socialism. His colleagues and fellow workers see him as a good worker. They respect him.

  Because of his abilities, Comrade Wilk was elected agitator by the party membership. He constantly and diligently fulfills this party assignment. Every day, he reads the party newspapers “Das Freie Wort” and “Neues Deutschland,” and studies the (translated) Notebook for Agitators as well as agitation literature.

  As leaders rallied the masses to become activists in their communities, the state also imposed harsher travel rules, this time within East Germany itself. Now villages that lay near the border were cut off to everyone except the residents of those areas; suddenly Oma could no longer even travel to see her parents in Seebenau.

  Alarmed by the numbers of people fleeing East Germany, Moscow ordered East German leader Ulbricht to make necessary changes to get things under control, to ease up on hardships and to make life easier on his people so that his citizens would stop trying to get out. But Ulbricht simply dismissed that directive, and instead his demands on the population surged. With the East–West Inner German border sealed, increasing Stasi scrutiny, pressure to spy on one another, and greater restrictions on travel out of, and now even inside, their country, the morale of the population spiraled downward.

  Tone-deaf to his citizens’ concerns, Ulbricht added to their misery by launching a plan to restore the country’s heavy industry. Since East Germany was losing hundreds of thousands of workers to the West, the leadership now put a greater burden on the workers who remained behind. Ulbricht demanded workers give everything they had, and promised that their efforts to meet production quotas would result in substantial improvements for the country. Should workers meet the required deadlines, by 1954, he said, rationing would be abolished and all foodstuffs and consumer goods would become plentiful and affordable. By 1955, he assured them, East Germany would be well fed, and have more meat, sugar, milk, and other basic necessities than West Germany.

  Before long, the cogs of heavy machinery were in motion, as the country focused maximum attention on steelmaking, machine tool building, and mining. From the start, workers were pressured to produce far beyond their capabilities, given their limited workforce and lack of resources, technology, and the state’s uncompromising deadlines; they were also being forced to produce far more for the same meager pay.

  As the regime continued to increase its demands, workers grew increasingly frustrated at Ulbricht’s unrealistic expectations. It soon became clear that the requir
ement to produce under such extreme conditions and on schedule was simply an impossible one.

  Rumblings of dissatisfaction spread. Workers throughout the country stewed in anger at the increasing requirement to produce more and more as food and basic goods dwindled and freedoms were stripped away. Tensions soared. The workers of East Germany were exhausted and angry.

  By springtime, realizing that their demands on workers were overwhelming them, the leadership promised a shift toward lighter industry, more trade, and a greater availability of goods to consumers throughout the East: food, clothing, household appliances that would make their lives better. But nothing came of it and instead the regime kept pressure on workers to increase their industrial output while continuing to lower their wages and dismissing their basic needs.

  By mid-June, workers throughout East Germany had had enough. A small group organized to represent all workers bravely confronted the state demanding better working and living conditions and free elections. Their demands were met with deafening silence.

  Then on June 16, everything came to a screeching halt as workers in East Berlin simply put down their tools, came down from scaffoldings, emerged from factories and work sites, and walked off the job.

  Word spread and by dawn the next day, June 17, some forty thousand construction and steel workers refused to go back to work, and staged a protest march in East Berlin. Strikes, walkouts, and demonstrations broke out in most major industrial cities, hundreds of thousands taking to the streets in towns all across East Germany. In just a short time, thousands swelled to nearly a million.

  Workers everywhere flooded the streets, rallying outside state offices, demanding reforms, calling for de-Stalinization and an end to the Ulbricht regime.

  “Down with the government!” the crowds shouted. “Death to communism!” “We don’t want to be slaves anymore. We want to be free!”

  Determined to seize control, protesters overwhelmed police, grabbing their megaphones and verbally lashing out at the Communist Party and the secret police. They tore Party notices and banners from the walls, attacked government buildings, and stormed prisons, setting political prisoners free. Though isolated from the Western world, the demonstrators hoped somehow to compel the West to come to their assistance. In the United States, President Eisenhower chose not to take action to assist the East German workers out of fear of unleashing war with the Soviet Union.

  The Workers’ Uprising of 1953 was violently suppressed by Soviet Forces.

  Courtesy of Universal History Archive/Getty Images

  Resistance spread. In Dresden, demonstrators took over a state radio station and used the airwaves to attack the country’s leaders, calling them liars. In Halle, rioters took over the local newspaper offices, and in Bitterfeld, a strike committee sent a telegram to the government in East Berlin demanding the “formation of a provisional government composed of revolutionary workers.”

  Red Army tanks moved in, and tens of thousands of Soviet troops, East German VoPo, and secret police appeared on the streets, descending on the demonstrators in a violent crackdown to silence the masses.

  When it was over, hundreds lay dead in the streets. Thousands more had been injured. Some ten thousand were arrested or detained, many sentenced to long terms in penal camps. Nearly one hundred were executed for their role in the uprising along with some twenty Soviet soldiers executed for refusing to shoot unarmed civilians.

  On June 18, the East German leadership went on the air to make an announcement to its people, claiming that the rebellion had been instigated by the West. In a twisted farce, Ulbricht hailed East German workers as heroes who had saved the day, claiming they had valiantly fought off the “imperialist-inspired demonstrators” who were determined to destroy East Germany. Behind the scenes, the regime ratcheted up the authority of the Stasi secret police to do whatever was necessary to ensure such an uprising would never again take place in East Germany.

