The Berlin Wall (37 page)

On 18 August, Kennedy’s note to Brandt was duly entrusted to General Clay, with instructions that it must not be made public.

This was understandable. The note would not have assuaged the populace of West Berlin or West Germany. The President’s answer to the mayor’s plea was polite and superficially positive, but Kennedy coolly refused every concrete action that Brandt asked for—except the reinforcement of the Berlin garrison, which had been already agreed in Washington. So, no three-power status for West Berlin, no appeal to the UN, no economic or military sanctions. And where Brandt had referred to the American as ‘friends’, in Kennedy’s reply the West Berliners were ‘partners’:

Dear Mayor Brandt:

I have read with great care your personal informal letter of August 16th and I want to thank you for it. In these testing days it is important for us to be in close touch. For this reason I am sending my answer by the hand of Vice President Johnson. He comes with General Clay, who is well known to Berliners; and they have my authority to discuss our problems in full frankness with you.

The measures taken by the Soviet Government and its puppets in East Berlin have caused revulsion here in America. This demonstration of what the Soviet Government means by freedom for a city, and peace for a people, proves the hollowness of Soviet pretensions; and Americans understand that this action necessarily constitutes a special blow to the people of West Berlin, connected as they remain in a myriad of ways to their fellow Berliners in the eastern sector. So I understand entirely the deep concerns and sense of trouble which prompted your letter.

Grave as this matter is, however, there are, as you say, no steps available to us which can force a significant material change in this present situation. Since it represents a resounding confession of failure and of political weakness, this brutal border closing evidently represents a basic
Soviet decision which only war could reverse. Neither you nor we, nor any of our Allies, have ever supposed that we should go to war on this point.

Yet the Soviet action is too serious for inadequate responses. My own objection to most of the measures which have been proposed—even to most of the suggestions in your own letter—is that they are mere trifles compared to what has been done. Some of them, moreover, seem unlikely to be fruitful even in their own terms. This is our present judgment, for example, on the question of an immediate appeal to the United Nations, although we shall continue to keep this possibility under lively review.

On careful consideration I myself have decided that the best immediate response is a significant reinforcement of the Western garrisons. The importance of this reinforcement is symbolic—but not symbolic only. We know that the Soviet Union continues to emphasize its demand for the removal of Allied protection from West Berlin. We believe that even a modest reinforcement will underline our rejection of this concept.

At the same time, and of even greater basic importance, we shall continue and accelerate the broad build-up of the military strength of the West upon which we are decided, and which we view as the necessary answer to the long-range Soviet threat to Berlin and to us all.

Within Berlin, in the immediate affairs of the city, there may be other specific appropriate steps to take. These we shall review as rapidly and sympathetically as possible, and I hope you will be sure to express your own views on such measures clearly to Vice President Johnson and his party. Actions which effectively demonstrate our continued commitment to freedom in Berlin will have our support.

I have considered with special care your proposal of a three-power status for West Berlin. My judgment is that a formal proclamation of such a status would imply a weakening of the four-power relationship on which our opposition to the border-closing depends. Whatever may be the immediate prospects, I do not believe that we should now take so double-edged a step. I do agree that the guarantees which we have pledged to West Berlin should be continuously affirmed and reaffirmed, and this we are doing. Moreover, I support your proposal of an appropriate plebiscite demonstrating the continuing conviction of West Berlin that its destiny is freedom in connection with the West.

More broadly, let me urge it upon you that we must not be shaken by
Soviet actions which in themselves are a confession of weakness. West Berlin today is more important than ever, and its mission to stand for freedom has never been so important as now. The link of West Berlin to the Free World is not a matter of rhetoric. Important as the ties to the East have been, painful as is their violation, the life of the city, as I understand it, runs primarily to the West—its economic life, its moral basis, and its military security. You may wish to consider and to suggest concrete ways in which these ties might be expanded in a fashion that would make the citizens of West Berlin more actively conscious of their role, not merely as an outpost of freedom, but as a vital part of the Free World and all its enterprises. In this double mission we are partners, and it is my own confidence that we can continue to rely upon each other as firmly in the future as we have in the past.

With warm personal regards,

Sincerely

John F Kennedy

Meanwhile, at the interrogation prison in the ‘forbidden district’ of East Berlin, young Klaus Schulz-Ladegast had just spent his first night as a bewildered captive of the
Stasi
. If he or any other persecuted East German had expected that the West would take steps to reverse what happened on 13 August, then by this morning at the latest their disappointment would have been assured.

On 18 August, before Clay and Johnson boarded their plane for Germany, the East Germans quietly began to build a solid, breeze-block obstruction between the Brandenburg Gate and the Potsdamer Platz. Its aim was clearly to reinforce and replace the barbed wire they had set up in those first hours of ‘Operation Rose’. An improvised ‘border closure’ was about to become a permanent, impassable physical barrier through the middle of a great city, a fortification without parallel in history.

Ulbricht’s men had begun to build what the whole world would soon know as the ‘Berlin Wall’.

CEMENT

12

WALL GAMES

TWO DAYS AFTER THE
closure of the border, a young man reported for duty on the Eastern side of the divide. Just twenty-one, Private Hagen Koch was a fresh-faced, newly married soldier in the East German army, the NVA.

