Kyra's Excellent Adventure, Part 6: Into the East

Kyra's Excellent Adventure Part 6: Into the East, part 1: Shadows of the Past

At the beginning of this series of posts, I talked about how my dad's father was born in Germany, in an area that later became part of East Germany. His family emigrated to the U.S. in the 1920s, but stayed in close touch with the relatives who stayed behind. Maintaining the family ties was important to them, and the care packages they sent helped the relatives back in Germany through some very tough times in the following decades.

The times my family lived in Germany in the 70s (1970-71 and 1978-79), making the trip into East Germany to visit our relatives was a priority and one of the major events of our time there. These were profoundly influential experiences in my life, and (since this blog is about my books) on a lot of the themes in my books. Again, with this trip, visiting our family in this area was a priority, and I was very curious to see how things now, since the fall of the Berlin Wall and the Iron Curtain, compare to my memories of how things were back then, during the Communist occupation.

First, for some context, a look back. Here are some random impressions from the 1970s (related with respect for the privacy and feelings of those still living who lived through those times). Some of these are my own memories, some of them are things I wasn't really aware of at the time that were later related to me by my parents.

My main memory is that everything was very gray and grim. My dad says part of that is because our visits both times were in February, not the best time of year. But I found my journal from 1978-79, and our visit in 1979 was in July. I've included excerpts from my actual teenage journal at the end of the post.

Time of year aside, I remember everything being dark and colorless. The pollution was terrible, all the buildings were blackened with soot from the smoke of coal fires. In one of the towns we visited, the town brewery dumped its raw waste into the creek that ran through town. Everything looked shabby, run-down, and dirty; the things that were new - new apartment blocks, cars - looked cheap and flimsy.

And not just the physical - the atmosphere of fear and lack of hope was palpable even to kids. People were afraid to speak openly. You worked at what the government told you to work at, you lived where the government told you to live, you got what the government decided to give you. And there were signs all over telling you how wonderful it all was. You were supposed to think what the government told you to think, even when it contradicted what was right in front of your eyes and what you lived every day.

To be allowed to enter the country, one of the things we had to do was promise to spend at least 15 West German marks per day.

The house belonging to my grandfather's family (like all private property) was confiscated by the Communists and the entire family was given one apartment in the house to live in. (Note: the photos in this post are courtesy of my father. All rights reserved.)

The house where my grandfather was born. Feb. 1971

 A grandfather's daily task was to go down to the store and stand in line for two hours to buy a bottle of rhubarb juice so that his young granddaughter could have some vitamins.

A town's allotment of meat for an entire week was a 3-pound (or maybe it was 3-kg) roast. People would just buy thin slices off of it. As we learned to our chagrin after buying the whole thing to treat our relatives to a nice family dinner. Why did the store let us buy it? Because we had West German marks.

Staying with our relatives would have caused too much trouble for them with the police, so we stayed at the state-owned hotel. On the ground outside, a pile of potatoes was heaped up alongside a pile of coal. Kitchen workers had to sit in the hallway to peel the potatoes.

State-owned hotel in one of the towns where our relatives lived. Note the red propaganda banner on the street. July 1979

In one elderly relative's apartment building, the toilet for the whole building was on the ground floor, a wooden bench with a hole in it.

In spite of the deprivations, our relatives welcomed us warmly and with overwhelming generosity. One time, all they had to eat was rice, so that was what they gave us. We did our best to return their generosity with the gifts we brought in and the care packages we sent, but it was like the widow's mite - they gave us all that they could out of the little they had, with their whole hearts. It was tremendously moving and humbling.

When it was time to leave, it was really hard, knowing that we could go but they had to stay. Sometimes elderly people would be allowed to leave the country for short trips, but anyone who was young and still working or who might possibly decide not to come back, no way. The thinking was that the old people wouldn't want to leave their homes and families for good. When we left, we felt like we were leaving our family members in prison and didn't know if we would ever be allowed to see them again. A few of the older ones did make visits to the U.S., but they had to leave someone behind in East Germany to make sure they would come back.

Leaving the country, we had to stop at the guard station at the border and wait for a long time while the guards searched every inch of the car. They rolled a mirror underneath and even stuck a wire into the gas tank to make sure we weren't smuggling anyone out. We kids stood by watching, and even though we were just kids, we knew enough to be terrified of what would happen if the guards found something they didn't like. The guards at the border posts served as judge, jury, and executioner. Finally the inspection ended and we were allowed to go.

