Red Love

by Leo Maxim

  I’m expecting something to happen, for people to be arrested on the spot or just forbidden to speak. But nothing happens. The people in the church clap and cheer. They call out “that’s exactly right” and “let’s do that right now”. It’s as if the prohibitions and the leaden anxiety had suddenly disappeared. Anne’s just as surprised by this new tone, by the courage and the power in that church. Suddenly it’s clear to me that it’s much more exciting to stay here than go to Budapest or Prague to get over the border. The wave has caught me, it’s pulling me along. A few days later I’m in the Gethsemane Church in Prenzlauer Berg. The people there are confident and cheerful too, in fact they’re practically ecstatic. They all seem to have understood that something’s happening, that it isn’t just far away that national borders are coming down; our own borders are being marked out as well. I see a man standing in the street in front of the church, shouting at the top of his voice, as if he’s just discovered the power of speech, as if he’s incredibly happy just sensing who he is. Policemen are standing not far from the church. Minibuses are parked in the streets. Stasi men are walking around in front of the church, wanting to be recognized. They’re showing us they’re there, but they’re hanging back.

  Every time I come out of a church or a meeting I feel full of energy. In fact they always say and demand the same things. But it’s always new, too. Like a rush that doesn’t pass. You have to go to another meeting straight away to feel that rush. It’s enough for you to look at each other, smile at each other on the U-Bahn, to know that you’re both thinking exactly the same thing. There’s a strange atmosphere in the city, excitement of the kind you get before going off on a big trip. I have the feeling that nothing can actually happen to us, not if there are so many of us. But that isn’t so clear at this juncture.

  In Peking demonstrators had been fired on in Tiananmen Square. The “Chinese solution” flickers through our heads as a possible scenario. We don’t know how the GDR government will react. Whether it will swim away from the movement or try to break the wave by force. In September 1989 there’s a woman outside the door in Karlshorst. She’s collecting signatures for the “New Forum”. Anne signs and takes a few forms so that she can collect signatures as well. She meets up with friends and acquaintances in the Café Espresso on Unter den Linden. The list of signatures lies open on the table. She isn’t scared now, even though the “New Forum” is still banned, even though no one knows what a signature like that might mean in the end. On 6 October 1989 Anne goes to her first meeting of opposition groups in the Church of the Redeemer. Television channels from all over the world are there to document the uprising. The groups present their programmes. A woman says they need to have free elections in the GDR under the supervision of the United Nations. Anne thinks that’s taking it a bit far. Free elections. It would be enough for her if the Party listened to everybody from time to time. After the end of the event a call goes out for someone who speaks French, because a Belgian radio journalist wants an interview. Anne puts her hand up, thinking she’s just going to have to translate. But it turns out that she’s to give the interview herself. She’s confused, she’s worried about putting her foot in her mouth, but it’s too late to back down. The journalist asks if she feels like an enemy of the GDR. Anne says the country’s enemies are in the government and the Politburo. She’s surprised and taken aback by her own words, it’s as if she’s on a flying carpet. She feels strong and happy.

  Maxim after a visit to the Church of the Redeemer, 1989

  Wolf goes to Leipzig with a few friends to paint a stage for a punk concert. The stage is in a derelict district in Leipzig East. He sees the dead chasms of houses, the deserted streets. In the evening, when the concert begins, the crumbling facades glow in the harsh stage lighting. They feel as if they’re in a ghost town. In a café on the Ring, a drunken waiter insults the guests in a French-sounding fantasy language. A group from the West is alarmed. Wolf tells them not to take everything so seriously, because it will all soon be over. The Westerners don’t understand what he means. They’re hungry.

  Anne and some others found the “New Forum” in Karlshorst. At the first meeting she’s elected chairwoman. Journalists and historians from the West come to Anne and Wolf’s flat every day. They sit in the kitchen, drink coffee, smoke and talk. In these conversations the old GDR has already ceased to exist. Instead another country has come into being, a democracy with different parties, but without private ownership, because this time everything really is to belong to the people. They talk about the Third Way, a compromise between capitalism and Socialism. Everything seems to be possible during these days, as long as the people are allowed to get on with it.

