Forty Autumns

by Nina Willner

  Excited and nervous, they approached a crossing near Grosszöbern. They fell into line behind other motorists slowly making their way westward in their Trabants and Wartburgs. Some had pulled off to the side, anxiously waiting, worrying, wondering about what lay up ahead, afraid to leave the only life they had ever known.

  Heidi and Reinhard drove slowly past, looking at them as they stared back, some with tear-filled eyes, bewildered and unsure. As the two moved onward, trepidation melted into nervous excitement, and then, when they saw that there were no armed guards to keep them from leaving, their fears gave way to jubilation. They moved through the abandoned border post, obstructed by nothing and impeded by no one.

  Once on the other side, they drove for a mile or so. Then they pulled off to the side of the road, stopped the car, and just sat in silence, gazing at the horizon. Adjacent to the road was a farmer’s field laid bare by the autumn harvest. They got out of the car and walked alongside it, breathing in the fresh air. Off in the distance, a farmer, no doubt aware of where they were from, waved a welcome.

  After a time, they walked back to their little car and got back in. Reinhard started up the engine. She looked over at him. He smiled at her, and they continued on their way, driving onward into the beautiful unknown.

  27

  REUNION AND REBIRTH

  TOGETHER AGAIN

  (1990–2013)

  I may not live to see the day, but you will be reunited with Hanna.

  —Oma in Klein Apenburg

  In the East, the extended East German family held a meeting about how best to proceed with their lives, and to discuss reconnecting with Hanna.

  In the spring of 1990, more than forty years after she had last seen her family, Hanna, now sixty-three years old, and Eddie flew to Germany to reunite with her family.

  Only Manni and his wife came to meet Hanna at the Frankfurt airport, in part not to overwhelm Hanna, but also because they could only fit four people and a suitcase into Manni’s Trabant.

  Manni smiled broadly through his tears when he saw his sister, and greeted Hanna with a bouquet of flowers.

  She embraced him, seeing how the years had lined his face. Strands of silver streaked his dark hair. He gazed back at her. She was shorter than he remembered her, and her once-striking features had mellowed to soft creases, but she still had the same smile, their mother’s smile. She guarded her emotions until he let loose his own feelings. Nothing was said, but they held each other for a long time. Manni, only thirteen years old when she had last seen him, was now in his mid-fifties.

  They arrived at Manni’s to a house full of people. A moment many years awaited, this was the day they had always hoped for but had never fully dared dream would happen.

  Everyone stood outside waiting for her.

  Hanna emerged from the car and was met by Tiele, Helga, and Tutti, who stared back at her. All of them felt the moment was hardly even real, but then they fell into one another, hugging and unleashing years of suppressed emotion.

  There were so many feelings all at once: great excitement and wonderment, immeasurable joy, but there was also heartache for those who had passed, who had not lived to see this day. There was anger at the system that had severed their family. And there was sadness for the time that had been stolen from them, a deep, primal pain for all that had been lost in the forty years since they had last seen one another. But there was also great comfort in the belief that Oma was with them, especially at that moment, as they finally came together once again.

  Her sisters released her and stepped away so that Hanna could move on to greet the others.

  She barely recognized her youngest sister. Hanna gazed at Heidi, who was already in tears. She was a grown woman, tall and statuesque, but all Hanna could see was the face of that little girl with long braids who had loved Heidelberg, the little girl she had only met once for a short visit nearly four decades earlier.

  There was not a dry eye in the room when Heidi and Hanna came together—and especially when Heidi took Hanna’s hand and didn’t let go for the rest of the afternoon.

  Hanna and Eddie met Reinhard and Cordula and many other relatives that day and over the next few days. She renewed her relationships with her brother and sisters, met their spouses, children, and grandchildren. She also met Roland’s, Klemens’s, and Kai’s families.

  That evening, everyone came together to formally celebrate an extraordinary reunion.

