Forty Autumns

by Nina Willner

  In February 1962, the Soviets released U.S. pilot Francis Gary Powers back into U.S. hands in exchange for a Soviet spy. The exchange took place over the Glienicke Bridge on the West Berlin–East German border, a location that would be made famous in the Cold War years for its Soviet–U.S. spy swaps.

  That same year, the United States increased its involvement against the communist insurgency in South Vietnam, and in October the world was brought to the brink of nuclear war for thirteen days during the Cuban Missile Crisis, when the Soviets sent nuclear-equipped missiles capable of reaching the United States to Cuba. President Kennedy challenged the Soviet Union:

  It shall be the policy of this Nation to regard any nuclear missile launched from Cuba against any nation in the Western Hemisphere as an attack by the Soviet Union on the United States, requiring a full retaliatory response upon the Soviet Union.

  I call upon Chairman Khrushchev to halt and eliminate this clandestine, reckless, and provocative threat to world peace and to stable relations between our two nations. I call upon him further to abandon this course of world domination, and to join in an historic effort to end the perilous arms race and to transform the history of man. He has an opportunity now to move the world back from the abyss of destruction.

  By mid-1962, more than twenty people had been killed at the Berlin Wall and some two hundred had been caught trying to escape over it. On the first anniversary of the building of the Wall, the citizens of West Berlin paused for three minutes of silence for those who had been shot or died falling from buildings or in the Spree River. In the coming years many more would be murdered while trying to make it to freedom.

  One year after the Wall was built, Western media captured an incredible, heartbreaking failed escape on film. The world watched, horrified, as Peter Fechter, an eighteen-year-old bricklayer from East Berlin, attempted to scale the Wall near Checkpoint Charlie, and was shot by border guards in plain view of onlookers from West Berlin. Despite his pleas for help, he was given no medical assistance as he lay bleeding at the base of the Wall, East German border guards threatening to shoot those from the West attempting to intervene. Livid West Berliners lashed out, screaming “Murderers!” as Fechter slowly bled to death. An hour after he was shot, East German border guards retrieved his lifeless body and carried him away.

  Back in the village, Opa’s superiors finally summoned him to address his waning passion for communism. He braced for another round of denunciations. They told him to sit in a chair in the middle of the room. One by one, they chastised him, telling him that he lacked the required zeal for socialism and that his mediocre performance was an insult to the Party. As usual, Opa said nothing in his defense.

  For the time being, he was allowed to remain in his role as headmaster, but now he knew it would not last. The state no longer had faith in him and began to seed the village with mistrust against him.

  That summer, as she watched her father’s mounting despair, Heidi turned thirteen years old. While Oma always seemed to find joy, even under their repressive circumstances, Opa did not, and now, more than ever, he seemed distant.

  With the country on lockdown, the secret police intensified their control of the population, perfecting their methods of penetrating every aspect of a person’s life, including reading their mail, listening in on conversations, gathering compromising details in an attempt to identify weaknesses that could be used to manipulate them, even threatening to expose family secrets of indiscretions or exploiting character flaws to the secret police’s advantage.

  The Stasi recruited more agents and perfected the dirty business of blackmail and bribery, offering promotions, special perks, or money, or holding career or educational advancement over people’s heads to get them to comply. They rewarded those who helped them and punished those who didn’t.

  The informant program also grew, the Stasi playing people off one another in an attempt to control everyone; the program was a success because no one knew who could be trusted and who the informants were. By now there were citizen spies in every factory, social club, and youth group. Every school, apartment building, military unit, political group, and sports organization was a potential pool of intrigue and exploitation. Without knowing who in their midst was eavesdropping or gathering information to pass on to the secret police, self-censorship became a way of survival.

  Fewer and fewer challenged the state anymore, knowing that complaints and comments against the regime or East German policies were punishable. Any act of defiance could cause people to disappear or destroy their own or their children’s futures. So people tried to stay off the Stasi radar and kept their heads low, hoping to live a quiet life under whatever conditions they faced. Since there was no sign that anything was going to change, people resigned themselves, made peace with their situation, and built a life accordingly.

