Burning Down the Haus

by Tim Mohr

  After the opening of the Hungarian border, would-be emigrants no longer made up such a large portion of protesters outside the church on Mondays, but the crowds continued to swell anyway.

  On September 11, 1989, about six hundred people gathered in front of Nikolai Church and were attacked by police after refusing to disperse; a hundred were detained. On September 18 about a thousand gathered, and so brutal was the police response that several protesters had to be hospitalized; about a hundred and fifty were detained. Over these weeks, the Ausreiser chant of “Wir wollen raus,” or “We want out,” was increasingly drowned out and replaced by a strong, defiant, affirmative version of the punks’ chant: “Wir bleiben hier,” or “We’re staying here.”

  Instead of mocking those who wanted to leave, this was now a threat: We’re staying here . . . for a reason.

  Now the people on the streets planned to stay, they refused to throw in the towel, they refused to flee the problem but instead vowed to fix it, to destroy it. This was perhaps a scarier prospect for the government than just a few weeks prior, when so many had just wanted to get the fuck out.

  We are the people, we are the power.

  The number of participants skyrocketed to five or six thousand on Monday, September 25—despite police brutality and mass arrests the previous week. Or perhaps because of the brutality and mass arrests. Because ordinary citizens cringed at the violence being inflicted on peaceful demonstrators in the town center. The boomerang effect.

  Also on September 25, demonstrators tried for the first time to leave the area around Nikolai Church to march along the broad ring road that encircled the old town center. Nothing had been planned, and Connie looked around at all the Stasi cameras and police and wondered what was going to happen. She knew many people had been arrested in previous weeks just for loitering near the church, and now thousands of people were trying to stage an actual march. Still, she wasn’t afraid. On the contrary.

  Finally, finally! I’ve been waiting for this moment!

  Again police used batons and dogs and made mass arrests, and managed to halt the marchers’ progress along the ring road in front of the main train station. Again average citizens—who increasingly hung around to watch the events—seemed repulsed by the violence. The marginal youths who made up the foot soldiers of the protests were accustomed to being beaten; they weren’t used to being viewed sympathetically by the populace. Things were changing fast.

  On October 2, over ten thousand joined the Monday march in Leipzig. Typical of the explosion in the crowd was another young punk with a similar name, Conny, famous around town for her bright red Mohawk. She was a regular in Open Work and had promoted concerts in the Mockauer Keller. Conny and others from the circle around the band L’Attentat had attended the Monday gatherings from the start, back when only two or three dozen people stood outside Nikolai Church. But now Conny’s mother joined her, appalled at the regime’s violence to such a degree that she did something she had never before contemplated: she protested.

  We are the people.

  That same Monday, October 2, solidarity vigils began in East Berlin, too, to protest the detainment of demonstrators in Leipzig in previous weeks; similar protests sprung up elsewhere around the country. From October 2 on, thousands of Berliners attended candlelit vigils held nightly in front of Gethsemane Church, in Prenzlauer Berg.

  A-Micha was still living in his squatted apartment on Schliemannstrasse, just around the corner from Gethsemane Church. In the chaos around him, and in the reports he heard from Leipzig and elsewhere, he recognized this as a do or die moment: either the dictatorship was going to fall now, right now, or he and all the rest would be crushed and the momentum would be lost—perhaps forever. Rumors had spread in opposition circles of Stasi prison camps being hastily built on the outskirts of Berlin, and despite the increasing number of demonstrators it still seemed to A-Micha as if things could go either way. A-Micha felt compelled to do something—anything—to ensure the outcome went the right way. He began to print flyers and distribute them to people around Gethsemane Church, whether they were there to protest or just to gawk.

  A-Micha’s flyer began: Wir dürfen jetzt nicht einschlafen!

  We cannot let up now!

  We cannot abandon the political prisoners to their fate!

  . . . We cannot leave our fate and that of our country to the politicians (here or over there)—after all WE are the ones who want to, and must, live here!

  We are the power—we can and must make demands!

  The flyer called for people to join the marches from the Schönhauser Allee S-Bahn station to Alexanderplatz every Monday.

  You can help us determine the way forward!

  Together with Leipzig, Dresden, and other cities we will enforce our will!

  Then in all caps:

  KEEP THE PRESSURE ON! INTO THE STREETS!

  On October 7, East Berlin was to serve as the backdrop for celebrations of the fortieth anniversary of the founding of the DDR. That morning, in a move often made prior to major public events, police arrived at the doors of many Erlöser punks and detained them to ensure they didn’t cause difficulties during the celebrations. Protests took place anyway, and police brutally suppressed demonstrators during and after the official celebrations; one demonstrator died and about five hundred were detained as protestors roved the streets of Prenzlauer Berg. Similar clashes took place all over the country. Again ordinary citizens were confronted with state-sanctioned violence inflicted on peaceful protesters, in Berlin, in Leipzig, and in many other places big and small. By the next day, three thousand protesters were in detainment around the country—in Leipzig, many of them held in horse stalls outside of town.