  They made toasts, praising their parents for their commitment to creating a closely bonded family despite their challenging conditions. They paid tribute to Opa’s moral courage, tenacity, and unrelenting will in speaking out against injustice, and in his struggle to live the truth. And they celebrated Oma’s spirit, unbending faith, and determination to protect the family against destructive influences; her force had sustained everyone through years of isolation and separation. And finally, the family honored my grandmother as an angel who still, always watches over them.

  There was immense joy in those first days, celebrated with plenty of Rotkäppchen champagne at every turn. At times they were too overwhelmed to celebrate or even talk, though they constantly hugged one another and cried a lot. A muted melancholy hung over those first meetings, all of them wanting to strive to create a new sense of normal and in so doing, try to guard against raw emotion that could only bring sadness and hurt.

  A few days later, Hanna’s five siblings accompanied her to the cemetery to see Oma’s and Opa’s graves. They gave her room to approach on her own and in her own time. She laid flowers at the base of their gravestones and took a quiet, private moment to “speak” to each of them.

  They visited Roland’s, Klemens’s, and Kai’s graves as well, my mother particularly saddened that Roland had died only one year before the Wall came down.

  In a caravan of Trabants, Wartburgs, and a Skoda, they went on to Klein Apenburg to look over the little hamlet and the house that had been Oma and Opa’s home while in internal exile. Walking the grounds, Hanna surveyed the patch of earth that had once been Oma’s lush garden and her oasis of peace. Then she went to sit for a while on the “Opa’s resting place” bench.

  The next day, they traveled to Seebenau to see Kallehn’s house, his farm, and to look over the area where she had made her initial failed escapes not long after the Soviets took over the East. In Seebenau, she recalled Kallehn’s unwavering support in urging and then helping her to flee. They took her to the area where she had made her final escape.

  Hanna and Eddie spent the last days of that first reunion with Heidi and Reinhard at their apartment in Karl Marx City. On their last day together, they took a trip to the countryside, where Heidi and Reinhard wanted to show Hanna and Eddie a place that had become special to them during the Cold War years, and continued to be even after the Wall fell. They parked the car on a rural side road and the four got out.

  They made their way down a dry dirt path, passing trees and fences that cordoned off divided plots of land. Halfway down the road, Reinhard stopped and unlocked a bolt on a wrought-iron fence post, opened the gate, and Hanna stepped into Paradise Bungalow. That afternoon, they sat in the shade of the blue spruce and pear trees, and began to get to know one another.

  In 1991, I went back to Germany with my husband and children and met everyone for the first time. It was extremely exciting but also overwhelming to go from having no relatives to suddenly having so many.

  I met them all, including Cordula. It would be years after the fall of the Wall that we would learn so much more about one another and about our parallel lives on two sides of the Iron Curtain. Over the years, we have formed a bond that has developed into a special friendship.

  Then in September 2013, I flew to Berlin with Hanna and my brother, Albert, for the latest family get-together, and to run the Berlin Marathon again. Almost thirty years after I had first run the marathon, I ran the race again, this time made epic when I ran with Cordula and Albert on a race course that holds no trace of the Wall and runs
through a reunited, open, and free Berlin, finishing at the world-renowned symbol of unity, the Brandenburg Gate.

  The 2013 reunion party was held in the Eberswalde Forest, thirty miles northeast of Berlin in a log cabin that had once been used to house East German youth on overnight FDJ scouting trips. More than sixty family members from the United States and former East Germany attended.

  Inside, the cabin was awash in a golden glow of a rustic chandelier. The music was loud and partygoers were scattered densely throughout the room, greeting one another with big embraces and heartfelt hugs. Beer bottles tapped and champagne flutes clinked one another.

  On the dance floor, Tiele danced with Reinhard, Manni with his wife. Kai’s children greeted my brother Marcel, and Helga and Tutti chatted with my sister Maggy. Manni’s boys joked about something with Klemens’s daughters, my children, and Cordula, which caused everyone to break out in laughter. Mari’s and my sister Sachi’s children played together; nearby, Albert and Roland’s son were deep in conversation.