  Fed by the continuing paranoia of Western influence, Ulbricht further isolated his citizens when he demanded the regime double its efforts to keep people from turning to Western media for news and entertainment. The government imposed harsher punishments and set FDJ youth to find and destroy or remove antennae that were pointing westward, in a campaign called Blitz contra NATO-sender, Blitz against NATO signals.

  The world remained in shock at the imprisonment of the people of East Germany. For those separated from their families, time just stood still. Melancholy over the separation of the two Germanys lingered. In the United States, Toni Fisher’s haunting ballad “West of the Wall,” about families and lovers separated by the barrier, became a Top 40 hit.

  For my mother, Hanna, after the Berlin Wall went up, East Germany and her family seemed to detach and pull away, disappearing further and further behind the Iron Curtain, into a mysterious, remote world where she feared she could never reach them again.

  In her home in Kansas, Hanna read a Time magazine article titled “East Germany: They Have Given Up Hope,” which relayed a West German traveler’s visit to his relatives in the East German city of Dresden. He said, “Never have I seen people who feel so alone, lost and abandoned. They have given up hope.” Hanna dismissed the report, choosing instead to believe that her family was somehow getting by.

  In fact, while the early years were spent struggling to rebuild from the war and adapting under the Russians, most were by now adjusting under East Germany’s brand of authoritarian communism. Some embraced the system while others played the game just to survive. Many put up defenses aimed at maintaining their personal dignity, but most now realized that one could have a quiet, uncomplicated life provided one didn’t expect much and didn’t challenge the authorities.

  At fourteen years old, Heidi was due to take Jugendweihe. Though she had been conditioned to look up to those who had taken the oath, unlike her classmates she no longer looked forward to the ceremony vowing loyalty to the regime. When her time came, Opa, warning that her future depended on it, pushed her to go, and so, among her peers and youth leaders and banners praising socialism, she too raised her right hand and dedicated herself to East Germany, then dispassionately joined the ranks of the FDJ.

  Opa spent the winter feeling increasingly isolated in his thoughts, so when spring arrived, Oma tried to get him to reconnect to the outdoors and to nature, which he had always loved. They often worked together in the garden, she noting which flowers had bloomed, which plants needed more water, as he raked the soil and picked vegetables for their next meal and for pickling. Together they made raspberry jam and apple cider, took walks in the grassy fields, or wandered in the forest picking mushrooms and poring over the flora. In the woods, he often walked ahead or moved off in a different direction, preferring to be alone for a time or wanting to find a place to sit by himself.

  Heidi (far right) takes Jugendweihe and ponders her future under communism.

  Courtesy of the Willner family

  The whole family knew that Opa was walking on thin ice. Oma felt that it was in his and the family’s best interest for Opa to have some joy infused into h
is life, so she invited the family to Schwaneberg to celebrate his birthday. Though Kai was still on border duty, everyone else came: Roland, Klemens, Tiele, and Manni and their families arrived with gifts of flowers, food, and homemade liqueur. Teenagers Helga, Tutti, and Heidi buzzed around the kitchen helping Oma prepare soup and potatoes, and plate pickled vegetables from the cellar. Though they had never really understood how Oma, with her meager rations, somehow managed to get enough to put a big spread on the table, she always did, even now as she set out homemade cakes, Butterkuchen, Bienenstich, and Apfelkuchen.

  Roland stood before the family, holding his glass high to make a toast.

  “Papa,” he said, “today we gather to celebrate you on your birthday. And, as with every year on this very day, we also commemorate East Germany’s Day of the Teacher. Papa, we all look up to you as our wonderful father and role model, and we are all proud to have followed in your footsteps as teachers. We know that this year has been a challenging one for you, but your family will always be here to support you. Many wishes for much health and many years of happiness. Zum Wohl.”

