The Race Against the Stasi
Page 5
KLAUS
I was born in Berlin in 1928, and I was born into communism. We hated the Nazis, hated what they stood for and hated what they’d done.
My mother and father were both founding members of the KPD, the German Communist Party, in 1918. My mother had been married before, to another of that group,8 so I had a half-brother who was nine years older than me. My own father was the first president of the GDR Central Bank.
During the war I was sent to Saalfeld, near Jena. They wanted to evacuate Berlin, and my grandparents had a shoe shop there. So I was helping them in the shop, but then I was conscripted to anti-aircraft. It was 1943, and the British and American bombers were trying to bomb the Carl Zeiss factory. You automatically assume that all German people were trying to protect their country, but it’s not true.
So there I was, a fifteen-year-old boy being made to shoot at British aircraft. They were using Russian POWs as forced labour, and the prisoners would bring us the anti-aircraft grenades. They’d deliver canisters of hydrochloric acid, which they used to create a smokescreen. They made the Russians open them, but it was like a death sentence because exposure to the acid damaged their lungs.
One time they caught me giving one of the prisoners some bread. I was just giving a piece of bread to a hungry man, but for that I went without food myself for twenty-four hours. The next day I told them I was so hungry that I didn’t have the energy to work.
NEUES DEUTSCHLAND
ORGAN DES ZENTRALKOMITEES DER SOZIALISTISCHEN EINHEITSPARTEI DEUTSCHLANDS
The manufacturing city of Chemnitz, the city with the great traditions of the German working class and of such revolutionary fighters as Fritz Heckert and Ernst Schneller, today receives the name of the greatest son of the German people, Karl Marx. Few cities in our country are so proud of the glorious struggles of the proletariat against capitalist exploitation and oppression, and of the liberation of working people from capitalism. Following the defeat of Hitlerism by the glorious Soviet Army, the working people of Chemnitz proved, through their exemplary performance in reconstructing their city and their businesses, that they possess the revolutionary momentum with which to fight against capitalist exploitation and oppression, and to create socialism in our country. Chemnitz will be called Karl-Marx-Stadt because its people, led by the working class and their party, have proved themselves worthy of this great German, and will continue to do so.
The workers of Karl-Marx-Stadt speak
At the centre of Chemnitz, in one of the liveliest squares, stands a bright circular building. Amidst the dark houses and ruins it acts, with its floral borders and the freshly mown lawn at the front, as a kind of clearing whose view relaxes the eyes. On its roof is a large, bright red star. It is the Soviet star.
The square in which it stands is called Stalinplatz, and the building is the Soviet Pavilion. Its construction was carried out by volunteer workers from the population of Chemnitz. ‘It was necessary for us all to participate in this construction,’ says worker Hans Werner. ‘With the construction of this pavilion we wanted to document that the friendship with the Soviet Union is a matter of the heart for the workers of Chemnitz.’ […]
Reprinted from ‘Karl-Marx-Stadt – a centre of the German workers movement’, 10 May 1953
DIETER
They renamed it, yes, but it wasn’t like people suddenly started calling it ‘Karl-Marx-Stadt’. Maybe they did in public, but it had been Chemnitz for hundreds of years! Karl Marx had never even been to Chemnitz!
These people were crazy.
NEUES DEUTSCHLAND
ORGAN DES ZENTRALKOMITEES DER SOZIALISTISCHEN EINHEITSPARTEI DEUTSCHLANDS
At the Army stadium in Warsaw, where GDR cyclists started the Peace Race for the first time three years ago, the evening of 14 May brought the greatest sporting triumph in the history of the movement of our republic. The four remaining riders of the GDR team, united as one, won the team competition of the sixth International Peace Race by over two minutes.
On the 2,230 kilometres to Warsaw, they left the best amateur cyclists in Europe in their wake. This great success was possible only because the athletes of the GDR enjoy assistance without parallel in the history of Germany.
The working people of the GDR have taken great pleasure in this success. On the evening of 14 May a flood of telegrams arrived in the Polish capital. Their joy is combined with the satisfaction that workers in all the socialist enterprises of our republic strive towards higher performance and thus pave the way for the wider promotion of sport. Here our team competed in peaceful competition with sixteen nations, and gave their all to produce a worthy characterisation of the GDR.
And yet the triumph of our team is but a victory for the movement for world peace. As America’s lackeys in Europe continue their imperialist war against the Soviet Union and the people’s democratic countries, the best cyclists from almost the whole of Europe were brought together in democracy. The great International Peace Race ran through the heart of Europe, demonstrating by example that peaceful and friendly understanding between its peoples is quite possible. Under the banner bearing the same logo as the blue jerseys of the victorious GDR team, namely Picasso’s dove of peace, a huge new victory was won. […]
At 139 kilometres, the final stage from ŁódĐ to Warsaw was the shortest of the race. It was already three o’clock when the thirty-eight riders began their lap of honour, and the image before them will remain unforgettable not only to them, but to all of those who witnessed it. In Stalinogrod9 we had been of the opinion that the hundreds of thousands present could never be equalled. Here, in the city of textile workers, we went one better.
