When East German Soldiers Dreamed of Flying Over the Wall (436)

0:00Welcome to Cold War Conversations, the home of real stories of the Cold War. Introducing Meta Glasses. Hey Meta, any last minute tables for two tonight? Sure, there's a great Italian restaurant 15 minutes away. Hey Meta, where's the nearest flower shop? Five minutes away, straight down Broadway, past the bodega. Their lilies are trending on Instagram, just saying. Hey Meta, am I forgetting anything else? How about setting a calendar reminder for next year? Meta Glasses, available in more than 20 styles. Chevy is called the heartbeat of America for a reason. With SUVs made to move with your rhythm.

0:44The versatile Equinox tackles your entire day. The spacious Traverse fits your crew and your whole weekend. And Trax brings style with value you can count on. All infused with tech that has your back. so your drive always hits the right chord. Chevrolet. Together, let's drive. It's not going to happen in this life, but if I ever wanted to work for the British security services in any shape or form, would it count against me? Would they be able to know that I was a member of the Great Britain GDR Society? This is Cold War Conversations. If you're new here, you've come to the right place to listen to Cold War history.

1:29Please make sure you follow us in your podcast app so you don't miss future episodes. Andrew was a British Modern Languages student in 1989. He recounts the serendipitous moment when he stumbled upon an advert for a work and holiday trip to East Germany. The trip was organised by the Great Britain GDR Society, which allowed participants to experience life behind the Iron Curtain. The only requirement was to join the society, which piqued the curiosity of Andrew, who had previously visited West Germany and had yet to set foot in the East. As the group engaged in work on a building site, they encountered East German soldiers and workers sharing stories and forging unexpected friendships.

2:12I'm delighted to welcome Andrew to our Cold War conversation. Yes, well, my contact was in 1989 when I came out of a lecture one morning at university. and I saw an advert a simple A4 sheet black and white advertising a work and holiday trip to East Germany so this was spring summer 1989 and the the actual trip was going to be July August 1989 I think the cost was 120 pounds something like that and the only condition was you had to join the Great Britain GDR Society, which I think was for a tiny fee, probably£5. So I did the necessary, joined the society, contacted them, and then obviously I got the details of the trip, and it was a three or four week trip in the summer holiday, the end of my second year, doing a modern languages degree at Oxford.

3:15I was going to Germany anyway for the whole of my third year to Bavaria. At that time, I hadn't been to Germany as much as I'd been to France. So it was a particularly good opportunity and an unusual one to go, obviously, to the GDR in what would turn out to be the very last weeks of the GDR as we knew it. Absolutely. Were you a fan of left-wing politics? Question I have to ask. Or was this just an opportunity to experience the other Germany, I guess, because you'd been to West Germany, but not East Germany. That's right. I had been to West Germany, not that much. But no, I wouldn't say I was a fan particularly of, not communist politics anyway.

4:05There was no kind of investigation about that, you know. A feature of the trip, it seemed to me, was very much they were trying to impress upon us how brilliant it was in a communist society so they would take us to restaurants etc the bill would be endless you know you could have whatever you wanted but if they thought that we hadn't noticed we were about the only people in these restaurants yeah they must have thought we were quite dim I think you know not to have noticed that. Did you need to go to any meetings or receive any publications prior to going on the trip? Or was it just a transaction and you were told where to go and when?

4:51It was the latter. There was absolutely no requirement to go to any meetings or express any political sympathies with the GDR regime. So it was literally a formality to join the society. And obviously all I was interested in was going on the trip. I mean, presumably once you get a membership pack through, did that come with any publications or propaganda? I think it may have done. I think there might have been some magazines in there, one or two things. I mean, for quite some time afterwards, I received something called the GDR Review. I can't remember if that was a monthly or probably a three-monthly.

5:39publication. I don't remember. But I've got quite a few editions of that. So yes, I think it did come with a few supplements and fairly direct and to the point instructions about what to do. I think it was quite soon after I responded. It wasn't like a whole year later or anything like that. I think it was probably just two or three months later the trip was. I get the impression that they did this quite regularly, well, at least yearly. The guy who led our trip, he certainly had been before. What did your parents' friends think about your proposed trip behind the Iron Curtain? No, they were quite happy with it.