  Wolf works tirelessly. He has so many ideas and so little time. He paints revolutionary banners for the Volksbühne and fabric pictures for a protest evening in the Church of the Redeemer. At night he sticks up posters in Alexanderplatz, calling for solidarity with Romania. He says he set off in the morning and had no idea what was happening. They days raced past him. There are two prints that must also have been produced at this time. Two figures, one turned in on itself and shivering, the other with broad shoulders and its head raised. Wolf calls these works “Fear” and “Pride”. They are two souls that now live within him.

  23

  Speaking Choirs

  ISEE THE PICTURES of the Monday demonstrations in Leipzig on television. Compared with these, things in Berlin are still quite quiet. There’s a rumour that the first big Berlin demonstrations are going to be held on 7 October, the fortieth anniversary of the GDR. Rendezvous is at five o’clock by the World Time Clock on Alexanderplatz. On 3 October I have an appointment at police headquarters in Lichtenberg to pick up my visa for Hungary, which I applied for a month before. I’m amazed that visas are even being issued now, because the Hungarian Prime Minister has opened the border with Austria in the meantime, and any GDR citizen who is able to get as far as Hungary can emigrate without any difficulties. This little greenish form, written in German and Russian, could get me to the West. But I only want to leave if things go all Chinese in Berlin on 7 October. Somehow it’s clear that this day will be crucial.

  I’m already excited on the morning of 7 October. They’re saying on the radio that Gorbachev and the leaders of the other Socialist states have already arrived in Berlin. The area around Alexanderplatz is guarded by police. Will we even get through to the World Time Clock? And how will they react if we disturb their birthday party? In the afternoon I go to Alexanderplatz with my girlfriend Christine. It’s half past four and the only people to be seen are a few demonstrators and lots of police. I’m disappointed and wonder why the protest in Berlin isn’t working. The people of Leipzig showed us how to do it. We get closer to the World Time Clock, and only now do I see that the whole of Alexanderplatz is full of people just waiting for things to kick off. Shortly after five the procession gets going, and at that moment people come streaming in from all directions. Soon the procession is too big to see all at once. We walk along Rathausstrasse to the Palace of the Republic. It’s a good feeling, suddenly being with so many people. The fear has gone. Who’s going to stop us now?

  At the Palace of the Republic there’s a wall of police trucks. Big grilles are mounted on the fronts of the trucks, clearly with a view to pushing the demonstrators aside. In the Palace, Erich Honecker is welcoming the heads of state of the brother countries. We shout “Gorbi, Gorbi”, because we want to see Gorbachev. But there’s no sign of him. Instead the police try to force us away. The trucks get moving and push the crowds back. Stasi men fish out individual demonstrators and lead them away. There’s a feeling of unease, and no one really seems to know where it goes from here. Someone has a megaphone and shouts that we’re now marching to Prenzlauer Berg. The procession reforms and pushes its way up Karl Liebknecht Strasse. Stasi people, police and FDJ members try to stop us. They link arms and block the street, but they’re overrun. I see a young woman in an FDJ shirt, standing distraught, cryin
g in the street. She bellows, “Why are you doing that?”

  Right beside us two Stasi try to drag a man away. Three demonstrators leap in and start hitting the Stasi men. One of them falls backwards and lies in the street, the other thinks for a moment and runs away. I can still see the fleeing Stasi man in front of my eyes. The horror in his eyes. How dare these people defend themselves! The police at the side of the street look on but do nothing. “They’re scared,” shouts one of the demonstrators. “The cops are shitting themselves.”

  The further we walk, the more powerful we feel. The speaking choirs ring out in the empty streets. People come running out of the houses and join us, others wave at us from their windows. The mood is relaxed now, the tension and fear have fled. We walk to the Gethsemane Church, where the procession breaks up. A few hundred demonstrators sit down in the road, candles are lit, songs are sung. The police trucks with the grilles approach from all sides. A policeman shouts through a megaphone that this is an illegal riotous assembly, and anyone who doesn’t leave immediately will be arrested. Suddenly the fear is back. My friend Christine and I wonder what we’re doing. We don’t want to be arrested. What good would that do? The demonstrations were a success, and there will be other demonstrations. We leave. With a bad conscience, because we’re leaving the people with the candles alone. The people who are braver than us.