In the neutralised zone only a narrow corridor remained for the riders to navigate through. Behind the police cordons and tensioned cables, on every roof, ledge and balcony railing, the tens of thousands crowded.
There was probably not an inch of the city which didn’t resonate with joyful acclamation of Królak and Wilczewski, or for the GDR team wearing, for the first time, the blue jerseys at the head of the peloton. Thousands of flowers, from simple bouquets to precious roses, were thrown to the race convoy on the streets of ŁódĐ. There was no trace of the suffering that the people of this city had endured at the hands of the fascist occupiers. ‘Best wishes to you participants of the 1953 Peace Race’ and other slogans, written in the German language, were stretched across the road. […]
Reprinted from ‘They won the greatest sporting success in the history of our republic’, 16 May 1953
DIETER
They were trying to build a national identity for the GDR, and in that respect the blue jersey was extremely important. It was the first time a GDR sporting team had been successful on the international stage, and they saw the effect it had on the people. It confirmed the power of sport as a unifying force, and it started to dawn on them that it was much more persuasive than political rhetoric. GDR athletes who won big events could be useful in engendering patriotism at home, and esteem abroad. Success in sport provided the kind of international recognition that their diplomacy couldn’t.
People loved the race regardless of whether they were interested in sport, because it was a big social event. I doubt there was anything like it anywhere else in the world, and I doubt that there ever will be again. Millions watched by the roadside, and the stages always finished in vast stadiums. They would always be full of people because it was such a big celebration.
Then again you need to bear in mind that quite a lot of what you saw was orchestrated. You had a civic responsibility to support it because it was part of the apparatus of the state, and so local politicians competed to put on the best show. They tried to muster as many spectators as they could, so schools and factories would close when the race came by.
It wasn’t a ‘day off’ in the traditional sense, no. You had a civic and social responsibility to contribute to the spectacle, because that’s why you’d been given the time off in the first place. That was the way socialism functioned;
it tried to organise your leisure time as well as your work time because everything was geared around building a new society. So by attending you were seen to be demonstrating support for your town, and the ideals of socialism as a whole. In reality, though, you probably had very little choice. Everyone loved the race, but if you didn’t show up your bosses would take a dim view of it.
SYLVIA
Life got better as the economy improved. We weren’t wealthy by any means, but nor were we poor. I’d say we were just a normal family.
Our first car was a little Borgward, but as time went by my dad would buy bigger and better ones. Eventually he got a beautiful BMW, and he’d drive us to the Rhineland on holiday. Sometimes we went to Koblenz, or to the mountains, and later we even started going to Italy.
DIETER
A car? Are you crazy? My family cycled everywhere, just like everyone else!
My dad was mad about cycling, and he was a good mechanic. He fixed bikes up for other people in his spare time, and that was his great passion. As far as I know he didn’t ask for money, but people would pay him in kind. He’d get eggs, fruit, bits and pieces of whatever there was.
There were always bikes around, but you needed money to buy one and there was very little of it about. A month after the GDR team won the blue jersey it was my twelfth birthday and I finally got one.
DIETER
On the day I got my bike there was an uprising in Berlin, and it spread all over the GDR.10 Everything was being sovietised, and it was obvious that we weren’t independent at all. Towns were being renamed, churches closed down, and people who protested were being thrown in prison.
Farmers were losing their land because all the farms were being collectivised,11 and everything was focused on heavy industry. They were building munitions, but food production was down and families were going short. There seemed to be less and less in the shops.
Everyone could see that they were better off in the west, and thousands were emigrating there every month,12 then in June they extended work quotas and increased prices, and that was the final straw. It started out as a general strike, and then it became a demonstration. That was when the Russians sent the tanks into Berlin.
So the people were coming together, but not as the politicians had hoped. They were uniting in defiance of the party, and in defiance of Moscow. The Hitler years had left them with an ingrained distrust of politicians, and the more they lied the more the people turned against them. They wanted food, housing and a decent standard of living, and they wanted to be rewarded for what they did. I think most people thought that socialism was all well and good in principle, but principle doesn’t put food on the table, does it? Communism wasn’t working, and the reality was that the GDR, our brave new world, was a puppet state for Russia.
DIETER
It wasn’t a racing bike, but that didn’t stop me from pretending.
I’d always played football, but I was becoming obsessed with cycling. One of my favourite things was a little book about the Tour de France, and I studied it over and over. I learned everything I could about great champions like Coppi and Bobet, then Hugo Koblet and Ferdi Kübler.
The book described the great mountains; the Alps and Pyrenees. It seemed like a mystical world to me, and so it became my most treasured possession. I knew it was something I could only ever dream about, and so that’s what I did – when I was on my bike I used to daydream that I was riding the Tour de France.
