by Jack Barsky
“No,” he answered with a smile that barely concealed his pride. “I just bought it.”
Getting a car at that time in the GDR was next to impossible. It was not uncommon for people to wait ten or fifteen years for the opportunity to purchase one. But apparently the ten thousand marks in cash that my father had shown to the seller had done the trick. And thus we became the first family in the entire village to own a car.
That summer, we took our first vacation that wasn’t to one of our grandparents’ homes. Our new Wartburg was perfect for the 395-kilometer trip to the seaside resort town of Heringsdorf on the Baltic Sea.
When I caught my first glimpse of that vast expanse of water and saw ships in the distance, I wondered what was on the other side and if it were possible to get there. My parents explained that we would not be allowed to travel on one of those ships because they were going to foreign countries, but to me that only made the prospect more enticing.
Our two weeks at the seashore came and went in no time, and on August 13, we loaded the Wartburg, said good-bye to paradise, and started our homeward journey. Because Berlin was directly on our way, my parents decided we’d make a stop in the capital and perhaps take a quick trip to the western side of the city to buy some things we couldn’t get in the East.
After about two and a half hours of driving, we found ourselves on a busy section of the Autobahn, one of the main arteries connecting the northern coast with the rest of Germany. My father looked over his shoulder at my brother and me and said, “We’re almost to Berlin. Get ready for the big city.”
I sat up quickly and looked out the window at the road ahead. I had never seen so many cars before, but traffic was moving swiftly.
Suddenly, my brother and I were thrown forward into the back of the front seat as my father unexpectedly slammed on the brakes. And from that moment on, traffic slowed to a crawl, and the minutes turned to an hour as the sun heated up the inside of our dark-green car. There was no air-conditioning, and we had to keep the windows closed to avoid the thick, stinking exhaust from the inefficient two-stroke engines of the East German cars.
Though other cars began turning around ahead of us, my father stubbornly held his course, all while mumbling words I had never heard him say.
Finally, we saw two soldiers in camouflage up ahead with machine guns at the ready. They were flagging people down and pointing in the opposite direction.
My father cranked down the window and said, “What’s going on here? How much more of a delay should we expect?”
The taller of the two soldiers responded with a smirk, “Delay? Hier geht’s nicht weiter. You can’t continue.” From the tone of his voice, it was clear who was in charge.
My father tried again, “Can you tell us what’s going on?”
“You’ll find out soon enough,” the soldier replied. “Now turn around and go home. That’s an order.”
We were all disappointed to miss out on the Berlin visit, but there was also a measure of fear that accompanied the unknown. What could have happened? A military confrontation with the occupying forces on the western side of the city? Or worse, the outbreak of another war? We were mostly silent for the next few hours as my father drove us around the outskirts of Berlin and south to Bad Muskau.
We found the answers to our questions when we arrived home and turned on the radio. The regular programming had been replaced by classical music, which was interrupted periodically by strident news bulletins.
Today is an important day in the history of our young antifascist republic. Under the wise leadership of Walter Ulbricht and the Politburo of the SED, we have begun securing our border with an antifascist protective wall. This measure will protect the first German state of workers and peasants from the assaults by the West German neo-Nazis and their Anglo-American patrons. Long live the GDR, long live the SED, and long live Walter Ulbricht!
When the music started again, my father said with a nod, “It’s about time. We need to protect what we’ve worked so hard for.”
The Berlin Wall never had much significance to me during those years. Far more exciting things were going on, such as the first manned space flight, which had happened four months before the wall was erected. Yuri Gagarin’s orbit of the earth was one more conspicuous sign that the Soviet Union had moved ahead of the United States in the area of technology. It was additional evidence of the inevitable triumph of communism over capitalism. For a young man growing up in the GDR, there seemed to be nothing but promise ahead.
At the end of eighth grade, the educational path split into two tracks. Most students continued for another two years of formal schooling and then went on to learn a trade. But the top ten percent continued their education at a regional Erweiterte Oberschule (EOS—an advanced secondary school), which was the East German equivalent of the traditional four-year gymnasium or prep school. The primary purpose of the EOS was to prepare students for entry into university.
My mother had attended a boarding school, and she was determined that I would do the same. My application to EOS Karl Marx in the nearby town of Spremberg was granted, pending successful completion of a written entrance exam demonstrating my proficiency in math and German.
My father drove me the twenty-seven kilometers to Spremberg, and I was one of the last students to arrive in the classroom where the exam would be administered. The moment I stepped into the room, I felt uncomfortable, as if I had arrived at the wrong place. The boys all seemed bigger and stronger, and the well-dressed, well-developed girls were even more intimidating. As they mingled in little groups and interacted among themselves, they seemed like citizens of another world.
By contrast, with my shorts held up by suspenders, I looked like a scrawny beanpole of a country boy. Which I was. Luckily, no one paid any attention to me as I silently made my way to the last row, sat down at a bench near the window, and waited for the test to begin.