  Christine lives on Anklamer Strasse, right near the Wall. We walk down Eberswalder Strasse and see that hundreds of soldiers are standing side by side in front of the Wall. They stand there in silence, lit only by the street lamps, sub-machine guns on their backs, hands folded in front of them, staring straight ahead. They’re standing all the way down the street. It’s only then that I realize how threatened the state feels. And how it’s misjudged the demonstrators. Because this evening it wouldn’t have occurred to anybody to storm the wall, when the important thing right now is to change the things inside it. An officer checks our IDs to see if we really need to go along here to get home. We walk along the silent row of men, hear our footsteps on the damp cobbles. A moment ago we passed through Berlin, singing and cheering. A moment ago the street still belonged to us. Now we’re orderly citizens again, saying thank you nicely to the officers, glad to be allowed home.

  The next day everything is terribly normal again. On the stairs I meet our neighbour, who is on her way home from the shops and wasn’t even aware of our demonstration. In the street where the Wall stands, the soldiers have moved away again, and children are French-skipping on the pavement. Life goes on, as if nothing has happened. On the East German news, the demonstration isn’t mentioned, but there are pictures of the night on Western television. They show policemen tearing into the demonstrators, and a young woman, bloody but smiling, talking about a victory. In the afternoon I go with Christine to visit a friend of my parents. Anne and Wolf are there too, and we tell them about our night. It already seems a very long time ago. Anne is concerned, and tells us to be careful because the state is capable of anything right now. She’s seen the policemen clubbing demonstrators on television. But I think she’s also a bit proud of us. Wolf is cross because he didn’t know anything about the demonstration. He wishes he’d been there. Anne says it would have been too hot for her. Demonstrating against the state, on the Republic’s birthday. It would have been like a provocation. “Exactly,” says Wolf and shakes his head.

  My parents’ friend gives us a copy of an illegal church newspaper, in which she describes why she’s just left the Party. Christine puts the newspaper in her pocket because I haven’t got one. On the way home we’re planning to take the U-Bahn at Alexanderplatz station. On the platform a man in plain clothes comes up to us, and there’s another one standing behind us. The man wants to see our IDs, I ask why but get no answer. The IDs disappear and the man tells us to come with them. I see other people being led away along the platform. Perhaps they don’t want us to take the line towards the Gethsemane Church, I think. The man pushes us abruptly towards the U-Bahn exit. We walk up the stairs and see police trucks waiting in Alexanderplatz. We’re searched, and I remember the church newspaper that Christine has in her coat pocket. I’m about to whisper something to her, but it’s too late. A policeman is holding the paper in his hand and asking where we got it. “Found it in the S-Bahn,” says Christine. She is led away, and I have to get into one of the trucks. There are already about twenty young people sitting on benches in the back. It all seems like a bad dream to me. I can’t get my head round it, we’ve been arrested and still haven’t even done anything.

  Wolf, 1989

  The trucks set off, I ask two boys sitting next to me what’s actually going on. But they don’t know any more than I do. They say they’d been at the cinema and had just been taken away. A girl cries and asks if we’re all going to jail. I can’t stop thinking about Christine and the newspaper. I can’t see where we’re going, because the roof of the truck is covered over. Cold air blows through the gaps in the tarpaulin, there’s a smell of diesel and sweat. The truck stops after about half an hour. The tarpaulins are thrown back, and a policeman shouts at us to get out and stand with our hands behind our heads. We’re standing in a courtyard, there’s barbed wire stretched along the tops of the walls. Are we already in jail? There are about thirty armed policemen standing around us. One of them, a small, thin man with black leather boots, yells that we all know why we’re there. He calls us a “shower” and a “rabble” and threatens us with extremely harsh treatment if any of us even thinks of acting contrary to his orders. We’re to line up in three rows in a big, brightly lit garage, “one metre’s distance from the man in front and behind, eyes front and keep your traps shut”.

