This was an interesting week for all of us, particularly our visitors Mike and Claudia, better known as Opa [Grandpa] & Oma [Grandma] to Logan. 

On Wednesday Mike and Claudia drove in from Frankfurt to arrive in the afternoon. Aside from coming to say ‘hi’ they were coming to Berlin to celebrate Mike’s 60th birthday on Thursday. Claudia came to visit in January and previously hadn’t been in the area for many years. Mike hadn’t been in Berlin since the wall came down. The last time he saw this area he was in the DDR [German Democratic Republic] army. Unbeknownst to Doreen and Chad, Mike had spent his military years as a motorcycle messenger in the DDR army from 1977-78. On the way to the park on Wednesday he casually dropped this into regular conversation as he started to reminisce about buildings he recognised.

This would prove wildly fascinating because the last time Mike saw Berlin, the wall was up and the division of East and West Germany was in full force. He explained that he never thought he would be stationed in Berlin but that the DDR was always on the lookout for young recruits that didn’t have ties to the West so they wouldn’t be enticed to flee when they were on patrol. Shortly after reporting to the intake facility he soon realised he was headed for the front lines. Never did he think that 40 years later he would return because his Daughter, Son-In-Law, and Grandson would live in Berlin - let alone on the Eastern side of where the wall once stood.

The plan was always to take an open air river boat cruise up and down the Spree; however, this would become a completely new adventure as Mike started to remember his first hand accounts of what life was like on the DDR side of the wall. 

Mike was 3 when the wall went up and unlike Claudia he didn’t have any relatives on the West side so the DDR was all he knew. As was the custom then, and up till 2011, all German men of a certain age were to serve their country in the military or social service.

As we walked to the river boats Mike remembered that his boot camp graduation ceremony took place on the steps of the Old Opera House. He remembered how the statues of historical figures like Fredrick the Great and Saint George were removed during the DDR years because glorifying Kings and conquerers didn’t fit within the communist mindset. He remembered how guards would stand outside of historical monuments and guard them with care. This in particular struck us as fascinating because you wound’t think that a communist force would care so deeply for monuments of the past when they went out of their way to remove statues meant to serve a similar purpose.

One such memorial, that Mike actually remembered how the change in guard happened down to the times of day, was the Central Memorial to Those Who Fell in WWII. Originally this was a guard house build by Fredrick the III in 1819. In 1931 the Prussian government had the guard house changed into a memorial “…to the fallen of WWI.” The building was severely damaged in the final days of WWII.

By 1960 the building was restored to it’s original splendour but this time the purpose was to memorialise “…the victims of fascism and militarism.” In 1969, under DDR control, an unknown soldier and unknown concentration camp prisoner were finally laid to rest surrounded by earth from the battlefield and concentration camps just below the statue of “Mother With Dead Son.” 

The historical reflection and power of this monument can not be over estimated. The added layer of knowing that the monument was restored and updated with such value under DDR control is also rather confusing to someone that has only ever lived a Western mindset.

As we continued the walk we approached Friedrichstraße Station. This is a beautiful station that has been restored many times throughout history but the architectural significance was not the subject of the day - the stop itself was what was significant. In DDR times this was the last stop from East to West - the stop that saw so many crushing family breakups, it would eventually be forever known as “The Palace of Tears.” Without the proper paperwork you were kicked off the train. Day passes (rarely awarded if ever) ended here. More unnecessary goodbyes than can be counted happened in this spot for nearly two decades. The Schlesier’s have their own personal reflections about this place. We didn’t need to go in to read the plaques on the walls to know what this place was or to learn about the grief that was caused here - we had first hand knowledge.

The entire walk to the boats was not just a reflection of a family’s past that happens to be a typical chapter in a Western history book but rather a window into a part of life that we don’t talk enough about because the losing side didn’t write the history book.