6:26I met with no resistance or advice to the contrary, as I recall. You know, it all seemed pretty sound, you know. The place we were dealing with had got a premises. Everything had got an address at the top of the letters that came, you know, and the instructions. So I was quite confident in that respect. I didn't know anybody else who was going. And in the event, there was one other person from my university who was in the year below who I never met before, had never met before. The students were drawn from all over the country, actually. Was there a briefing as to how to behave over there or anything like that?

7:12Because you're, I don't know, representing the UK abroad? there was no there was nothing like that do you know what i mean we we literally met at liverpool street station bound for harwich and then obviously the ferry and then i think it was hook of holland straight across to berlin you see and by which time you're forging friendships you know everybody's the same i think very few people on the trip knew someone else and the trip itself was a work holiday so did they detail how much work and how much holiday there was going to be i think it was more work than holiday it was either two to one or three to one but there was very little detail probably no detail about what the work would be oh really oh okay yeah well not yes i think there can't have been because it was it was on a building site in the end and we weren't builders you know we were students we were mostly german students i think language students you go to harwich to the hook of holland so where where do you cross the border into east germany oh is that a place called helmstadt i think well whatever the railway crossing is yeah that was helmstadt okay so that was uh obviously a delay you know and everything properly done visas yeah now visas what i mean what they must have provided all that sort of thing i think i don't remember applying for special visas when you arrive in berlin do you come into west berlin and cross into the east or are you arriving directly into the east well we will have gone through part of the west won't we because friedrichstrasse was the big entry point and that again was a major major delay you know a lot of waiting around a great feeling of uncertainty i can remember that quite well standing in a long queue and it just being very static so i also remember because it was the evening when we got there really vividly remember seeing sections of the Berlin Wall lit up, you know, from the train.

9:39That's quite a vivid memory I've got. But it was Friedrichstrasse. So, yeah, I mean, where do you go in anyway? So you would have come into Zoo Station in West Berlin and then a few more stops over the wall by the Reistag and then into Friedrichstrasse. That's it. It would be that, wouldn't it, of course. I don't remember. I'd never been to West Berlin, you see. So, I mean, that is very familiar to me now, what you've just said, but I won't necessarily have expected to station at the time. Yeah. And aside from the, you know, the waiting around and the lights of the Berlin Wall, what were your first impressions of East Berlin?

10:29well i think we were just nervous you know we were a lot of anticipation wondering where we were going to be sleeping that night because it was getting towards that time of day yeah just nervous excitement i think a bit of tension i mean i was 20 most of us were all of us i think were university students you know undergraduates so i guess it was pretty exciting i mean i keep was for a meal somewhere. Again, I remember that. It was a big canteen-style meal place. And then it was back to this camp that I've wondered about quite a lot since, and I think it's probably a Lidl or Raver store now, in a place called Marlsdorf, which is way out east.

11:18It was 50 minutes an hour from Unterdain-Linden, Brandenburger Tor. Or, yeah, the camp, I'm pretty sure, was south of the station, south of Malzdorf station. I have found somebody who claims to have pinpointed it in the last few weeks, actually. Oh, okay. Yeah. So, I mean, obviously it's not there now and it's been built over. Did you take many photos when you were over there? I've got some photos, yeah, mainly from the building site and the other tourist visits that we did, yeah. I don't think I've got many photos on the camp, if any, which is frustrating. It wasn't the same taking photos, was it, in 1989?

12:04It was quite an effort, you know. Well, it was. I did an interview with somebody the other day. I can't remember who I was speaking to, and I said, God, what I wouldn't have given for having a digital camera when I was in East Berlin and just being able to shoot everything because i was i went i was in uh east berlin in june 89 so again just before the whole thing fell apart and so glad i got there while it was still a yeah the divided city i did take some photos from the top of the tv tower and i went back in june 1990 from regensburg where i was doing my year so i've got a lot of photos from then that was my first time back in Berlin when of course it you know everything everything had changed so the the accommodation that you were in what that was that it sounds like you were in tents or in huts or something no not tents not huts they were they were brick buildings I mean they were like um just like dormitories I think in in sort of one-story brick buildings you know around a camp which had got a road going through it it had got some outbuildings there was like a sports pitch in the middle between the block so that's where we stayed for that work phase the first two or three weeks it was pretty basic you know and we had some meetings in these outbuildings i remember i remember groups coming to speak to us the um the fday yacht with the german youth you know the Freudeutsche Jugend came to address us.