From my journal (entries edited and names redacted for privacy):

4 July 1979
Barbed wire electric fences, floodlights, mine fields, watch towers, and guns ... This is the edge of the world for millions, even billions, of people. As we sat at the [border] zone waiting for our papers to be processed and our belongings and money declared ... One of the guards was a friendly young man who spent a few minutes talking with Dad about the University of Kaiserslautern [where my dad was working that year]. I could tell by the faraway, wistful look in the guard's eyes that he wanted to get out.

Once across the border I felt like I was on another planet, a bleak, monotone planet. All the houses are a dun-colored yellow or brown, the sky is dim, the sun pale, the trees and grass faded. Even the wild red poppies look dull. The roads are terrible. There were few cars on the road, all of Russian manufacture, similar appearance, and poor quality.

It is difficult to breathe freely in East Germany.

We stopped in Auerbach to get our visas. There were several propaganda posters around the town: "We love our Socialist fatherland." "The more Socialism, the more freedom."

[Redacted for privacy] is a poor, filthy industrial town. There is a brook running through it which also runs by a brewery. It smells sickeningly, even at a distance, of stale beer and sewage. The air is as polluted as the stream. The sun hardly finds its way through the smog, when it shines at all. The outsides of the buildings are horribly run down and dirty while the streets are literally the pits. None of the people look very healthy; there are three or four poorly-stocked grocery stores for a city of 11,000. Prices are quite high, quality poor, and salaries very low - 400-600 marks per month.

Street scene in an East German town, July 1979

Our hotel rooms were nicer than I had expected, clean and modern. On the other hand, they were expensive (as foreigners, we had to pay twice the regular rates) and had no hot water.

I can't believe how small [relatives'] apartment is; it's barely large enough for five people. They have some nice possessions, including a color TV. [This town was close enough to the border that they could get West German TV signals on their televisions, but they were forbidden to watch it. At work, people would secretly trade what they had been able to write down of the West German TV schedule. When we were at the relatives' place one evening, they closed the curtains and pulled out their copy of the schedule from where it was hidden so they could watch TV.]

5 July 1979
The apartments we saw were very small and primitive but clean, with lace curtains and lovely displays of china and crystal. The latter items are no longer available. I noticed that everything that has to do with the government is really scuzzy and low class, while the people really care about having a neat home in the old style.

People really treasure their nice things because they can't easily get them now. Near [this town] there is a nice housing development with large houses and yards. Only influential members of the Communist party can live there.

We saw the church whose dome my great-grandfather built. Church services are permitted but are closely monitored.

We passed a huge long line at the vegetable shop. It makes me mad - the young people have to work all day to survive, and rely on the grandparents for shopping. But a lot of those old people simply aren't able to stand in those long lines.

Karl-Marx-Stadt [Chemnitz] is the ugliest, crumbliest, dirtiest, grayest, most depressing city I've ever imagined. It consists of lousy streets, decrepit old houses, and rows of identical new apartment buildings. There is a huge Russian army base by [elderly cousin S's] apartment. I tried to help the kids find a playground, but I wasn't sure where I was and wasn't allowed to go. I got so depressed that I went back to S's and did a whole English lesson [still trying to finish my home study for that year of school].

S has a Kleingarten [garden plot] and thus is able to have fresh fruits and vegetables, at least in the summer. The 1 km walk to her garden is so much easier than standing in line for an hour to buy a wilted cucumber. [I remember she had fresh rhubarb, to make a cake or torte with, which she was storing in her bathtub for lack of anywhere else to keep it.]

S's son said that he would save every pfennig and sacrifice anything to go to the States for a few weeks.

7 July 1979
The people in the country no longer have their own farms and cows, but they do have vegetable gardens and chickens. [The farms were all joined together and made into communal farms.] The farm people are considerably healthier than the rest of the population and have the added luxury of owning their own homes [the homes their families have owned for generations].

There are many people in East Germany who are skilled in handwork. Cousin D used to make little crocheted baskets and Cousin H's friend is quite good at woodwork. They aren't allowed to sell the things they make.

11 July 1979
I wonder what it would be like to work as a border guard. It must be strange, seeing the hills on the other side every day for years but not being able to go to them.

Across the border, the sun seemed brighter, the grass greener, etc. At the gas station, [my youngest brother] R got out and kissed the ground. For the first time in five days, I could breathe deeply without getting lungfuls of smog.

Next time: Into the East: Out of darkness into the light.