Foreign Relations of the United States, 1981–1988, Volume X, Eastern Europe

289. Telegram From the Mission in West Berlin to the Department of State and the Embassy in the Federal Republic of Germany¹

2556.

West Berlin, August 12, 1986, 1712Z

SUBJECT

• The Berlin Wall Turns Twenty-Five (II): The Concrete Has Many Faces.

1. Summary and Introduction: Prepared as the second of three messages on the twenty-fifth anniversary of the Wall on August 13, this cable explores what this concrete feature of the landscape means for the way life is conducted here. Ugly gash on a city and country’s face, notorious physical barrier, resented monument to hopelessness, cultural backdrop, tourist attraction, routine nuisance, irrelevant symbol—the Wall is somehow all of these. It skews life in West Berlin, so that everything is just a bit different, and in some ways harder, here than in the FRG. Despite knowledge among Berlin’s and Bonn’s politicians that the Western guarantee is solid, the fact that the allies were not able to prevent the Wall’s construction, or knock it down afterwards, was a signal event in their political experience.

2. What the Wall is not, however, is the clear manifestation of despair which West Berliners saw in 1961, when they had to face the fact, without warning, that they were being sealed off. While it still divides families and friends, West Berliners have learned in curious ways to cope with or ignore the Wall. There is a current of new romanticism about the East, according to which East Berlin and the GDR, “shielded” by the Wall, have been able to stay more “German.”

3. The contradiction of a physically isolated city, which nevertheless is a thriving place with a contemporary role to play in Germany and Europe and where people can lead normal lives, is one of the basic paradoxes of this town. But ask a Berliner if he’d rather be elsewhere, and most will say that they could never live anywhere but here. End summary and introduction.

The Wall as Moat

4. Without warning, the GDR began to emplace rolls of barbed wire along the East/West sector boundary during the early morning of August 13, 1961. More formidable than the sudden physical barrier was the cordon of troops which forbade anyone to cross the line, as had been common up to that moment. The formal dividing line between two worlds in the middle of Europe, across which thousands of refugees had come daily to the West, became overnight an impassable barrier. Photographs and stories of ensuing dangerous escapes, and unsuccessful attempts, became famous. No one doubted that a struggling GDR Government had glaringly revealed its desperation and illegitimacy. The “Haus am Checkpoint Charlie” museum, which has documented and emphasized these themes, remains one of West Berlin’s very popular tourist stops.

5. With Soviet approval, the GDR had torn itself and East Berlin away from the rest of the country. Since the 1948–49 airlift, the West Berliners had survived many precarious years and knew they could rely on the Western allies’ commitment to defend the city. Their confidence was nonetheless shaken when the realization sank in that no one could prevent what the East was doing. (Septel discusses in greater detail what the Wall has meant for the German psyche in the search for a new national identity.)² While those who govern in West Berlin—and Bonn—today know from personal experience how real the Western commitment is, the demonstration in 1961 of the limits of the power of Western protection must also be counted as one of the significant and chilling events of their formative years.

6. Official visitors to the city are often conducted to the Wall, usually at the old Reichstag building which abuts directly on the boundary, to absorb first-hand something of modern German history and the country’s division. While the city’s tourist brochures do not push a visit to the Wall, the authorities have maintained viewing stands at many points. One of the most popular, but not the most poignant, is Potsdamer Platz, an area in the middle of the city which was one of Europe’s busiest intersections before World War Two. It is now a broad wasteland between the East German inner and outer walls, populated only by border guards and watchdogs.

7. What strikes these visitors time after time is that the phrase “Berlin Wall” actually means a set of formidable, manned fortifications that grabs most of them in the pit of the stomach. It is generally important to the West Berlin Government that visitors leave with some understanding of the reality of the gash across the city, although Berliners increasingly want to downplay the perception of Berlin as “embattled” or “surrounded.” (see paras 13–14 below).

Still Disrupting Lives

8. For those with families or relatives in East Berlin and the GDR, and even for West Berliners who are curious and want to take a look around, the Kafkaesque partial porosity of the Wall serves to underline the monumental character of the barrier. Up until the Quadripartite Agreement (QA) of 1971, only those few West Berliners who worked in the Soviet sector of the city and possessed special identity cards could travel into East Berlin.