  At the head table, my mother and her siblings seated themselves. When the sound system began to blare an old German folk song they instantly recognized from their childhood, they quickly locked arms, linking themselves in a chain, beaming at one another and giggling like little children as they began to sway animatedly from side to side in rhythm to the music. Melting into their own private world, the six seemed oblivious to the rest of us as they sang loudly and blissfully with wild abandon. Though East Germans had been set free nearly twenty-five years earlier, these siblings still celebrated as if the Berlin Wall had fallen that very day.

  Watching the family together, my mind began to wander and I stepped away from the celebration to take a break, to immerse myself just for a moment in my own uninterrupted thoughts. I panned the room, taking it all in, when my thoughts drifted back to the Cold War. In 1985, the mere thought of this kind of celebration would have been a reckless fantasy.

  On the fireplace mantel stood two silver-framed black-and-white portraits. One was a picture of Opa in his middle years, looking proud and dignified. He would have been pleased with this day, I thought, to know that his children and grandchildren were all right.

  The other photograph was a picture of Oma. It was the same one I had seen when I first set eyes on her as a little girl. She looked serene and wise and every bit the perfect grandmother as the first time I saw her. But where once, in a little girl’s fantasy I imagined she was looking at me, now she seemed to me to look out over the whole room as if to say, My children, my family, now you are all together . . . just as I knew you would someday be.

  Six of nine remaining siblings reunite. (Left to right:) Helga, Tutti, Manni, Hanna, Heidi, and Tiele.

  Courtesy of the Willner family

  EPILOGUE

  Oma, Opa, Roland, Kai, and Klemens died in East Germany during the Cold War. Manni, Tiele, Helga, and Tutti all retired as teachers. After the fall of the Berlin Wall, many East German teachers, including many of my relatives, were laid off when Germany suddenly had a surplus of educators.

  Today, Hanna’s brothers and sisters, their children, and their grandchildren have adjusted to life in a reunited Germany. As Oma had always insisted, today they remain very close with one another and with Hanna.

  Hanna and Eddie raised six children. Now widowed, Hanna still works as a German teacher, writer, and painter. She recently published her first novel, Christine: A Life in Germany After WWII. She has fourteen grandchildren. Since her escape in 1948, she has been thankful every day for her freedom and, since 1989, for reunion with her family. Eddie passed away in 2008.

  Albert, a retired U.S. Army colonel, now works as a senior China analyst.

  After the Wall fell, Heidi’s firm was privatized by Rawema. Heidi, who had never joined the Communist Party, was the only employee besides Meier, her boss, who was asked to stay on. She was promoted to executive assistant to the company president. She recently retired after thirty-seven years with the company.

  Siemens privatized the company that Reinhard had worked for, incorporating it into their own electronic control systems in Erlangen, West Germany, and inserted their own West German employees. Consequently all thirty former East German employees, including Reinhard, lost their jobs. Though opportunities dried up quickly for many East Germans after the fall of the Wall, Reinhard, having so ingeniously built the bungalow during the Cold War with any resources he could find, ironically was hired as a salesman for building materials.

  Heidi and Reinhard still enjoy Paradise Bungalow and the fruits of freedom every day, including as much travel as possible outside the country.

  Hanna and Heidi remain very close. In 2015, Hanna turned eighty-eight. Whenever they come together, Heidi, now sixty-seven, still scrambles to hold her big sister’s hand as if she never wants to let go.

  Cordula continued training and competing in international competitions even after German reunification. She was the last East German champion in point track races. In April 1990, she competed for the first time in a united Germany. Competing alongside was Andrea, the defector, who had by then become a member of the National Cycling Team of West Germany.

  Summer 1991 saw the first National Championship of Germany, with East and West cyclists competing together. In a surprise finale, Cordula and her team from Sportsclub Chemnitz (formerly Karl Marx City) won the race, becoming the first champions in a major cycling tournament in newly reunited Germany. In April 1992, Cordula competed in her last race as a professional athlete. Today Cordula is a deputy bank manager.