  We stand in the garage all night. I spend hours looking at the shoulders of the man in front of me, because looking at the floor isn’t allowed. The man in front of me has brown hair and wears a dark-blue jacket. Even today I don’t know what his face looks like. I wonder what’s going to happen to us, what accusations they can actually bring against us. If it wasn’t for the church newspaper, I wouldn’t actually need to worry. The longer I think, the more anxious I become. Perhaps we’ll disappear into jail for weeks or months, without contact with the outside world. The government has nothing more to lose anyway, and after the demonstration on 7 October they may have opted for the harsh, Chinese-style response. What’s a dictatorship capable of when it feels it’s been cornered? I start imagining the most terrible scenarios. I always do that when I’m scared. Maybe to be able to tell myself it’s not going to be as bad as that. And then I think of Gerhard, and that he’s bound to come and get me out of here if necessary. If Gerhard could see me here, his grandson, innocently arrested. Would he still defend the state, or would he be ashamed? He’d help me at any rate. The thought reassures me a little.

  Eventually someone in the garage just sits down. He says he can’t stand up any more. Two policemen pull him up from the floor and lead him away, no idea where. At dawn I ask a policeman to take me to the toilet. On the way I look around. It looks as if we’ve ended up in a police barracks. But it’s not a prison, at least. I tell the policeman that none of us actually know why we’re here. “We’ll see,” says the policeman and brings me back to my place in the garage. A few hours later the first of us are taken to the main building “for interrogation”. When my name is called I’m almost relieved that this damned waiting is over. I’m taken to a room with a desk and a picture of Honecker hanging over it. Honecker smiles, but the man behind the desk just growls at me to sit down. He’s quite old, with grey hair and a bald patch. He doesn’t look angry, more as if the whole business is starting to get on his nerves. “The sooner you tell the truth, the better it’ll be for you,” he says. The man wants to know what I did the evening before I was arrested. I tell him about meeting my parents’ friend and say we just wanted to go home. The man asks where the church newspaper came from, the one he found on Christine. I tell him we found it in the S-Bahn, as Christine said. The man shouts at me not to t
reat him like an idiot. “Your friend has admitted everything, so don’t act stupid.” I notice my hand starting to shake, my face glows red. “OK, out with it,” says the man. I don’t know what to do. It’s possible that Christine hasn’t admitted anything at all, that he’s just trying to trick me. But I feel the urge just to tell him everything, because then at least it will all be over. The man offers me a cigarette and suddenly it all comes spilling out. I tell him we got the paper from my parents’ friend, that Christine has nothing to do with it. That’s the end of the interrogation, and I’m taken to a waiting room. It’s only now that I realize I’m completely drenched in sweat. I feel miserable. I would have loved to be brave, but I couldn’t. I’m a failure, a wimp.

  Two hours later I’m allowed to go. I call my parents from a phone box. Anne tells me to come home quickly, Christine’s there already. I go to Karlshorst and walk along the street from the station to our house. Everything’s quiet, there are just a few crows cawing above the railway embankment. I feel as if I’ve been away for ever. Before I tell them about my night, Anne fetches a tape recorder. She says everything needs to be documented. She’s being more of a historian than a mother; maybe that makes it easier for her. When I started writing this book, Anne gave me the cassette she made. It’s interesting to hear my voice again after such a long time. I speak quietly and in a very detached way, as if it wasn’t my story. I think it was very embarrassing for me to be a victim. They hit me where it hurt, they injured my sense of self. I don’t mention the flyers, my anxiety, my defeat. I had a guilty conscience about it for ages afterwards. That interrogation remained a dark chapter. Later I ran through it in my memory over and over again, giving the answers I would actually have expected of myself. I did the same with the discussions in citizenship class. I was disappointed with myself, and it was much worse than the night in the garage.