  Yao Yilin, a Chinese Politburo member and hardliner who had advocated the crackdown on Tiananmen Square protesters earlier that year, attended the DDR anniversary celebrations to great fanfare. Egon Krenz had also just returned from China, where he had celebrated the fortieth anniversary of the People’s Republic and said, “In the struggles of our time, the DDR and China stand side by side.” The East German regime seemed to be hinting once again at a Tiananmen solution to the building chaos.

  Soviet premier Mikhail Gorbachev had also reluctantly flown in from Moscow for the anniversary celebrations—behind closed doors he referred to Honecker as an “asshole” and said that he hadn’t been anxious to take part in Honecker’s self-congratulatory fête.

  Along the parade route on October 7, East Germans had chanted Gorbachev’s name, some even calling out, “Gorbi, help us!”

  While in the East German capital, Gorbachev told seventy-seven-year-old dictator Erich Honecker, “Wer zu spät kommt, den bestraft das Leben.”

  Translation: He who is too late is punished by life.

  64

  It takes a magical, spontaneous, mass uprising for a revolution to take place.

  No one group can ever bring it about.

  First there is a feeling of shakiness underfoot, a faint tremor, discernable only by those doing the shaking and stomping—in this case, in East Germany, the punks, the freaks, the young people who realized that the authorities were scared, that the dictatorship was wobbly. Then, if the stars align, other people, normal people, those who would otherwise just go about their lives, happy to get by in the system as it exists, not my problem, no reason to make waves . . . if the stars align just right, then those people might eventually feel it, too. The tremors. The shakiness. And maybe, just maybe, they come out of their apartments and their houses to see what’s happening, to see what is causing the tremors. And maybe, just maybe, they even join in, I’m not sure exactly what I’m doing out here, what brought me outside, but I don’t like the way those people are being treated . . . and . . . well . . . I don’t like this regime either; I’m staying out here in the street. Maybe these people, the normal people, the ones not inclined to step out of line, maybe they help to rock the joint, too, maybe they help to shake and stomp. And perhaps, if the magic holds just rig
ht, and everyone feels it and everyone joins in, we are the people, the tremor becomes an earthquake and the foundation crumbles. It all comes apart.

  Revolution.

  And that is what happened in the fall of 1989 in East Germany.

  By early October, the groundwork laid by punks and other activists influenced by the punk mentality was becoming a magical, spontaneous, mass uprising, being joined by people from all walks of life, all now chanting Otze’s line: We are the people.

  Both participants and Party officials expected the number of people at Leipzig’s weekly Monday demonstration to swell on October 9, 1989. So, too, would the number and type of security forces present. For the first time, the Party called in troops from the National Volks Army, armed with live ammunition; Stasi chief Mielke issued orders for all Stasi operatives to carry their guns; regional hospitals were put on alert. For weeks, every Monday protest had been bigger than the previous; for weeks, the violence of the official response had also intensified. Which side was winning? And what would happen next?

  Siegbert Schefke—Media Siggi from the Environmental Library—snuck out of his Berlin apartment in the pre-dawn hours of October 9, ditching the group of Stasi tails waiting for him outside his place by creeping across the roofs of adjoining buildings before dropping down and driving to Leipzig with Aram Radomski and one of their cameras, switching cars several times to make sure they weren’t followed. All around them they saw convoys of military-style vehicles also chugging toward Leipzig. When they reached town, the pair hid in a church tower that faced the ring road in central Leipzig. From that vantage point they filmed the biggest demonstration yet as it slowly snaked around the ring road.

  This time, for the first time, security forces did not attack demonstrators despite the military-style build-up prior to the event. With close to 100,000 peaceful protesters working their way around Leipzig’s historic city center, police, Stasi, National Volks Army troops, and paramilitary groups all hung back.

  Siggi and Aram smuggled the footage out via their West German correspondent contact, and it was broadcast the next night for everyone in East Germany to see via Western TV. The snowball effect, the magical spontaneous uprising of a broad spectrum of society—of normal people, working people, those who usually just went along—had reached critical mass for all to see. No longer just punks and freaks dared to take to the streets, but grandmothers and shift workers, the bedrock of society, all across the country . . . the tremors becoming ever more frequent, ever more powerful, the foundations shuddering underfoot, shaking, shaking, shaking.

  Even core members of the Party could now feel the tremors reverberating beneath them.

  The following Tuesday, October 17, at the weekly meeting of the Politburo, Erich Honecker was deposed. The Politburo installed Egon Krenz in his place, who, despite having spoken openly of a “Chinese solution” to the country’s unrest, despite having overseen the election commission that was proven to have falsified the vote back in May, now began to speak of change.

  People on the streets were not buying it.

  The tremors did not let up.

  We are the people, we are the power.

  On November 4, 1989, three Stasi officers knocked at A-Micha’s door at seven in the morning. “These are the colleagues who will look after you today,” the ranking officer said, gesturing to the other two. “We don’t have to arrest you, but we can arrest you.”