Koch, born in the historic Thuringian town of Zerbst, was at that time a true believer. He had joined the SED at the age of nineteen. After completing an apprenticeship in technical drawing, he succumbed to strong peer and employer pressure and volunteered for the East German military. Due to his perceived political reliability, he was selected for the élite so-called ‘Felix Dzerzhyski Guard Regiment’ in Berlin—the military arm of the
Stasi
. Because of his skills in draughtsmanship, he was assigned to its mapping department.
¹

Koch’s service in Berlin brought him a wife, and increased his attachment to the Communist system. Even more, it increased his resentment against young people of his own age who lived in East Berlin but worked in West Berlin—sometimes part time and at weekends. They could earn 5 marks an hour in the West, which because of the unofficial 5:1 exchange rate, gave them 25 East German marks. So, for an afternoon’s work, such a ‘border-crosser’ could earn 100 East marks, which happened to equal an army private’s entire weekly salary. The ‘border-crossers’ flashed their money around, wore the latest Western fashions, and mocked those like young Koch, who existed on meagre Communist pittances.

So, when the border was closed on 13 August, Private Koch supported it with enthusiasm. ‘The measures’ would finally settle the hash of those kids who made, to his mind, a despicable profit out of living in a heavily subsidised socialist state while working in a dog-eat-dog capitalist one. Call it fair-mindedness or call it envy.

On 12/13 August 1961, Koch had been granted a rare weekend leave. He and his bride realised something was going on during Sunday morning, when they observed the first disturbances on the border. Koch was recalled to his unit, but it was not until 15 August that he was given a job. That job would make him rather famous. Or notorious. Again, depending on your point of view.

Around dawn on Tuesday, the young private was summoned to his commander and told to report to the East-West border. The staff responsible for the border closure was carrying out an initial inspection. Koch’s task would be to accompany them and ‘document the state of the extension of the border fortification works on topographical maps’.
²

Koch got a new pair of boots, for this was going to be a long walk—most of the fifty or so kilometres from Pankow-Schönholz in the north to Alt-Glienicke in the far south-east. The hardest parts were places like the Bernauer Strasse, where only the buildings sat on GDR territory, while the pavements were already in the West. But Koch persevered, painstakingly drawing his maps on a folding portable table. The survey team made good progress, sometimes ferried short distances by jeep. They had covered twenty kilometres by early afternoon. Koch’s senior companions changed from section to section; but the conscientious young private with his instruments, his drawing materials and his folding table remained a constant factor.

At around three p.m., the mapping party arrived in the old centre of Berlin.

There was now barbed wire all along the Zimmerstrasse leading to the crossing point known as ‘Checkpoint Charlie’, which since Sunday was reserved only for foreigners. Coming from the Potsdamer Platz, the party cut down the Mauerstrasse (literally ‘Wall Street’, named after the eighteenth-century customs wall) and arrived at the checkpoint in time to witness a large and noisy demonstration on the West Berlin side. Koch’s superiors, superior
Stasi
men as they were, took offence at the Western ‘provocation’. Something had to be done.

Soon Koch found himself with new orders. The ‘aggressive forces of imperialism’, he was told by an officer, had to be shown the limits of their malign power. The 21-year-old picked up a can of white paint and a
brush and found the exact line of the border, which followed that between the boroughs of Mitte in the East and Kreuzberg in the West.

Starting at the pharmacy on the corner of Zimmerstrasse and Friedrichstrasse, and ignoring yells and catcalls from the Western side, Koch straddled the border. Bending to his work, he painted a precise white line to show the ‘imperialists’ where East Berlin began. Then he marched smartly back to join the mapping party.

By the end of that long summer’s day, Private Hagen Koch’s task would be complete, his feet thoroughly sore, and the ‘white line’ he had painted at Checkpoint Charlie on 15 August 1961 would be world-famous.

Just minutes later, a couple of kilometres to the north, another guardian of the GDR’s borders was carrying out his duties. Corporal Conrad Schumann stood just inside East Berlin, on the corner of Bernauer Strasse and Ruppiner Strasse, facing a jeering group of West Berliners. In parts of Bernauer Strasse, concrete slabs had been positioned to block escape routes, but at this time nothing more formidable than a three-feet-high roll of barbed wire stood between this inexperienced, unhappy young child of the SED state and the Western ‘enemy’.

Schumann, a nineteen-year-old Saxon fresh from NCO training school, had been drafted into the élite ‘Readiness Police’ and was one of 4,000 provincials who had volunteered for transfer to Berlin. When his unit first arrived just a few days earlier, he had been shocked to find that they were regarded with suspicion by East Berliners. Schumann remained in a confused and uneasy state, unsettled by the border closure and the ensuing events.

‘The people were swearing at us,’ Schumann explained later.

We felt we were simply doing our duty but were getting scolded from all sides. The West Berliners yelled at us and the Eastern demonstrators yelled at us. We stood in the middle…For a young person, it was terrible.
³

Schumann’s discomfort was all too apparent. The young East German NCO was standing against a house wall, his machine-pistol slung over his shoulder. He chain-smoked, glancing occasionally in the direction of
the Western protesters, mostly young men of his own age. They could read the doubt and indecision written on his face. Some stopped abusing him and started encouraging him to desert. ‘Come over!’ they called out. ‘Come over!’

A rookie photojournalist from Hamburg, Peter Leibing—a year older than Schumann and in Berlin for less than twenty-four hours—was also watching.

‘I had him in my sights for more than hour,’ Leibing recalled. ‘I had a feeling he was going to jump. It was kind of an instinct.’
⁴

The urging from the Western side grew louder. A West Berlin police car drove up and stood with its rear door open and its engine racing. ‘Come over! Come over!’

Schumann suddenly tossed away his cigarette and ran for the wire, casting aside his heavy weapon as he reached the barrier and jumped for the Western side.

Leibing’s famous photograph—taken, ironically, with an East German Exacta camera—immortalises that extraordinary moment. The helmeted and jackbooted Schumann is captured in mid-leap atop the barbed wire, his young face immobile with concentration, symbolically overcoming this artificial and inhumane division and yet, for those of us who still look at the picture, frozen for ever between East and West.