An American Teenager in East Berlin: April, 1989
It was the Friday before the start of spring break at the Florida Air Force Academy. A staunchly strict military school in the heartland of idiocracy. Most of the cadets had already packed up and left to go back home. I was a fifteen-year-old emotionally volatile, impulsive, delinquent. I was raised by a single mother who worked twelve-hour shifts, six days a week to provide for me. My behavior at the time was completely out of control. My mother had had enough and shipped me out to military school. The prospect of having me home for eight days did not appeal to her, so she decided to send me on a trip to Europe instead.
By Friday evening all the cadets had gone home except for me and three other guys whose parents also didn’t want them home for spring break. We were to spend the night at school and depart for Europe the following day. All four of us were moved to the same barracks. The enormous academy seemed hauntingly empty. Although we supposed to be confined to the floor of our barracks, I took a late-night walk around the school. There was an ominous, hollow feeling that overtook me and I was ambivalent about going on this trip. Part of me just wanted to go home and hang out with my friends, but that wasn’t happening.
West Berlin
West Berlin in April of 1989 was a happy go lucky, gregarious, disco-dancing city. The people were cheerfully affable and seemed content with their way of life. Perhaps the winds of change were blowing and an overall sense of optimism reverberated throughout West Berlin. The wall that separated East and West Berlin had become a powerful symbol of the cold war and the struggle between the economic systems of capitalism and communism. After World War II Germany was divided between the allies and Russians. England and the United States were in control of West Germany, while the Russians took over East Germany. Unlike the allies, Russia never allowed East Germany to form an independent or democratic government. Thus, the Russians forcefully implemented Communism as the fabric of East Germany’s societal ideology. To enforce their system of government East German authorities built a wall that partitioned East and West Berlin.
The purpose of the wall, which was built in 1961 was to stop the flow of East Germans from leaving the communist-controlled territory. This was a concept that I could not grasp. I didn’t understand as a self-absorbed American teenager why a government had to build a wall to keep their people from leaving. I had grown up traveling around Europe with my parents and the idea of not being able to move freely was foreign to me. I had no clue what communism or capitalism was or how it influenced my life. I had never heard of Karl Marx or Friedrich Engels, and I had definitely not read their communist manifesto. I was sure of only one thing, I intrinsically knew that shooting your own citizens to keep them from leaving was wrong.
On November 9th, 1989, seven months after I was there, the Berlin wall fell, ending a 45-year power struggle between the communist Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (USSR) and the capitalistic Western societies. Although the official end of the USSR didn’t come till 1991, Miguel Gorbachev, the head of the communist party had already seen the writing on the wall (no pun intended), and by the mid-1980s began to implement reforms that moved away from Stalinism.
West Berlin was the last stop on our spring break trip before heading back to the pit I called Florida. While we were in West Berlin we had met some college students from the University of Mimi. We had spent the previous evening drinking and bar hoping with them. They informed us that they had a bus trip scheduled the next day to enter East Berlin and if we would be interested in joining them. We told them we would and the following day I found myself at one of the most infamous places in cold war history.
Checkpoint Charley
Checkpoint Charley was the crossing point between West and East Berlin. It was a cryptic, eerie place that would make the hair on your arm stand up. It was a place that you associated with spy novels and deep covert operations. As we sat on the bus with the rest of the college students, soldiers came through and inspected everyone, as well as soldiers outside who were checking under the bus. We were eventually let through and I entered East Berlin. As I went through Checkpoint Charley I could see just how complex and vast the Berlin wall really was. Guard towers were stationed all along the wall, it felt like I was entering a large hopeless prison. We were not allowed off the bus, the entire tour was done driving through the city. What I saw shocked me.
There was none on the streets, not a single individual was walking through the city. No families, no hustle and bustle of city life, just a barren metropolis, devoid of any human spirit. I had never experienced anything like this, the shift in energy was acute. East Berlin had an oppressive, inhospitable feeling to it. Military personal with machine guns and guard dogs were stationed along our route. All the windows to the buildings and homes were shut. I couldn’t see inside anywhere due to all the shutters being closed. This grim, cold place rattled something inside of me. For the very first time in my life, I became socially conscious of the world around me. The East German government which was a puppet regime for the USSR, made it clear that they had complete and total control over the civilian population. What was also blatantly apparent was that the East German authorities accomplished this type of collective obedience through intimidation and fear. At the time I didn’t fully understand it but I was witnessing what a totalitarian police state looked like.
East Berlin, April 1989
It was obvious that East German authorities arranged this frigid display of power. They knew we were coming and the people were ordered to stay in their homes with the windows locked tight. For the short 60-minute bus tour of East Berlin in April of 1998 I did not see one resident of the city. I wasn’t mature enough or intellectually astute to fully comprehend what was happening. All I knew was that the people in East Germany didn’t have the freedom that we enjoyed in the West.
That experience sparked an interest in me. From that day I have always had a strong desire to understand conflict and the mechanisms that can cause a society to implode. I wanted to know why a place like East Germany and the Berlin wall could even exist in the first place and why it’s citizens would agree to be subjugated to the demands of their government.
A few years later I read Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels Communist Manifesto. I studied the history of the time when they wrote their manifesto. I read about the industrial revolution and the indiscriminate mistreatment of workers, including young children. I learned about the titans of capitalism, like John D. Rockefeller and Andrew Carnegie, and how they impacted America. I read about Vladimir Lenin and the bloody Russian Revolution. I studied the ideologies of both capitalism and communism. I learned about WWII and the cold war that followed. I wanted to understand why people were being shot and killed for trying to cross over from East to West Berlin.
What I have learned is people have their own interpretation of how things should be done in our society. But what I have come to realize since that fateful trip is that people love power. They become intoxicated on it and they will do anything they can to hold on to that power.
For so long in our history, it has been an evolutionary impulse to follow leaders. To find solace in community and organization. We want to feel safe in our homes and protected by dangerous elements. To participate in this communal living, we are willing to relish certain freedoms for the prosperity and safety of everyone around us. The question becomes how much of our freedom are we willing to lose in the name of false prophets and deceptive beliefs. Revolutions have existed for thousands of years. There are countless recorded events throughout history where people have risen up against injustice and tyranny. I see the trends of history repeating itself here, today in the U.S. The pendulum of human connection is swinging toward intolerance and bigotry and if we are not careful we could coagulate into a country that we do not recognize. What I saw in East Berlin in 1989 scared me and I hope to never see it again.