  Then one officer took up a position in front of the building, and one behind. Wherever A-Micha went, they went. And if he were to go in the direction of Alexanderplatz, where a demonstration was scheduled, he knew what would happen.

  It didn’t matter that A-Micha and other known agitators couldn’t go.

  November 4 was a Saturday, making the demonstration that day the first not scheduled on a workday. Half a million people gathered on East Berlin’s Alexanderplatz to demand real change, fundamental change, not Egon fucking Krenz change. The tremors had become shockwaves. The tremors had fatally cracked the foundation. Revolution was at hand.

  We are the people.

  Back in August, Erich Honecker had quoted an August Bebel rhyme during a promotional visit to a microprocessor factory in Erfurt: “Den Sozialismus in seinem Lauf hält weder Ochs noch Esel auf,” which means “Neither ox nor donkey can halt the progress of socialism.” Honecker had repeated the phrase on October 6, with Gorbachev in attendance on the eve of the celebrations of the DDR’s fortieth birthday.

  The final sentence of the fall issue of the mOAning Star newspaper read: Die Anarchie in ihrem Lauf hält weder Mielke noch Erich schon gar nicht mehr auf.

  Translation: Neither Stasi chief Erich Mielke nor dictator Erich Honecker can halt the progress of anarchy any longer.

  Truth.

  65

  It was cold on November 9, 1989. As the sun sank early that evening, it got colder.

  Feeling B and die Anderen were on their way to another gig in West Berlin that night at a venue called Pike Club, in a back courtyard on Glogauer Strasse, in Kreuzberg. The club was fairly close to two border checkpoints, one at Heinrich-Heine-Strasse and the other at the Oberbaumbrücke, a bridge from Warschauer Strasse in the East to Schlesisches Tor in the West.

  The bands’ previous gig together in the West—back in May—had taken place barely a week before the Chinese government crushed the student uprising on Tiananmen Square. That had been an oh-shit moment for some members of the bands.

  Should I have stayed in the West?

  But Feeling B had soon after been granted another set of travel visas, lengthy ones that allowed them to go on tour in West Germany during the summer of 1989. Visiting the other side of Berlin was one thing; traversing West Germany was another. The state concert agency assigned the band a driver, a cushy Russian Lada sedan, and a trailer to haul their gear.

  In the case of die Anderen, the reward for their return after the May show came that fall of 1989, when authorities granted them permission to play the show at Pike Club. This time die Anderen received visas that allowed unlimited exit and entry for a month, from late October to late November, as well as the right to use any checkpoint.

  The members of die Anderen had already crossed to Kreuzberg and back earlier the same day as the Pike Club gig to buy a few cans of beer and a newspaper.

  They’d been drinking all day.

  Dafty was playing guitar in die Anderen at this point. Toster had gotten him back into the music scene upon Dafty’s return from the army, having him work as a roadie for die Anderen before Dafty started his own group, which eventually imploded. Dafty—with his serious punk background, his run-ins with the cops, his detainments, his friendships with the Erlöser punks and Church from Below crowd—simply couldn’t believe he had this visa in his hand.

  But he did; they all did.

  And when they turned up for the gig that cold November night, they were already drunk. They kept drinking as the other bands played, with Feeling B playing their set just before die Anderen went on.

  Unlike back in May, this time the venue was full, and as die Anderen played the crowd seemed to swell further.

  The band spotted a lot of familiar faces in the audience, but that wasn’t unusual. They always ran into a lot of people they knew in West Berlin—people who had fled recently through Hungary or people who had left or been expatriated over the years. But as die Anderen ripped through their set, people started holding up East German ID papers and waving them in the air.

  Strange.

  Still, drunk themselves, the band members figured the people in the crowd were probably drunk, too—shit, maybe they were making fun of the band or something.

  They continued to play.

  More familiar faces. The British musician PJ Harvey was at the show—along with her mom. Harvey was still practically a teenager, but the band she was in at the time, Automatic Dlamini, had played in East Berlin over the summer and she’d gotten to know die Anderen.

  So many familiar faces.
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br />   And the ID papers waving in the air.

  More and more East German ID papers held aloft.

  What the fuck was going on?

  Finally, as die Anderen were playing their final song of the night, Dafty spotted another familiar face. And this wasn’t someone who had fled the country. He had seen this person earlier that day, back in East Berlin.

  It began to dawn on him . . . but wait, that’s impossible!

  He just couldn’t wrap his hazy head around what was happening. If these people were here . . . in West Berlin . . .

  I must be really drunk.

  Of course everyone already had a sense that something big was on the verge of happening. Things had already taken place in the last few weeks and months they thought they’d never see. Honecker had stepped down. Tens of thousands had taken to the streets in Leipzig and Berlin, half a million had filled Alexanderplatz just a few days ago. But still. This . . . this would mean . . .

  When the band came offstage, they were mobbed by friends from East Berlin, all talking at once, and it was true, it was true: the checkpoints were open.