by Herbie Sykes
DIETER
The pressure to join the party was increasing, but I didn’t want to and my dad was dead set against it. So in that respect my family was different, and I suppose I was different. I wasn’t political at all, but nor did I want my life to become politicised.
NEUES DEUTSCHLAND
ORGAN DES ZENTRALKOMITEES DER SOZIALISTISCHEN EINHEITSPARTEI DEUTSCHLANDS
The Chairman of the State Committee for Physical Culture and Sports, Alfred B. Neumann, awarded medals of merit to four sports officials on behalf of Prime Minister Otto Grotewohl at the hall of ministers in Berlin on Saturday morning. In addition twenty-seven athletes, coaches, officials and the sports editor of Neues Deutschland, Klaus-Ullrich Huhn,45 received the title ‘Honoured Master of Sports’. A further eighty-three athletes were awarded the title ‘Master of Sports’. […]
ROAD CYCLING:
Masters of Sports: Klaus Ampler (DHfK Leipzig), Lothar Appler, Manfred Brüning, Eberhard Butzke, Alexander Fehsler, Siegfried Fehsler (all SC Dynamo Berlin), Günter Lux (DHfK Leipzig), Hans-Dieter Taufmann (SC Dynamo Berlin), Dieter Wiedemann (SC Wismut Karl-Marx-Stadt).
Reprinted from ‘High state awards for sportsmen’, 16 December 1962
DIETER
Why so many Dynamo riders? I’ll tell you.
The country was getting more and more oppressive. There were more police, more people being arrested, and more Stasi.46
Dynamo was the Stasi sport club, and the Stasi boss was Erich Mielke. He was also chairman of the sport club, and he was one of the most callous and powerful men in the GDR. He liked the fact that people were afraid of him, and afraid of the Stasi. If he decided he wanted Dynamo athletes at the big international sporting events he’d have them, come what may. He was much more interested in football than cycling, but that wasn’t the point. Mielke was a man who got what he wanted, and he wanted his sport club to be the best.
SYLVIA
I knew he must have been extremely upset because it was the one and only time he mentioned the situation in the GDR. We had family over there, so we understood that you couldn’t write or send anything that might be construed as anti-communist. You couldn’t send West German magazines, for example, and even patriotic German folk music was banned.
I remember writing to him when they shot John F. Kennedy in November 1963. It was a really important thing, but he didn’t have anything to say about it. He just wrote, ‘It’s a pity.’
DIETER
She’s right that I never mentioned politics, and right about the the killing of JFK. The reason I didn’t comment on things like that was because it served no purpose, and it would have been dangerous. By now people who expressed political opinions, however innocuous, were being dragged out of restaurants. You learned to say nothing, because that way they didn’t have a reason to come after you.
To you it’s all perfectly normal. It looks like a boy and a girl writing letters, but actually you have no idea what it was like to live under those conditions. We’re talking about the GDR in the immediate aftermath of the wall. The country was being run by Leninist-Marxist fundamentalists. They were absolutely convinced that capitalism threatened not only their ideology, but their very existence.
They were crazy, and they were convinced that people from the west were their enemies. I was a sportsman being supported by the state, and I was writing letters to a girl from Bavaria. They didn’t care about human beings, and they certainly didn’t care about bourgeois sentiments like love.
The only thing that mattered to them was winning the war.
DIETER
By 1963 everything seemed to be getting worse, and the cycling was certainly getting worse. I’d been denied the chance to ride the World Championships, and then they told us that the Tours of Egypt and Tunisia were cancelled. That just left Eastern Bloc races, and the Peace Race if you happened to qualify. Even that was a political football, though.
My problems were partly the way I rode, partly my character and mainly political. I couldn’t win a sprint, but stage races weren’t about winning sprints. I was consistent and I think I was pretty tough, but I didn’t care about being interviewed by journalists or talking on the radio. I rode my bike, kept myself to myself and I wasn’t bothered about trying to promote myself or the party. Even when I finished second at the Tour of the GDR they never really wrote about me because I was no use to them. I was from the wrong club and the wrong town, and I wasn’t interested in being used to promote the ideology.
I’d been runner-up at the Tour of the GDR the previous season, and anyone could see that I was one of the best stage racers in the country. And so of course I wasn’t chosen for the Peace Race47.
What happened was that I had some dental problems, and they said I wasn’t sufficiently recovered. I told them that I knew my body, and in training I was one of the strongest. I was ready to ride, but it made no difference. They chose two from Dynamo and three from DHfK, and so that only left one spot for the rest. They chose Weissleder instead of me, so basically they used the thing with my teeth as a mechanism to lever me out.
DIETER
All I wanted was that they treated me fairly and let me ride. Now, though, it was increasingly clear that they weren’t about to. Anyway, Ampler won the Peace Race and the GDR won the team prize. They got what they wanted, and they got it with DHfK and Dynamo riders. I guess in that sense they were justified in leaving me out after all.