13:46It obviously was a propaganda mission for them, you know, clearly. One of our group dared to say, you know, all these uniforms and there's this name with Jugend in it, you know, you are beginning to sound like the Haarjot, the Hitlerjugend to me. What's the difference? Which, you know, one or two of us were looking in the floor at that point and thinking, you know, be careful, be careful. Yeah, what was their response to that faux pas? I think maybe our leader just kind of interjected and just kind of, you know, yeah, calmed it down before any great offence was shown or taken. I think that kind of thing happened once or twice, you know, during the whole thing.

14:38So it sounds like you really did have a mixed bag of people. on this trip. Did you, I mean, can you describe some of the other participants? Because there must have been some there who believed in real and existing socialism. Well, I remember there was a girl from my home county, Lincolnshire, who called herself a Polish version of her first name, you know. and yeah I mean maybe she was really left-wing and you know pro-communist and I think there were some who probably did go because they genuinely loved it and just you know and embraced it I'm not really sure I mean we were busy most of us I think were busy enjoying the opportunity to be in a city like that you know i mean i'm very much into german literature i was at the time so to be able to go out in a small group of already made friends you know in the evenings after the after the building work has done after we've been back to malzdorf we've taken the s-barm back in to really very adjacent to where we were doing the building and we're walking to the Berliner Ensemble, you know, the Theater am Schiffbauern, Brecht's Theatre.

16:01These are students, myself included, who have done a Brecht play for A-Level, you know, just a couple of years before. It was great to think that you're, you know, you're walking these streets. The Kormischer Au pair was there on Bergenstrasse. Wontoday in Linden was already, you know, known to us. And obviously Alex, Alexander Platz, we would go there in the evenings very late and feel extremely safe. I mean, the only thing we were scared of was crossing those big wide roads and getting arrested for not waiting for the green man. You know, that was something that was said. But we, midnight and the small hours, we were having drinks in the Nikolai Theatre and there were hatches here and there, takeaway pizza was available.

16:48It wasn't the greatest pizza, but, you know, that was fine. So, you know, it really did feel free and open and safe. I do distinctly remember that, which was a great thing. I'm not sure if you would have felt like that in a Western capital in those hours. When I was in Berlin, I was there for two weeks staying in West Berlin, but did come over to the East loads of times because I was just fascinated by the fact there was this divided city and went and saw a classical music concert at the concert hall on that square the gendarmenplatz i know i was there a few weeks ago i know what you mean exactly yeah saw a classical music concert there and it was something like 50 pence or something the ticket but then we had to make sure that we got the train back before midnight because the day visas expired at midnight.

17:49Okay. Whereas you, you know, you could, you know, stay up. I mean, how late did stuff stay open in East Berlin? Yeah, well, I'm just wondering that. Because we were going back to Marsdorf for the second time in the day in the small hours. So the S-Bahn was still working. Yeah, I mean, there wasn't much open and there wasn't much going on. But I think that's probably why we liked it. You know, you could literally roam down these incredible boulevards, you know. I think that was part of the appeal, really. The thing is, we then were up really, really early to go back to the building site. You know, early.

18:30I think we were working, in inverted commas, from about 6am at the latest. So, you're getting the picture that there wasn't much sleep being had. Were you being paid for this work or did you have to exchange a set amount of money when you came in into Ostmarks? I think they must have given us a small amount of money, which is basically all we needed. They were feeding us and I don't remember changing money. I do remember the, you'll know, the Lustgarten area. I remember that being paved back then. and I remember some of our group exchanging money basically you know exchanging dollars or pounds or whatever for uh for Ostmarks which I think was quite a common thing but they were everybody was looking over their shoulder a bit you know but I think they gave us money for the for the work but we didn't need much you know we had plenty for what we needed it for they they took us everywhere.