  HISTORICAL NOTES

  After the Fall

  The unofficial dismantling of the Wall began almost immediately and, in the days and weeks that followed the opening of the borders, Mauerspechte, or “Wall woodpeckers,” people armed with sledgehammers and picks, appeared on the scene to chisel and chip off bits and pieces of the Wall, some destroying it, others hoping to preserve bits of history as souvenirs. Over the next weeks and months, bulldozers demolished parts of the Wall, then rebuilt and reopened roads and transportation routes between East and West.

  By December 1989, the Wall at the Brandenburg Gate had been dismantled and was once again opened for through traffic. In March 1990, East Germans voted in free parliamentary elections for the first time, with the Christian Democratic Union, a noncommunist party, winning the most seats in Parliament. In May 1990, the two German states signed a treaty agreeing on monetary, economic, and social union and by October 1990, East and West Germany had reunified.

  Profound change took place throughout Eastern Europe. After 1990, all of Eastern Europe’s former communist regimes were replaced with democratically elected governments. In Poland Solidarity leader Lech Walesa and in Czechoslovakia playwright Vaclav Havel, both dissidents, were elected president of their respective countries.

  In Romania, Nicolae Ceausescu, the only hard-line communist besides Honecker to reject reforms, ordered a violent suppression of demonstrations, then fled the country. He was caught and returned to Bucharest, where, along with his wife, he was executed.

  Honecker fled to Moscow.

  In late 1991, the Soviet Union dissolved, which officially marked the end of the Cold War.

  What Happened After the Fall?

  The Wall

  Today parts of the Berlin Wall are on display in 140 countries throughout the world to remind people of the danger of totalitarian regimes. Concrete sections are located throughout Eastern Europe, in Gdansk, Poland; Budapest, Hungary; Moscow, Russia; in the United States at, among other locations, the Ronald Reagan Presidential Library in Simi Valley, California, and the Pentagon; and throughout the Western world, in the United Kingdom, Germany, and in South Korea, not far from the North Korean border.

  The East German People

  East Germans emerged to face and adjust to a new life. While some embraced their freedom, others remained melancholy, feeling a sense of loss, and some were fearful of the uncertainty that lay ahead. Most would agree, howev
er, that they were bewildered at the extent to which their government had betrayed them.

  Germany’s Leadership Today

  Today, Angela Merkel is chancellor of Germany. A former East German research scientist and the daughter of an East German pastor, she was one of thousands to cross into West Berlin in the initial hours after the fall.

  Merkel, the first female chancellor, has led a reunited Germany since 2005.

  Joachim Gauck, formerly an East German Protestant pastor, was an anticommunist civil rights activist during the regime. Today Gauck is president of Germany.

  East German Leader Erich Honecker

  Honecker and his wife, Margot, fled to Moscow to avoid prosecution on charges of Cold War crimes. In November 1990, he was tried in absentia for manslaughter for ordering border guards to shoot East Germans trying to escape. Following the dissolution of the Soviet Union in December 1991, Honecker took refuge in the Chilean embassy in Moscow, but was extradited by the Yeltsin administration to Germany, where he stood trial but was released due to ill health. He moved to Chile and died of cancer in 1994 while in exile, unrepentant and successfully evading prosecution for human rights abuses committed during his regime.

  The Stasi

  At the height of their power, the Stasi had employed one informant for every sixty-six residents; factoring in part-time informants, the number more accurately approximates one in six East German citizens.

  During the chaos of the downfall, enraged citizens stormed and overran Stasi headquarters in East Berlin and began destroying files, but that emotionally charged activity was halted when they realized that the documents would be needed to prove secret police activities.

  In 1992, Stasi files became accessible to the public. People could now read their own dossiers and find out who spied on them. By 1995, many documents, including those that had been shredded or otherwise destroyed by the Stasi or angry citizens who had converged on the headquarters, had been painstakingly reassembled, revealing millions of crimes and systematic human rights abuses.