9. The QA reaffirmed the status of greater Berlin and put an end to the era of successive crises over the city. Since the agreement, Germans can transit the Wall through specified crossing points. West Berliners, however, unlike West Germans, cannot obtain permission for overnight stays in East Berlin, unless they file formally for GDR entry visas, entailing invitations, specific itineraries, pre-arranged lodgings, and the other usual steps required by the East Germans of other countries’ tourists. They must be back in the West by two a.m., causing them to start looking at their watches at the end of an evening with friends or relatives and already start withdrawing from the temporary psychological adjustment to being in the East. For those who would like their relatives to visit West Berlin for family occasions, the specific GDR list of who is eligible for such travel permission means that there are always conspicuous absences from such reunions.

10. The division also puts the visitors from the West in the uncomfortable position of the children of privilege, who have more, can move about freely, and want to help their GDR relatives with scarce goods without chipping away at their relatives’ self-respect or ties of affection. At the same time, the GDR’s various calculated methods of extracting hard currency from the Western visitors adds to the pressure of the state’s hand.

Others Don’t Want To Go

11. This pressure has caused many West Berliners, at the same time, not to bother at all. For the less reflective, it is often merely anxiety at the unknown, or unwillingness to accept the standard of goods and services in East Berlin. But others consciously decide that they do not want to put themselves in the hands of GDR authorities, a process that begins with the cumbersome, two-step process of obtaining permission to visit. There are others who just cannot be troubled to go through the bureaucratic complexity of applying at a GDR “visits office” in West Berlin (there are six) for a “visits certificate,” with which one is entitled to apply for a visa at the sector boundary. For such people, the process of dealing with GDR border formalities at the Autobahn crossings to transit to the FRG (Dreilinden, Staaken, Heiligensee) is quite sufficient to dampen all curiosity.

The Senat and East Berlin

12. The West Berlin Government, as do we, takes it as an article of faith that East and West Berlin are one city. It encourages visitors to West Berlin to visit the East as well, and the lack of interest in East Berlin among many who live here is a keen disappointment. But at the same time, as we have previously reported, there is not much it can do to influence the East Germans to allow bonds across the Wall, as the Senat’s efforts to work out cooperative arrangements on the city’s 750th anniversary in 1987 made clear. The Senat’s best hope is to press the FRG to keep always the city’s interests in mind when dealing with the GDR, a project whose success has been uneven.

The Economic Picture

13. We have reported continuously on the favorable business climate in the city and the vigorous efforts the Senat and the business community make to promote it. Such people generally prefer to downplay the Wall’s consequences and are very sensitive to any indication that arises that the city might be in any way a difficult place to do business.

14. Accordingly, a lot of effort goes into convincing businessmen that they can conduct their affairs normally here or establish businesses that take advantage of Berlin’s unique situation. What Berlin’s relative isolation often means to new investors is that they are separated from their markets, although those already established here experience no difficulties with transportation of finished goods and supplies and are surprised when newcomers or potential investors ask about this. Not atypically, a laser medical supply firm came to Berlin recently precisely because follow-up on patients was easier in Berlin’s sequestered and stable population. For the same reason, Berlin has become the favorite pool for market surveys for new products destined for the FRG.

15. At the same time, it is accepted that goods cost more here than in West Germany. The city’s finite area, with no chance to expand, has other effects as well. It is cited over and over again as a basic factor in the repeated real estate and construction scandals, and it means that the city must load up on duplicate services, such as too many hospital beds, to make sure it does not run short.