  The little village of Schwaneberg remained quiet throughout the uprising. Oma listened to Ulbricht’s radio announcement and turned to look at Opa, who simply shook his head.

  In the West, Hanna received a letter from her sister Tiele, now a twenty-year-old kindergarten teacher. In the letter, Tiele described watching the demonstrations from her window in her second-floor apartment in Naumburg an der Saale.

  “There were people everywhere,” she wrote. “It was a huge demonstration. Only after it was over did we learn that the West tried to stage some kind of attack.” That letter the authorities allowed to go out to the West.

  The East German Workers’ Uprising of 1953, the rebellion of the working class, had been decisively and ruthlessly crushed. As long as the regime remained backed by the Soviet Union, there would not be another mass attempt to rebel by the citizens of East Germany.

  A month later the local police summoned Oma. Though her previous requests to visit Hanna in the West had been rejected, they called her in to discuss her latest application. By now it had been nearly six years since mother and daughter had seen each other, their correspondence scant, having been carefully filtered by the authorities.

  Down at the station, the police official sat behind a desk. He would, he said, approve a short visit under two conditions. Warning more than asking, he said, “You wouldn’t leave your family in the East and try to stay in the West, would you?” Oma shook her head no. It was true. She would never abandon her family, and besides, by now it was clear to everyone that flight would mean consequences for those who remained behind.

  The second condition, he said, was to bring Hanna back or, barring that, convince her to “do a few special things for her country” in her work with the Americans. Now Oma had a predicament, but she remained calm and unmoved. Refusal or failure to comply, if she accepted the terms, would also mean further problems for the family. She weighed her options. Her desire to see her daughter won out.

  Thinking this might be the only chance the sisters would have to meet, Oma looked up and resolutely added, “I want to take my daughter Heidi.”

  “Well then,” he said, and sat back, “we have an understanding.”

  Oma nodded. He stamped some papers and she got up to leave. Convinced that a wife and mother of so many children was not a flight risk, she was granted a travel permit to spend two days with her daughter in Heidelberg.

  8

  THE VISIT

  SISTERS MEET

  (1954)

  Both within the family and without, our sisters hold up our mirrors: our images of who we are and of who we can dare to be.

  —Elizabeth Fishel

  In the days and months following the Workers’ Uprising of 1953, the regime regained control by twisting the facts of the incident as much as they could, telling East Germans that, thanks to their efforts, the republic remained intact after the unprovoked attack by West Germany. Furthermore, they claimed that the American government had approved millions of dollars for anticommunist underground activity, and that West German subversive organizations had received a great deal of that money to finance agents in East Germany to incite dissent, with fascists and provocateurs acting on behalf of foreign and West German monopolists. West Germany reacted to the brutal crackdown and Ulbricht’s statements by continuing to refuse to recognize East Germany, officially or otherwise.

  The Western world, for its part, came to view East Germany with increasing suspicion as stories leaked out from behind the Iron Curtain of a regime that used physical force and psychological coercion to keep its people in line, where words against the regime were enough to have one interrogated and imprisoned.

  Escapees, émigrés, and the exiled brought with them alarming tales of oppression, stories of brutal interrogations, harsh prison sentences, and no opportunity for self-defense when charged with a crime. They relayed tales of torture and psychological manipulation that fueled fear and paranoia, of grave punishments for trying to reach out to the West, and of deaths at the border. Publicly East German leaders denied the accusati
ons of abuse, but privately they realized that their reputation was beginning to take a serious hit.

  Oma came home and told Heidi the wonderful news: she was going on a trip to the West to meet her big sister Hanna. Opa asked what the terms were. Oma denied there were any, hiding the truth from him.

  The night before the trip to the West, five-year-old Heidi was excited and could not seem to calm down. Nor could Oma, sleeping just a few rooms away. The next morning, anticipation had them both up with the sunrise and making final preparations.

  Helga helped Heidi put on her dress, her sweater, and leggings knitted by Oma. Tutti tied bows to the ends of Heidi’s braided pigtails, both of the older girls silently wishing they too could go.

  On a cool October morning, under an overcast autumn sky, the family went to the train station to see them off. After settling into their compartment, Heidi looked out the window, smiling and waving at her siblings on the platform. Excited for the two, the children waved back vigorously, Manni blowing kisses as the train pulled away, but Opa had already noticed the secret police standing in the background and told the children to quiet down.

  Little Heidi fidgeted and bounced around the train car, chirping Hanna’s name over and over again as she slid from side to side on the wooden bench, looking out of the window at the forests and farm fields as the train moved west. Several hours later, they reached the East–West border.

  Oma presented her tickets and paperwork to the East German ticket examiner. Heidi beamed at him and said, “I’m going to visit my sister!” He scowled; she shrugged, then looked back at Oma, narrowing her eyes, made a comical, mocking sourpuss face, and then broke into a big smile. As the train moved onward, Heidi stood at the window, watching as they crossed into the West. She remained wide awake for most of the day, but by nightfall, when the train finally pulled into the Heidelberg station, she was fast asleep on Oma’s lap.