19:35They must have taken us on coaches at the weekend, for example. We did quite a few visits. I mean, they took us to Sachsenhausen and Cecilienhof in Potsdam, Sans Souci. We went up the TV tower. We went into the Brandenburg Gate, where they showed us some, like a CCTV room, all these black and white monitors showing cameras trained on the wall, you know I've thought since when I've looked at pictures of the Brandenburg Gate from that era, how could I have gone into that, there's not enough room you know, where is there a sort of inside to it, but there is I mean you can see at either side there are some steps up and there are some doors so we definitely did that you know and that's uh i remember that and they did they did this with pride you know they're sort of showing you how incredible their surveillance system is how could they not have thought that you know this was something to be ashamed of you know watching the civilian population like this starting or growing your own business can be intimidating and lonely at times your to-do list may feel endless with new tasks and lists can easily begin to overrun your life.

20:55So finding the right tool that not only helps you out, but simplifies everything as a built-in business partner can be a game changer. For millions of businesses, that tool is Shopify. Shopify is the commerce platform behind millions of businesses around the world and 10 % of all e-commerce in the US, from household names like Gymshark, Rare Beauty, and Heinz, to brands just getting started. Shopify has hundreds of ready-to-use templates that can help you build a beautiful online store that matches your brand's style. And you can tackle all the important tasks in one place, from inventory to payments to analytics and more.

21:33No need to save multiple websites or try to figure out what platform is hosting the tool that you need. And if people haven't heard about your brand, you can get the word out like you have a marketing team behind you with easy to run email and social media campaigns to reach customers wherever they're scrolling or strolling. Start your business today with the industry's best business partner, Shopify, and start hearing. Sign up for your$1 per month trial today at shopify.com slash realm. Go to shopify.com slash realm. That's shopify.com slash realm. Pros trust the Home Depot for heavy-duty storage solutions for any job site or garage.

22:14Right now, get up to 15 % off select storage and organization. Impact and water-resistant totes and shelving built to hold up to 2 ,500 pounds. Storage systems have space for all your tools and protect them in the garage, on the job site, and everywhere in between. Save time and maximize efficiency with adjustable shelving customized to your business's needs. Shop and save on ProGrade Storage at The Home Depot. How pros get more done. Well, I guess they're trying to show you how effective the border is defending it against the capitalist West. Because I did do an interview with a woman called Katya, who was the daughter of an East German admiral.

22:54And she went into a museum within the Brandenburg Gate that they had there. It must have been quite a small museum. Because effectively, it was in no man's land. I mean, it was in the no man's land area, the border. It was beyond the, you know, the first line of the barriers there. Yeah, no, no. Well, I mean, that whole area has always fascinated me because that's where our building site was. This Galenda, this patch of land. And so from the Brandenburg Gate southwards towards Potsdamer Plants, between what is now Ebertstrasse and Wilhelmstrasse, that's where this big building site was that we went on for two or three weeks in the summer of 89.

23:47Some of our group were detailed to go up, I think it was Pankow or somewhere in Prenzloherberg. I regard myself as one of the lucky ones because I was in this bigger group, I think, who went to that building site, which is, of course, where all those quite swanky flats are. I mean, it's the, well, part of it is also where the Jewish monument is, isn't it? There's Gertrude Kolmarstrasse, which runs sort of in between Wilhelmstrasse and Ebertstrasse. What I do remember is Otto Grotewaldstrasse, which was the former name of Wilhelmstrasse, wasn't it? Obviously, it was Wilhelmstrasse before Otto Grotewald as well.

24:33So, yeah, I mean, it was just a sort of derelict or barren landscape, that was, that was being re... What's the word, yeah? Well, repurposed. There was talk of Katharina Witt, you know, the ice dancer. and Eric Honica's daughter, Eric and Margo Honica's daughter, they were two names that somehow we picked up were going to have one of these luxury flats that would eventually be built where we were. We were digging foundations, like literally with spades, you know what I mean? It was never going to happen. That was just an excuse to get us into the country and give us something to do. The colleagues on the building side, many of them, There must have been some professional builders, but many of them were soldiers from the People's Army.

25:27So Volksarmisten. I mean, that's who we kind of mixed with and had our tea breaks with. So that was interesting. One of them said to me one day, if we keep digging, if we keep digging, we might dig up the Führersschädel, so Hitler's skull. It was very much where the bunker was. You know, that was part of the building site terrain. And one building at the sort of southern extreme, you know, Fosstrasse, where Hitler's chancellery was? Yeah. There is a building the other side of that, which is now part of the facade to the new Mall of Berlin. It's like a sort of sandstone or brown building with bullet marks hidden.