At first a group of us used to go out and ride, but I was much better than the others. After a while they stopped coming with me because they couldn’t keep up and they said I was a maniac. I would ride as fast as I could for as long as I could, and I didn’t seem to be able to stop myself. Pretty soon I only had myself to ride against, so I started timing myself. I decided I wanted to start racing when I was fourteen, so I only had two years to get ready.
DIETER
My mum’s sister had married an American soldier. She was living in New York and she sent parcels. When the Russians sent the tanks in my mum decided she’d had enough. She wanted to go to America, and my aunt had told her she’d pay our airfare. My dad didn’t want anything to do with it, though. He said he was nearly fifty, and he wasn’t about to be uprooted to the other side of the world. He said he’d been born in Flöha, and he would die in Flöha. That’s the kind of man he was.
SYLVIA
We used to send parcels to a place called Flöha. My Great-Aunt Gertrud and Uncle Herbert lived there, and my grandmother told me that they couldn’t get a lot of the things we had.
We would send coffee, chocolate, things like that, and one of the things we sent most often was cigars. Uncle Herbert loved to smoke them, but he couldn’t get them over there. They were precious for him, and when he got them he’d write back thanking us. When we saw that there was a letter from Herbert Diersche we’d sit down as a family and read it all together. He’d describe the taste of the coffee, the smell of the cigars, the joy of smoking them. He wrote beautifully, and you almost felt like you were there in the room with him.
DIETER
The 1954 race was important for all sorts of reasons. The Russians were there for the first time, but they also invited the first non-European team. They were from India,13 and there was a huge amount of attention around them. Most people had never seen an Indian before, so it was another big statement of global fellowship. One guy, a Sikh named Dhana Singh, became the symbol of the whole race. The Indians were hopeless as cyclists, but the rest of the peloton made it their business to try to help them get round.
Obviously we’d won the previous year, so the anticipation was greater than ever. We didn’t win a single stage, though, and didn’t even have a rider in the top ten. It was a big letdown.
Then, of course, the FRG went and won the football World Cup in 1954, with the entire world watching.
NEUES DEUTSCHLAND
ORGAN DES ZENTRALKOMITEES DER SOZIALISTISCHEN EINHEITSPARTEI DEUTSCHLANDS
It was a game that interested the whole world, drew millions of spectators. As the aged Honorary President of FIFA Jules Rimet presented the trophy to the West German captain Fritz Walter, so concluded a World Cup which had moved hearts as never before. The trophy will remain in West Germany for the next four years, before the question will once more be asked in 1958. Fritz Walter took the prized trophy not only as captain, but having played the game of his life in the decisive encounter. The other members of the team coached by Sepp Herberger were scarcely less convincing.
The West German team are world champions. However it’s necessary to pay attention to the well-wishers, because among them there are suspicious names which strike an unpleasant chord. This narrow victory was stamped with ‘German character’, a character the world knows, and has had cause to recover from more than once. One needs a finely tuned ear to distinguish between the honest joy of sporting success, and the rantings of people who discover sport in their hearts only when that it enables them to play their ‘Deutschland, Deutschland Über Alles’ records at full blast.
People such as Adenauer, whose telegram also arrived in Switzerland. So far his state budget has provided no money for the promotion of West German sport, and nor has he given any thought to trying to prevent the pressganging of young athletes into the Foreign Legion. Now, though, he seeks to take advantage of the performance of eleven West German footballers for his American propaganda. […]
This is the Adenauer who, forty-eight hours before the game, threatened the French people with fascist impudence. Among neighbouring populations who couldn’t fail to hear Sunday night’s caterwauling of ‘Deutschland, Deutschland Über Alles’, there will be a similar reaction to the Paris speech. Inevitably then, it follows that the sporting performance of the West German team is pushed into the background by this chauvinistic tone. These chauvinistic plans, however, will lead to another war. Two World Cups, as well as thousands of outstanding athletes from all nations, fell victim to the last war.
Fritz
Walter wore the uniform of a lance corporal in Hitler’s Wehrmacht. Luckily for him his war ended early, and he became a Soviet prisoner of war. Other German internationals, such as the unforgettable Urban and the rapier-quick winger Klingler, were killed. Why recall them now? Because the policies of the Adenauer government set the same course as that which sent Urban, Klingler and many others to their deaths, and because they use the victory of Fritz Walter in Bern as an opportunity to create the atmosphere they need for a new military rampage.
They write: ‘Everywhere German hearts beat, they felt this was a German triumph, a triumph of Germanness’. What they actually mean is, ‘If we are world champions in football, we’ll soon be armed for other actions. We are strengthening!’
Fritz Walter celebrated the greatest day of his life on the football pitch. We are happy for him, but at this time we can’t help but commemorate great athletes like Urban and Klingler …
Reprinted from ‘Once again the football World Cup’, 6 June 1954
DIETER
The issue was that there was a sporting cold war going on as well as a political one. Sport was absolute, and it was all about winners and losers. People were more interested in sport than in politics, and that’s why it started to become the big ideological battleground.