East Germany (Wandlitz)

East Germany - Wandlitz (loosely based on a conversation with Dr.
Uta Hebenstreit in February 1998)

by R. Eric Swanepoel

It was always there, like a perpetual Christmas from which we were
excluded. Life was alright for some, better than alright. We would
imagine, we children, the food, the huge houses filled with toys, the
gardens, in that little paradise village. Especially the food. While we
ate our black bread, and drank our ersatz fruit juice, sickly and pink,
what were the Wandlitz children having?
Every day we passed the road that led to the barrier gate. Every day we
saw the Stasi on guard, stiffly conscious of their
responsibility.
They never told us what privileges they had - the apparatchiks - but
they made sure we understood that it was all deserved. After all, they
said, you have food and clothing and jobs and your country is great.
You may see the best concerts in the world: ballet, opera, classical
music. Our sportsmen and women were worldbeaters. And if you had talent
you would be given all the training you could want. (Never mind if you
didn't want it!)
Life in the GDR was glorious, they said. Yet we sensed there should be
more colour. Perhaps they kept it in Wandlitz.

Sometimes we would hear something from The West. A friend of a friend
knew someone who had been, but the tales of wealth and freedom were
unreal. Wandlitz we could almost smell. Beyond those trees. Behind
those walls.

Then I was grown up and The Wall came down. You can't imagine what that
was like for us: the colours, the noise, the size of The West! The
cars, the clothes, the food, the houses! So this was what we had been
deprived of!

We all loved each other in this brave new world. We no longer thought
about Wandlitz.

It's difficult to say when I noticed the first cracks. Was it a
newspaper report about the "burden" of the Ossies? (So we were a burden
to them, it seemed!) Was it perhaps the third or fourth or fifth, or
ninety-seventh homeless vagrant I saw, bottle-clutching and raw-faced?
Was it when I saw the famous Hermann Schumacher, the great musician,
much celebrated in our country in former times... when I saw him
playing his heart out on a cheap violin on Potsdammerplatz, a frayed
hat displaying a few coins?
I don't know.

One day, for no obvious reason, I awoke with Wandlitz on my mind. I was
so excited! Now I could see it! The Stasi were long transmuted into
respectable businessmen and the gate would be open. I dressed quickly.
I couldn't eat. I ran there, my imagination primed with images of The
West. What splendid mansions would I see?

Well, the buildings were a bit bigger than the ones we had lived in,
and better built, but they were ordinary. Nothing much, really.

Christmas had never existed.