What they did was to select me for the Tour of Lower Austria with Rittmeyer and Lörke. It was a sop to keep me sweet, but also a complete sham. Neither Austria nor Sweden were part of NATO, so technically they were both neutral. However, both had economic and diplomatic links with the NATO countries, and so given that the GDR was a pariah they couldn’t be seen to invite us. Equally they couldn’t be seen not to, so what they did was to invite small teams of riders on the pretext that they were riding for the same club. The official version was that they were representing the club as distinct to the state, and that’s how they got round it.
It was politically expedient to present it that way. Neues Deutschland never referenced the fact that we were ostensibly riding for a single club, but referred to us as the ‘GDR team’. The inference was that the Swedes and Austrians invited us because they were enlightened, peaceful nations, while the rest didn’t because they had caved in to Bonn. That was the level of duplicity.
DIETER
I’d grown up dreaming of the World Championships and the Tour de France, but for my troubles I’d been sent to the Tour of Lower Austria.
While we were there something incredible happened. One of my team-mates came up to me and said, ‘Why don’t we try to defect while we’re here?’ It was an absolute bolt from the blue, and I remember it as if it were yesterday because I was so astonished. I thought about it for a second or two, and then just laughed. I just made out I thought he was joking.
DIETER
Why didn’t I answer?
In the weeks before the race I’d thought about defecting a lot, but I’d decided I couldn’t. I’d only met Sylvia once, she was only seventeen and I didn’t know what she really felt. I wasn’t sure whether she meant what she wrote, or whether the letters were just a way to pass the time. The other thing was that even if I had wanted to go I couldn’t have. My dad was working on the race as a mechanic, and it would have been pretty terrible for him to go home without me.
By now you were living in constant fear of saying the wrong thing. You had to be watchful all the time, because you felt like you were being watched all the time. That’s why, particularly after 1961, it became almost impossible to build genuine friendships. I liked the guy, and the chances are that he really wanted to go. Equally it was possible he just wanted to know how I’d respond. If I’d said, ‘Oh yes, that’s a great idea!’ he might have gone straight back to the coach, or to the Stasi, or whomever. For all I knew – and for all I know today – he might have been Stasi himself.
You could have a lot of idea
s, but it was best not to articulate them. My way of dealing with it was to keep myself to myself and say nothing to anybody. I’m quite a shy person by nature, but the point is that you learned to internalise everything. You had to think about the potential ramifications of everything you said, and the net result was that you had your public self and your private self.
DIETER
You couldn’t know, for example, whether your girlfriend’s dad might be Stasi. You couldn’t know whether your girlfriend herself was Stasi. They would send a pretty girl, they’d kid you into thinking they were in love with you, and that would be the end of you. You’d finish up in prison.
DIETER
So I was second again in Lower Austria, and more importantly we won the team prize. I went back in July for the full Tour of Austria. I did a decent ride there as well, without going too deep. I finished tenth, but by the time I got home my form was as good as it had ever been.
NEUES DEUTSCHLAND
ORGAN DES ZENTRALKOMITEES DER SOZIALISTISCHEN EINHEITSPARTEI DEUTSCHLANDS
A hearty encounter between Peace Race winner Klaus Ampler, the Chairman of the Council of Agriculture Georg Ewald, and the crew of a combine harvester. Otto Lipkowski and Walter Götze, from the Görzig LPG, are the current leaders of the harvesting competition. Thursday afternoon’s encounter came down to a twenty-seven-hectare barley fight. Beaming with happiness, the two comradely farmers each received a symbolic yellow jersey from Germany’s best cyclist. He told them, ‘You are the winners of the first stage. Let’s hope you’re able to defend your yellow jerseys to the end!’
[…]
The heroes of the fields waved the hero of the road off with a firm handshake; ‘All the best, and stay at the front!’
Reprinted from ‘Yellow jerseys’, 26 July 1963
DIETER
The 1963 Tour of the GDR was the last week in July, and I had the form of my life. I fancied myself to win it, but they surpassed themselves this time. I was on the start line ready to go, and a guy from the federation came up to me. He said, ‘You’re not starting because you have to go to Berlin. You’ve been selected for the team time trial at the Worlds, and you need to do a training camp with Appler, Brüning and Müller.’
The point is that the championships were in Belgium, and it was clear to everyone that we wouldn’t be permitted to travel. Nothing had changed, so their pulling me out of the race was a complete waste of time in that respect.
I was a good time trialist, but my being withdrawn wasn’t because of that. The point was that by pulling me out they ensured that Ampler, who was one of the DHfK pin-up boys, would win the Tour of the GDR. There was nothing I could do about it except wait for the official announcement that we wouldn’t be travelling to Belgium. Sure enough it arrived four days later and so that was that; another chance missed and another total waste of time.
NEUES DEUTSCHLAND
ORGAN DES ZENTRALKOMITEES DER SOZIALISTISCHEN EINHEITSPARTEI DEUTSCHLANDS
A further page has been added to the NATO authorities’ inglorious chapter of discrimination against GDR athletes. This latest Bonn-inspired policy has it that our world-class track and road cyclists are excluded from competing in the World Championships in Belgium, just as they were in Italy last year. […]
It later transpired that the Belgian government had issued the visas, and the GDR Cycling Federation was even notified of their numbers. Federation president Heinz Przybyl, general secretary Heinz Dietrich, trainer Gallinge and the world-class track foursome Barleben, Köhler, Schmelzer and Kissner, the first part of the GDR team, arrived at Brussels airport on Sunday, the Belgian police forced them to return home immediately.