  That afternoon, everyone seemed to drift back to a simpler time. Oma steered the conversation to more carefree days of the past. Memories flooded in. Roland, Klemens, Tiele, and Manni recalled winter in the little village of Trabitz, where they had lived before moving to Schwaneberg. In heavy snow, homemade sleds and wooden crates would be tied together and, with their teacher, Opa, at the helm, the children gleefully sailed down Kanterburg Hill, a couple of times sliding terrifyingly close to the frozen Saale River. Helga recalled how when a stork had built a nest on Herr Poppel’s stable, it was Opa who forbade anyone to tear it down, and how after that day the bird became the village mascot and Opa was given the moniker the Stork Rescuer.

  That evening Oma persuaded Opa to play some of his favorite folk songs on his beloved Schimmel piano. He did so and the children joined in, singing in harmony. After the sun went down, they built a bonfire outside and hovered around it. Looking at his children laughing in the glow of the fire, Opa smiled, and for a while he seemed to be all right.

  Despite the building of the Berlin Wall, those still determined to get out would not be stopped. To have any chance at success now, though, they had to invent new ways to outsmart border guards. A few got out hidden in the trunks or tiny front engine compartments of cars authorized to cross into the West.

  Then, in April 1963, Wolfgang Engels, a nineteen-year-old civilian employee of the East German Army, stole an armored personnel carrier from the base where he worked and crashed it into the Wall. When the vehicle failed to completely penetrate the concrete, Engels bolted, running on foot through the rubble toward the West while East German border guards fired on him. A West German policeman intervened, firing his weapon at the East German border guards. Shot twice while struggling to free himself from barbed wire, Engels was pulled to safety by West Berliners and survived. After this escape, an upgrade was made in which three-meter-high, three-ton wall sections were put in place to block any similar attempts.

  In another escape, Rudolf Mueller, who had fled to West Berlin before the Wall went up, dug a seventy-two-foot underground tunnel from West to East Berlin to get his family out. As he moved his family into the tunnel, they were discovered by a twenty-one-year-old border guard who raised his weapon and ordered them to stop. Mueller shot and killed the guard before the family escaped to West Berlin.

  In the East, the Stasi instructed citizen informants to find out who might be plotting to escape, and how and where they were planning to do it. To their border guards, the regime ordered, “Do not hesitate with the use of firearms, including when the border breakouts involve women and children.”

  In June 1963, President Kennedy visited Berlin. Near the Brandenburg Gate, the leader of the free world climbed the steps of a viewing platform and looked over the Wall into the East at the obstacles and barriers meant to keep East Germans imprisoned. On the other side, armed guards stood looking back, all the while monitoring the death strip below.

  Addressing a crowd of 120,000 outside West Berlin’s city hall, the Rathaus Schöneberg, in a message meant to be a show of unwavering support for West Berliners and for their freedom, and carried on live television all over the world, Kennedy said, “There are many people in the world who don’t understand the greatest issue between the free world and the communist world. Let them come to Berlin.

  Freedom has many difficulties and democracy is not perfect, but we have never had to put a wall up to keep our people in to prevent them from leaving us. West Berliners and people around the world went wild as Kennedy concluded with these now-famous lines: “All free men, wherever they may live, are citizens of Berlin, and, therefore, as a free man, I take pride in the words ‘Ich bin ein Berliner!’”

  Kennedy’s remarks inspired the Western world and gave a morale boost to the people of West Berlin in one of the most important moments for the United States during the Cold War. Five months later, in November 1963, Kennedy was shot and killed in Dallas by Lee Harvey Oswald, an American who had once defected to the Soviet Union.