26:12I do remember that standing. and it's, I've looked at what that used to be. It was some kind of transport ministry building that has been skillfully incorporated into the new facade of the Mall of Berlin, the car park that goes down, and then that big open area where you can sort of walk through and to the left and right. So, you know, it's quite fresh in my mind a lot of that. Obviously, it's been completely built over. In fact, June 1990, when I did go back, those flats were miraculously up. And the previous July, you know, it was just this kind of dry, barren landscape with some masonry, which, you know, was probably World War II ruins.

27:06So there was quite a dramatic transformation in the, you know. Yeah, I know exactly the flats you mean. I think Marcus Wolff got one of them as well, the Stasi guy. But the NVA soldiers, were they bow soldatans? So people who had conscientiously objected to carrying arms and who were doing manual labour? I don't think so. I mean, they were uniformed. I just remember from our chats with them, you know, obviously we could speak German. and they were from all over East Germany. There were Saxon accents in there, Berlin accents, you know. And I remember one of them saying, really, you know, if only I were a bird and could fly over the wall, you know, and it would just be fantastic.

27:54It would just be fantastic to be able to go over there. You know, one of them had got a newborn son that he hadn't seen. So it was very sort of harsh conditions they were serving under. we learned from them that they'd been waiting 12 or 13 years for their car some of them you know which was pretty typical i think so we had a we certainly had the opportunity to associate with them and hang out with them and i've got photos of of all that really uh just we were sitting around a lot you know the foreman i remember i've not met many journalists called alphonse but he was called Alphonse. He was drunk from 6am, you know, schnapps.

28:40He was just always drinking schnapps. So it was a very, very shoddy, work-shy, aimless kind of operation that he was presiding over. There were a lot of porter cabins. I remember getting changed in the porter cabins. You know, we looked like extras from 1984 in these dark blue and dark grey overalls that they gave us. that caused some some amusement and the food you know was absolutely shocking you know like really fatty pork and hardly cooked but boiled you know i was i was i just didn't really like the food that they were giving us in in at lunch break we must have finished quite early in the afternoon though because we started at 6 a.m i think you know yeah i think we made the most of in terms of having interesting chats with the workmates.

29:35I remember one guy wanting to take out one of the girls in our group and I remember lending him some clothes, you know. Probably he asked me the day before, can you bring me some proper clothes so I can take this girl out? Who was obviously willing to go out with him in the afternoon. Incredible. I'd love to see those photos. You can share those with me. Yeah, I've got them somewhere in a box. I would be really interested to see those. So you're actually right up against the Berlin Wall. Oh, some of the photos I've got have got the white wall in the background, which will be the one that I imagine went down Gertrude Kolmarstrasse, as I think it's now called.

30:22I probably believed for a while that it was the Ebertstrasse axis, You know, the one that sort of curves around the back of the Brandenburg Gate and then just carries on down. I think that was Hermann Göringstraße in World War II. So I think it must be, because that is a complete no man's land, isn't it? It was a huge expanse. It was probably the widest bit of no man's land in Berlin. So we were, obviously our porter cabins and building site were not on that bit. There is like, it's just sort of a green area, isn't it? our building site was between I imagine the axis of Gertrude Kolmar to Otto Wörterwolle Strasse yeah I'm going to see if I can find some Allied reconnaissance photos to see if I can pick out your porter cabins or even some figures around the foundations of that because there must be some somewhere well there was something on Twitter a few days ago Yesterday, I think.

31:28From, do you know Jens Schoene? I don't know what he is. Yeah, I think I follow him. Yeah, he sent a picture. It's a little bit like that picture, that quite famous picture taken from the roof of the Reichstag, looking towards the Brandenburg Gate, and there's like a vast expanse in the background going southwards. But this one, well, it was one of these on this day things. so I saw it a day later but I think it was 10th of October 1989 and you can see the porter cabins actually so that's a very recent tweet I was looking at that yesterday afternoon I've also got a picture from somewhere that I use in my school trip booklet because I take trips to Berlin every two years and I've found some pictures of the building site from the other end just yeah I think there might be 1988 instead of 1989 but you can see you can see the little bit of infrastructure of the building operation that's going on yeah I mean it's it's definitely partly in the area of the Führer bunker I think they did unearth bits of the Führer bunker in the building of those because I remember I used to get a magazine called After the Battle and there was one copy which where they'd actually got access to it weirdly I have to see whether I could find that, I'd forgotten about that It's incredible isn't it it's just so intriguing really and that's just opposite from the former propaganda ministry isn't it do you know that, the other side of what was Wilhelmstrasse it goes into a square really, I think we were sitting on one of my pictures, I think we're sitting with our backs to Otto Guterwoldstrasse.