As soon as the teacher gave the word, all heads bent forward and the room fell silent except for the scratching of pencils on the test forms. Completely in my element, I moved quickly and easily through the questions and finished long before the allotted time. I always had a good sense of how I did on exams, and as I left the room that day, I knew I had passed. Sure enough, when the results were published, I was one of forty applicants admitted to the school.
On September 1, 1963, my father and I loaded my bedding, school supplies, and other necessities into the Wartburg and made the thirty-minute drive to the dorm at EOS Karl Marx.
As my father parked the car on the street, I stared out at the enormous building that would be my home for the next four years. Compared to everything I was used to, the place looked like a castle. Set back a hundred feet from the road and surrounded by lush greenery, the three-story villa rose up majestically to rule the surrounding neighborhood. The stucco front, unusually large windows, and complex steep roofline made the building a true standout in the entire city of Spremberg.
I later learned that the mansion, built in the 1920s, had been owned by a wealthy textile businessman and his wife. At the end of the war, both the textile mill and the villa had been declared Staatseigentum—property of the state. I don’t know what happened to the businessman, but the authorities allowed his wife to stay in a two-room apartment on the second floor of the villa and share the grandiose mansion with twenty-five lively and disrespectful teenagers. The dowager kept to herself, and the students treated her like a ghost from the past, passing in silence on those rare occasions when our paths crossed.
Though I was impressed by the grounds and the beautiful building, what mattered most to me was that the dorm was coed. Though this arrangement caused many headaches for the live-in headmaster, for me it opened up glorious possibilities. Finally, I would be closer to those illusive and magnificent creatures known as girls.
Once school began, classes filled the day until 2:00 p.m. There were no electives in the EOS system, only a heavy emphasis on the following subjects in order of importa
nce: math, German, chemistry, physics, Russian, English, history, biology, geography, physical education, civics, philosophy, art, and music. We also had school-sponsored extracurricular events in the Communist Youth Movement and Communist Military Sports Movement to strengthen our belief in the Communist cause.
Religion was absent from the curriculum, and even the study of philosophy was limited to the fundamentals of Marxist dialectical materialism—the idea that the material world has objective reality independent of mind or spirit.[1] Giants of German philosophy such as Kant and Hegel did not even get honorable mention. The concepts of open debate, point and counterpoint, and Socratic dialogue were unknown to us. Thus, the intellectual blackout extended far beyond spiritual matters.
There was one truth and one truth only: the teachings of Marx, Engels, and Lenin, as interpreted by the Communist leaders of our time. Dialectical materialism was elevated to the status of an exact science, on par with mathematics and physics. Therefore, its findings and conclusions, as applied to the history of mankind, were unassailable.
Moreover, because capitalism was certain to fall and yield to communism—the pinnacle of societal evolution—we were clearly on the right side of history, and there was no further need for critical thought. Existential issues were, by and large, off-limits.
This single-track approach to life could not help but stunt both our spiritual and intellectual growth. We were hungry for answers but often did not even know the questions.
After dinner each night in the dorm, there was a mandatory viewing of the evening news program, Die Aktuelle Kamera, which was primarily government propaganda with two minutes at the end for weather and sports. The top story was invariably something about the heroic efforts of a group of workers or farmers to help fulfill the goals of the central plan laid out by the Communist Party. Not even the most ardent supporters of the Communist regime (which included me) took this stuff seriously.
On the evening of November 22, 1963, I stepped away to the bathroom just prior to the start of the newscast. As I reentered the room through the sliding double doors, my friend Helmut jumped up from his chair and yelled, “Kennedy got killed!” The entire room, usually filled with banter and laughter, fell silent as we looked at one another in disbelief.
Though Kennedy, as president of the United States, personified our ultimate enemy—as we had seen clearly during the Cuban Missile Crisis in 1962 and his visit to West Berlin in June 1963 when he gave his famous “Ich bin ein Berliner” speech—he still had a certain mystique that reached even behind the Iron Curtain. JFK and his wife were attractive and elegant—an irresistible contrast to the stodgy East German leaders and their dour wives. And there was some hope that he might start the process of easing tensions between East and West.
Even though the media coverage of the assassination and funeral was cold and factual, and even though most East Germans lacked a deep understanding of what was going on in the world at the time, we sensed that Kennedy’s untimely death was a big loss to humanity. Students and faculty alike were sobered by this tragic event.
The next day, a small group of students shuffled along a sandy back road to the railway station to catch the weekend train to our respective hometowns. The cold November drizzle and leafless trees reflected our somber mood. Even the transistor radio that usually blared rock-and-roll music during our walks was silent.
I WAS SITTING AT THE TABLE in my dorm room on a hot June afternoon, wrestling with a pesky math problem, when Rosi stepped into the room. Rosi was one of the girls in the dorm who often mingled with the guys. She was bright, funny, attractive, and friendly.
“Hey, Albrecht, a bunch of us are going to see The Three Musketeers at the open-air theater tonight. We got permission to stay out late. Do you want to come?”
I stared at her in surprise and said shyly, “I don’t know. I have a lot of homework left to do.”
Rosi let out a hearty laugh. “Since when do you have a problem with homework? I wish I had your smarts. Come on, it will be fun!”
