amerikanerin in berlin

Oh, hey.

Last Thursday we didn't have school (it was Himmelfahrt, literally "heaven cruise" or "journey" or "drive", which is much more stimulating to the imagination than "Ascension Day") so I went to Leipzig. It's only a little more than an hour away by train, and it was the second biggest city in the former DDR (East Germany). It was in Leipzig that the peaceful revolution began in 1989, leading directly to the fall of the Berlin Wall and then to the reunification of Germany. Dissatisfied DDR citizens in Leipzig started gathering on Monday nights in the Nikolaikirche for prayer meetings, because churches were the only places allowed to have assemblies of more than like 6 people at a time, and then pretty soon they were taking to the streets and protesting against the DDR regime and especially against the Stasi, the East German secret police. The Stasi was the largest secret police force pretty much ever: if you count all the "unofficial cooperators" who spied on their neighbors for the Stasi, the ratio of secret police to citizens is 1:6.

Here's the former Stasi headquarters in Leipzig:

In 1989 the citizens of Leipzig took over the building, which is called the Runde Ecke (round corner), and demanded that the Stasi guys still hiding out there quit shredding all their extensive files on DDR citizens. In 1990 Leipzig made a museum out of the building, calling the exhibition "Stasi: Power and Banality". It's full of equipment the Stasi used to steam open mail, tap phone lines, take surreptitious photos, and disguise undercover operatives.

Once I get past the typical reaction to this kind of history ("How can people get away with stuff like that?"), I find it fascinating to consider what went on during an average day in an office in a place like the Runde Ecke. While the Stasi kept its eye on plenty of potential "dissenters" whom they judged dangerous to the DDR regime, they also kept copious files on regular, "law-abiding" citizens. The Stasi archives have been opened now, and former East Germans can read their own files. Lots of them contain little more than stuff like, "X goes to grocery store with parents, Tuesday 3:12 pm." That's where the banality comes in.

There's a really good book, short and readable, Stasiland by Anna Funder, with more stories like that. And the film Das Leben der Anderen ("The Lives of Others"), which won an Oscar, is terrific too.

I went to the Berlin Stasi HQ, too, last week, and a former Stasi prisoner took a small group of us on a tour of the place. It's been kept intact as it was, everything '70s brown and orange. The sheer size of the place is astounding, even before you get inside. The compound is practically a small village, and they did have everything a Stasi man could want within the whole complex, including doctors--Stasi employees weren't allowed to go to outside doctors, because then their files might be compromised.

Here's half of one of about 25 buildings in the complex:

And a map of the place (above picture is, I believe, Building 15-2 in the lower right corner):

It took me a while to find the right entrance for the museum.

The tour guide talked about the film Das Leben der Anderen, which parts were authentic or not, and overall had good things to say. The movie was filmed in the actual building, at the actual desks the Stasi men used.

It's such a huge topic, I can't even begin to comment on it here. At the risk of beginning to sound like a broken record, I can only say again that living here, in the reunited former capital city of a country which no longer exists, where stuff like this happened...way better than reading about it in a textbook. Only--I kinda wish I'd been around twenty-some years ago to see it all go down.

More pics of Leipzig on Flickr.

by LP at 4:16 PM (Berlin time) | Permalink | Comments

May 1 is a holiday in Germany, International Workers' Day--or in German, one of its names is Kampftag der Arbeiterbewegung, which roughly translates to "struggle day of the workers' movement". The latter is rather more indicative of the general feeling surrounding the holiday; there's been plenty of violence in the history of May 1 protests and I gather that now it's considered overall a good excuse for a little rabble rousing, particularly for punks and skinheads who specialize in that sort of thing.

Although the main organized demonstrations are today in Kreuzberg, the mischievousness started last night in Friedrichshain. So I went with Jeremy and Mario and the other Mario to see if any hooligans were setting fire to any cars or anything. We met up at Mauerpark (a park in memorial of the Berlin Wall), but there everybody was just playing soccer and holding impromptu concerts with guitars and bongo drums. The only hooligans around were the ones I came with. Mario said there's usually a bonfire, so he and Jeremy and the other Mario set out to start one. I swear, I was only there to take pictures. I managed to document the night's excitement with some of my most mediocre photography yet:

Since the police were patrolling the streets literally by the hundreds, it wasn't long before they caught wise to the plot. Two of them in green came over to talk to the Marios, and then four in black stopped by to see what was going on, and then three more in green came over to help the first ones. All in full anti-riot gear, all going out of their way to be more friendly and polite than any police I have ever, in my very limited experience, dealt with. Jeremy was taking pictures with a Polaroid camera, and the biggest policeman was giving him photographic advice.

After the Marios had been officially "advised" against starting any more fires, we decided to go back closer to Jeremy and Mario's apartment--to Boxhagener Platz, affectionately known as "the Boxi"--where more serious stuff was supposedly going down, hoping to see somebody blow something up or whatever. The closer we got, the more cops there were, and crowds of people in increasing density and belligerence. There were floodlights; there was a loudspeaker; there were water cannons at the ready. The police vans were literally lining the streets, nose to tail all around the Boxi. More of the anti-riot storm-trooper-looking types were regularly walking (not quite marching) around in ordered groups of twelve or so, or standing shoulder-to-shoulder blocking off streets they didn't want anyone else to shove their way into. We had to take a roundabout way to the guys' apartment, which another very large policeman in full anti-riot gear very politely explained.

There was plenty of broken glass on the street and groups of people periodically yelling stuff. We didn't get into the thick of it, but stayed out on the fringes where punks and regular guys and police were just kind of milling around. According to the news today, the thick of it was relatively tame: about a thousand people were on the Boxi, and the police made 61 arrests in all, but it wasn't as bad as it's been in years past. Here's a photo from the newspaper taken by someone savvier with a camera than I am:

So yeah, it was cool to be on the scene and see some of Berlin's rabble get roused. But don't worry, Mom, I finished out the night playing foosball and made it home safely to bed.

Labels: Berlin life

by LP at 12:57 PM (Berlin time) | Permalink | Comments