This town is full of history. There’s ancient history, there’s really old history and there’s history that happens every day. The best thing we can do is to learn from it, not ignore it, and prevent it from repeating. That’s our continued mindset and it’s how we can reflect and still enjoy the present. So, we boarded Bellevue and set out for an open-air guided tour of the Spree river. Berlin is home to ancient architecture like the sister to the Sistine Chapel, the Dome, and modern designs like the Opera house donated by the US during Jimmy Carter’s administration (locals still call it Jimmy’s Smile). We drifted under bridges built in the early 1800s and around artifacts housed on Museum Island from the roman times.

To end the day on a high note we dined at a wonderful Italian bistro in Prenzlauer Berg and then enjoyed a nice walk home.

Doreen wanted to do something special for Mike but wasn’t quite sure what to do until she saw it on the street one day like a vision. Back in the day, Mike drove a Trabant. For those that aren’t up on their Eastern European automobile culture, a Trabant (aka Trabi) was a vehicle made in East Germany exclusively during DDR times. They are 2 and 4 door 2 cylinder vehicles that were very hard to come by - people often waited for years on a waiting list to get one. As luck would have it, there is a culture in Berlin that is keeping the history of the Trabi alive, including turning a few into limousines. When Doreen saw one of them on the street she know she had to reserve one for Saturday as a birthday surprise for Mike. We disguised the plan for the day as going to see the Spanish and French cathedrals. We arrived early and enjoyed the square until the driver showed up. With a careful nudge Doreen surprised Mike and caught him a little off guard. Mike was like a kid again cruising around the city in the Tribi limo.

As the ride concluded Mike noticed a seemingly abandon building that hadn’t changed in 40 years. It was where he stood guard. Inside the Stasi plotted against their own people. Outside troopers like Mike stood guard and were routinely kept out of the loop. Today the building is in Russian ownership as the embassy is directly across the street. From the abandon building it’s a straight shot to Checkpoint Charlie and the memorial to the wall which is marked on the city streets with cobble stone. 

I followed Mike closely, just behind him, as he seemed to discover the area all over again. I stopped taking pictures and just observed my Father-In-Law as he experienced the area. I realised I saw something completely different then he saw. He would later explain to me how the dressed up building on the street wasn’t the original and how he was forbidden from getting this close back when he was in the army. I asked him what he thought of the way Checkpoint Charlie is commercialised and what he thought of the McDonalds and Burger King sandwiching the out-building. He simply shrugged as if to say this is better than it was.

We walked down the path of the wall, which pretty much follows the way to our flat. Along the way we saw the old DDR president’s headquarters. We walked into Nicolai square to observe the “Saint George and the Dragon” statue which was moved to this location post DDR times when it was recovered after the wall had fallen. This is one of three prized statues in Europe and is coveted by both Christian and Muslim believers. It’s fitting that it was moved to Nicolai square as the Nicolai Church was ground zero for  protests and gatherings in the days of the DDR. People who gathered here to protest often disappeared in the middle of the night. They were taken for ransom by the DDR as the government was running out of money in the final days. Ironic that the government who detested wealth, and made sure everyone was ‘equal’ financially, was fixated on greed and not prosperity for the common man in the end.

Mike turned 60 this week, which isn’t very old. In his lifetime, in the Western world, we allowed this to happen. The DDR is by far not the greatest tragedy that man has taken part in - it’s not even the greatest tragedy of the past 50 years. On a list of terrible things humans have done to each other over the last 50 years it likely wouldn’t make the top 100. Regardless, it happened and it happened to several someones I know. It changed the course of many people’s lives. Today, families are still broken up over what happened during those 30 years. When the wall came down DDR citizens learned who spied on who. Who was Stasi and who was just being bribed to rat on their loved ones. That pain is still there. I mentioned before that two natives in Berlin will simply ask each other when they first meet “East or West?” - a question that cuts so deep to the quick. I’ve mused that there is no such question for Americans. Germany, like America, had seen it’s fair share of tragedy and done it’s fare share of tragic things to it’s own people before. What’s different about the DDR isn’t that humans did horrible things to each other in modern times for the sake of power and greed. What’s different is that it happened in an area that should have learned that lesson by the 1960s. The wall came up over night but the underlying causes were there for over a decade before. What’s stopping something similar from happening again?

Until Next Time,

The McNeills