Rosi was almost a year older than me, and she was already a fully developed young woman. For a scrawny, awkward country boy, she was clearly out of my league. And yet . . . was this for real? It wasn’t exactly a date, but had this pretty girl just asked me out?
Up until that moment, girls had been creatures to secretly admire from afar. From kindergarten on, there had always been a pretty girl or two that I wished I could have as a special friend, but I was always too shy to ask. To me, girls were to be adored, admired, and treated with kindness and love—especially the dainty ones.
And now, here was my chance. A beautiful young lady had shown enough interest in me to ask me to join her. I hoped that Rosi couldn’t detect my accelerated heartbeat as I leaned back, scratched my head, and said with phony equanimity, “All right, you talked me into it. When are we leaving?”
“Now!” she said.
I felt suddenly light-headed, and all thoughts of staying back to work on math problems fled from my mind.
For this special outing, the dorm administrator had moved the curfew from 10:00 p.m. to midnight. As nine o’clock approached, we began the twenty-minute walk to the outdoor theater. There were a dozen boys and girls in our group, but as if by secret agreement, Rosi and I stayed a few yards behind the others, walking silently side by side along the meandering back path through a garden ablaze with late spring flowers. The temperature outside was still near eighty degrees, and Rosi was wearing a sleeveless summer dress with a flowery print design.
Emboldened by her proximity, I “accidentally” brushed her hand, and to my surprise and delight, she took hold of mine. For the remainder of the walk, we held hands but didn’t say a word.
After viewing the movie—of which I remember nothing—we began the homeward stroll, again lagging behind the group. Under the cover of darkness, I awkwardly tried to find her lips. When I did, she responded passionately and (in hindsight) with experience. Before we withdrew to our respective dorm rooms at midnight, there was one more sweet good-night kiss and our first embrace.
The next morning, my lips were sore and my jaw hurt, but I was walking on air, and the blissful grin that seemed permanently engraved on my face was a dead giveaway to anybody who cared to look. After sixteen years without meaningful love, and many years of yearning for female companionship, I was certain I had found the love of my life and the girl I would one day marry. What was probably only a casual flirt for Rosi was head-over-heels passion for me.
To my dismay, only two weeks remained before summer vacation, so I focused the grand sum of my pent-up emotions on my new girlfriend and spent every possible minute in Rosi’s presence. When we were apart, I daydreamed about her and wrote her name on books, bags, desks, my hands—whatever suitable object could be victimized by my smudgy ballpoint pen. I sent her little slips of paper with love notes, including one that said, “I am you and you are I.”
It was going to be a long summer without her, but I would write to her and think about her the entire time. And I was certain she would do the same.
Although the school year was winding down, I still had time to get in trouble before the summer break began.
My mother always declared proudly to anyone who would listen, “Albrecht is very, very smart and easy to handle.” But given the occasional lashings I received from my father, the “easy to handle” part may have been more fiction than fact. In any case, parental discipline at home did nothing to change my behavior when I was away at school. And as my ability to think, reason, and respond had improved, I had begun to challenge authority.
Oma Hedwig always advised me to count to ten and take a deep breath before I opened my mouth, but that wisdom was not on my mind one warm afternoon in June when I threw out a challenge to my math teacher in front of the entire class.
We were slogging through a stretch of the most boring mechanical algebra: square roots and logarithms. As Herr Traubach was filling the blackboard with formulas copied from a large
notebook, I raised my hand.
“Yes, Herr Dittrich?” Our teachers always used the polite form of speech to address us, and in keeping with customary practice, I rose from my seat to reply.
“Can you tell us why we have to learn all this quatsch?” I said.
Herr Traubach’s face turned beet red, and there was dead silence in the classroom.
“Sit down!” was all he could muster, and we finished the final ten minutes of class under a cloud of severe discomfort.
The following day, I was moved from the front row to the back and was also summoned to the principal’s office. The principal was a short, wiry man with penetrating eyes, an aquiline nose, and a full head of wavy, dark-blond hair. He exuded authority and was one of the few people at the school whom I truly respected. When I closed the door behind me and stood in front of his desk, there was no mistaking that I was in trouble.
“Herr Dittrich, your behavior in class is unacceptable. You are such a smart young man, but your performance does not live up to your potential. High school is a privilege. Do not squander it by clowning around. You must shape up or we may have to resort to punishment.”
Blah, blah, blah, I thought on my way back to the classroom. My father’s hand is a lot more dangerous than your mouth. But I would soon get a painful reminder that a principal’s words must be taken very seriously.
On Monday of the last week of school, the students gathered for the customary general assembly. As usual, I paid no attention to the announcements until I was rudely awakened from my daydreaming by the sound of my own name.
“Herr Wlochal and Herr Dittrich, step out in front of the assembly!”
I had barely enough time to come forward before the principal began reading a statement to the students and teachers. “Herr Dittrich, you are herewith receiving a strong reprimand for lack of discipline, disrupting class, and inciting your classmates to behavior unbecoming of a young Communist. We are placing you on probation. Failure to turn things around will result in expulsion.”