The GDR Cycling Federation wrote to the UCI congress, due to be held in Liège on 31 July. On behalf of its 16,000 members it issued the sharpest protest against this outrageous act of political interference in matters of international sport. The federation stresses that it has always made every effort in endeavouring to further the development of cycling in the world. It is an equal member of the UCI and has the right to participate both at congress and in the World Championships. The world governing body has a duty to provide protection for its members. […]
Reprinted from ‘GDR cyclists refused entry’, 30 July 1963
DIETER
So I’d missed out on both the Peace Race and the Tour of the GDR. I had the feeling that sooner or later there would be nothing left for me to ride but pointless criteriums, races I didn’t have a hope of winning. I was like a tree that can’t bear fruit, and the only things growing were anger and resentment.
Ampler won the Tour of the GDR, DHfK riders were second and third, and I was delegated to the Tour of Bulgaria. I’d started to hate all the hypocrisy of GDR cycling, and to resent the fact that my career was being hijacked by politicians.
I was becoming fixated on the idea of getting out. All I wanted was to be a proper cyclist and to be free to come and go as I pleased. I’d had enough. My mind was made up.
SYLVIA
A letter arrived from Flöha, but this time it was addressed to my mum and dad.
SYLVIA
My mum said she didn’t mind me going, but only on condition that she came with me.
Dieter and I had been writing for three years now, and I was always insisting that I would go to live with him when I was twenty-one. I guess she wanted to make sure that he was OK just in case I didn’t change my mind. She wrote to my great-uncle in Flöha and asked him to apply for the permits.
The problem was that we weren’t immediate family. They were only my mum’s aunt and uncle, so the permit was refused. My uncle went to see Dieter to tell him that it was impossible for me to come.
DIETER
The permits were refused, as I’d suspected they would be. I went straight to the town hall and asked to see the mayor. I reminded him that he’d promised me a favour after the Peace Race, and that I’d never taken him up on it. Now I said I wanted to use it, and so he needed to help me.
I told him that I wanted to have ‘a girl’ sitting next to me for the anniversary party. I explained that because of my cycling commitments I never had time to think about girlfriends, or to go to the kind of places where you might meet one. I said I didn’t want the embarrassment of being seated there alone for the big event, but that there was a girl from the west I sometimes exchanged letters with. I explained that she had an aunt and uncle in Flöha that she wanted to visit, and that she’d said she’d be happy to come to the party while she was here. The problem was that she’d been refused a permit, and so if he could help it would be appreciated.
Why didn’t I tell him she was a sort of girlfriend? I’ll explain as best I can.
I was hedging my bets, but it was based on the assumption that he didn’t know the true nature of our relationship. He was the mayor and so he was an important person, but that didn’t mean he’d seen the letters. I’d always assumed that the Stasi had been reading them, but unless he was Stasi himself he’d have no access to them and no way of knowing. There was no point in making it any more complicated than needed be, and if I’d said, ‘She’s my girlfriend and we’re in love with one another’ he might have turned me down outright.
I knew he wanted to look after me because I was the golden boy, but I also knew that he wouldn’t have wanted to compromise his own position. You didn’t get to be the mayor unless you were trusted by the party and they – in the guise of the Stasi – had decreed that she couldn’t come. The Stasi was their ‘shield and sword’, and the rules were clear. And yet here I was asking him to appeal to them on her behalf.
I wasn’t in the party and I’d never expressed any interest in joining. I wasn’t a Täve, so politically the mayor had nothing to gain from Sylvia’s coming, but probably quite a bit to lose. In isolation his appealing to the Stasi probably wasn’t too damaging, but nor would it have been helpful for his career. The reason she’d been refused a permit was because things like that were considered ‘anti-communist’. If, t
herefore, anything had gone wrong, he’d have been the architect because he’d been the one facilitating the visit. Then the fact that he’d appealed on my behalf would be recorded in his Stasi file, and so in some respects I was asking him to roll the dice.
I knew that had I not been Dieter Wiedemann, Peace Race rider and local hero, there’s no way in the world he’d have even considered doing it. He’d promised me a favour, but he could easily have said, ‘When I said I could do you a favour I meant that I can get you to the top of the waiting list for a car.’ Equally he could have said one thing and done another. He could have gone away and done nothing, then told me that the Stasi had turned him down. I’d have been none the wiser and he wouldn’t have had to ask them a favour.
What happened was that he told me to leave it with him for three days and he’d see what he could do. So I was betting on him keeping his word, and on his having friends in high places at the Stasi. I was asking him to sway them into bending their own rules for a nineteen-year-old girl who, according to their doctrine, had no right to travel.
DIETER
When I went back he said he’d been to see them. They’d told him the permits wouldn’t be a problem, and all I had to do was just tell Sylvia’s uncle to reapply.
I’d done it, and I headed off to Bulgaria knowing that I’d be seeing her again. It was all arranged.