  News from the East was sparse for almost a decade. Teenage Heidi longed to be in touch with her sister, if only to share news about important family events she was sure Hanna would want to know: that Roland had been promoted to headmaster of his high school, and that he and his wife had a five-year-old boy; that Manni and Tiele had both married and had children; that Kai had completed his tour in the army, Helga was engaged, and Tutti had graduated from high school and was preparing to become a teacher like the others. But there was also terribly sad news, that Klemens had suddenly died from a quickly spreading cancer, leaving behind a wife and two children.

  Heidi ached to confide in her sister about what troubled her, that life at times could be lonely. It worried her that Opa was no longer in the good graces of the authorities, but she sought comfort in the fact that despite their circumstances, Oma remained strong, refusing to let the regime get the better of the family. Most of all, Heidi wished she could tell her sister that Hanna inspired her, and that she admired her for having escaped. But Heidi knew she could never risk writing these words in a letter. In light of the Stasi’s ongoing campaign to slander Opa, Oma told Heidi to hold off on sending any letters to Hanna.

  No one in his right mind dared poke fun at the regime. But now, at his Saturday-night card games, despite Oma’s best efforts, Opa’s frustrations came to a boiling point.

  Knowing full well there were informants in his midst, one night he threw caution to the wind and ridiculed the local authorities, calling the regime a bunch of bumbling idiots. That comment silenced the room. After a long, deafening pause in which no one dared look at anyone else, Opa shrugged his shoulders and threw in his cards, motioning for the players to simply continue the game, which they did. Later in the game, half-jokingly, Opa called the mayor, one of his fellow card players, a cheater. But he really went overboard when he told a joke about East German leader Ulbricht, calling him a “backward stooge.” Stunned at Opa’s audacity, no one dared react. Opa, however, busted out in laughter. One of the other card players, his neighbor and longtime friend, realizing he had taken it too far, took hold of him by his collar and pulled him up saying, “That’s right, old boy, I think you’re done for the night. Let’s get you home.”

  Before depositing him at home to Oma, his friend yanked Opa close, looked him dead in the eye, and told him that he was acting reckless and asking for serious trouble.

  It didn’t take long for the authorities to call Opa in. They told him they were fed up with his attitude.

  Then one of them slid a piece of paper across the table to Opa. It was a letter he had written to Ulbricht in which he complained about the failings of the local Communist Party leadership.

  “Is this your signature?”

  Opa returned home with a blank stare. He had been dismissed from his job as headmaster and teacher, officially denounced, and kicked out of the Communis
t Party.

  After several weeks at home, fuming, worried, and thinking things through, one afternoon he rose from his chair in his study and pulled himself together. Then he walked back to the village headquarters and told the authorities that they had made a mistake dropping him from the Party. Citing his long and dedicated service to his community, he asked that his membership and job be reinstated.

  The authorities responded by telling him that somewhere along the line he had lost his loyalty, adding “your performance is no longer in the spirit of progress,” and that Opa’s continued presence in the village would affect the other villagers.

  And that is how Oma and Opa, together with the only child left at home, Heidi, were unceremoniously banished to the tiny hamlet of Klein Apenburg, nearly seventy miles away and in the middle of nowhere.

  13

  ONLY PARTY MEMBERS SUCCEED

  “WE HAVE EACH OTHER”

  (1966–1969)

  I do not weep: I loathe tears, for they are a sign of slavery.

  —German artist Max Beckmann

  Klein Apenburg was located in a remote region of the Altmark district of Saxony-Anhalt. Surrounded mostly by farmland or vacant stretches of undeveloped land, the entire community consisted of seven modest buildings clustered around one dusty cul-de-sac. Five of those buildings were dwellings, one an abandoned stone church with a bell tower, and the other an old, decrepit wooden barn. Everyone in the hamlet was elderly and a few infirm. One octogenarian had lived in the tiny settlement for decades, but the others had arrived over the years alone or in pairs. Now the tiny community of retired farmers, a soldier, and factory workers, some with spouses, some alone, added a former headmaster and schoolteacher’s family to their little colony. Other than sixteen-year-old Heidi, there were no children.

  The house in Klein Apenburg