33:25And I think there might be some remains of the old propaganda ministry there, but it quickly opens into a square. It's where that current U-Bahn station that's been renamed is. You know, they used to be called Mordenstrasse. Yeah, Stadtmitte it was for a while as well, wasn't I thinking? Right, right. The one that allegedly the marble in it is from the Führer Chancellery, but I think that's been disproved now. Right, yeah. What sort of contact did you have with GDR citizens other than the people you were working with? Okay, so we had three or four leaders. I remember a guy called Uwe and there was Bound.

34:09I can't remember, there was a lady as well, I can't remember her name. I mean, Uwe was very much a sing-song around the campfire type. you know so he was singing he was singing he was singing Beatles songs back at Marsdorf you know I don't remember I say that I don't remember any bonfires particularly but you know in the dark in the twilight he'd got people outside with a beer probably and he was he was singing Beatles songs you know he's accompanying himself on his guitar and everybody was joining in so that was that was lovely i must say bern was a lot younger i mean they were there to help us just get the best possible time i think you know they were very keen to show us their country you know and take us out and about they didn't go to the building site with us i recall they didn't go to ours anyway i mean our leader bill he came to the otto grotervoll site you know the one right next to the wall so maybe they went to the panko one i'm not sure yeah we also we definitely went probably she was one of the leaders this one a woman took us to her gdr flat basically you know and we all sort of well it can't have been all of us because there was 30 or 40 of us but i certainly remember going into a you know a gdr flat that was basically one big room you know well not that big obviously but you converted this settee or whatever this couch into it was their bed as well you know i remember that and some big heavy radiators against the wall probably everything painted blind green or whatever like the like unterdane linden station i did have one slightly strange experience they took us to a social event in the evening which was basically turned into a disco, a big disco.

36:09There's a lot of drinking but also a disco. I think it was in Friedrichshain. What's it called? Volkspark Friedrichshain. I don't know if you know that. It's one of these places built on a lot of rubble. So you climb up as you go further into the park. It's quite wooded. it's the one where there's a Märchenbrunnens, fairy tale fountains as you go in Yeah I think there was a flank bunker there during the war Yeah and there is today some kind of cafe really quite a swish cafe there now and I think that must be on the spot where we were taken but I left my, I lost my glasses there, I just left them on a table They were new and I didn't wear them all the time back then.

37:03And I had to, really, I wanted to get them, you know, so I went back on my own, which was quite strange the next day. I've still got my East Berlin map with just one or two locations circled in pencil. Obviously, it's one of those maps where West Berlin just doesn't exist, you know, the type of thing. Brilliant, yeah. So I reckon I went back to Rosa Luxemburg Platz. That is a U-Bahn station, isn't it? And then walked down a street or two, very much trams going down the middle of the road, I remember that. But it was quite eerie, I think, just sort of being slightly off the touristy centre, the streets that we knew really well and that I'd been together in a big group with.

37:48It was a little bit, I felt a little bit uncertain making my way back to this place on my own, you know, under my own steam. But I found the glasses, so all's well that ends well. I remember stopping and phoning my brother on the way back. So everything worked. You know, this public call box, I just thought, well, I'll give this a go. You know, I know the international code. And I remember getting through to my brother with a few coins I'd got. You know, so that was quite good that that worked. I do remember seeing an electrical goods shop. and there was this toaster in the window it it had pride of place it was the only thing in the whole shop and it was just massive and it got all these valves displayed on it you know it's like looking at one of the first computers or something and as i say it was the only item in the shop and i remember staring at that and thinking what is going on here you know back in Marsdorf, something else I remember, is just walking past this little square quite near the actual station, as we did, sometimes several times a day, a van pulled up, opened its back doors, and it was full of bananas.