16. One direct consequence of the sealing of the sector boundary was that West Berlin businesses had instant job openings, since their workers who lived in East Berlin were stranded. To deal with the problem, foreign workers, mainly Turks, were encouraged to come to Berlin, forming the nucleus of a community which has made Berlin today the third-largest Turkish city in the world. (See septel on Berlin’s Turkish community.)³

The Wall as Urban Sculpture

17. Many West Berliners have come to think of the Wall as a bizarre tourist attraction and unique cultural backdrop. The old slogans on the Wall—”KZ” (concentration camp) and “This wall of shame must go,” for instance—have been replaced by colorful improvised murals and the kinds of graffiti people write on walls everywhere. Magazine articles about Berlin often include photos—shot with fisheye or wide-angle lenses—of a gaily painted piece of concrete stretching across the landscape. If you define the Wall as a piece of urban sculpture which no other city can boast, it is easy to ignore what it represents. As a new trendy magazine called “Wiener,” which bills itself as “an expression of Zeitgeist,” put it, the children and young people who see things this way “are just not into pain.”

Thesis: The East as Reality; The West as Mere Glitter

18. This view contributes to what is almost a new romanticism about East Berlin and the GDR. Shown in downtown movie houses during the last year and a half have been several movies which depict the GDR, for all its problems, as basically a happy place. Those in the East might be mildly oppressed and poorer than their countrymen in the West, but they are also portrayed as less pressured (i.e., not exposed to the competitiveness of the West), less driven by ambition and greed, less modernized, and, by inference perhaps, less vulnerable to American cultural influences. In short, they have somehow preserved more of what is quintessentially “German.” These films have enjoyed great popularity in West Berlin.

19. These films feature young Germans who move back and forth between the two alternative Germanies and choose between them, and in the end, the East Germans choose to go home. Although many of the viewers would not be willing to sacrifice their freedoms and comforts for antiquated factories and jokes about the secret police (which in these films are subjects for great mirth openly shared), they can afford the luxury of fantasizing about East German life because they have no sense of having lost something when the Wall went up.

20. Some West Berliners talk wistfully about how the old historical middle of Berlin was allotted to the Soviet sector of the city. This didn’t matter much while East Berlin was still a pile of ruins. But since the East Germans have poured money into fixing up the center, such people ask “What have we got as a counterweight in the West?” Their regretful answer often runs “a palace, night life, and shopping.” Urban planning here quickly becomes thorny because of this problem. Should the basic calculation be how the two halves of the city would fit together one day, or should West Berlin plan pragmatically for its needs—e.g., erect a new building complex for the seat of government—as if the division were permanent?

And the Wall as Prop for Stunts

21. Within a week and a half, there have been two spectacular publicity stunts at the Wall. The explanation is the same as Sir Edmund Hillary’s about Mount Everest: “Because it’s there.” Septels report a supposed escape from East Berlin in Soviet uniforms⁴ (later revealed to be a hoax) and a retired American carpenter’s sitting astride the Wall and whacking at it with a sledgehammer.⁵ This kind of thing will go on, since the Wall will continue to fascinate and challenge dreamers, idealists, schemers, and con men as long as it exists.

Normality

22. Despite the city’s situation, the key to West Berlin’s viability—and a point of particular emphasis for this Mission—is the fact that people can lead normal, free, and rewarding lives and happily bring up their children here. Most West Berliners are not oppressed by the Wall, nor do they think about it much, as they go about their business. And despite the complicated psychological meaning for West Berliners of their situation and what the East Germans call the “anti-fascist protective barrier,” West Berlin is not fertile ground for the pessimistic appraisal of the state of the world so fashionable in parts of the West German population. Many, if not most, people here believe that they could not happily live in any less vibrant and fascinating a city.

Kornblum

1. Source: Reagan Library, Stephen Sestanovich Files, [Germany]: Berlin: 08/01/86–08/12/86. Confidential; Priority. Sent for information to East Berlin, NATO Collective, Eastern European posts, Bern, Helsinki, Stockholm, Vienna, Geneva, Frankfurt, Hamburg, Munich, Stuttgart, Dusseldorf, Pretoria, USCINCEUR Vaihingen, CINCUSAREUR Heidelberg, CINCUSAFE Ramstein, USNMR SHAPE, JCS, and DOD.
2. See Document 288.
3. Not found.
4. Telegram 2405 from West Berlin, August 1, described the alleged escape in which an East German was said to have crossed into West Berlin wearing a Soviet uniform. (Department of State, Central Foreign Policy File, D860590–0155)
5. Not found.