William Tyler
The East German Prison

William Tyler - The East German Prison

- Let me just say this is the penultimate talk on the history of Germany. Next week is the final talk and the following week, I shan’t be here, but I shall be here the week after that. I’m not here in two weeks’ time because I’m actually going on holiday with my grandchildren and we’re going to a theme park, which we’ve been to before in the Netherlands called Efteling, which is absolutely magnificent and even okay for the likes of aged me. So we’re looking forward to that. But what I want to talk about today is East Germany. Last week I spoke about West Germany. In other words, I’m talking about the period of time between the end of the Second World War in 1945 and the collapse of Eastern Europe and leading to the reunification of Germany in 1990. So as we saw last week, the history of West Germany is 1949 when the Allied Occupation officially ended and 1990 when West Germany was reunited with East Germany. So the dates for East Germany are exactly the same, 1949 to 1990. Just to repeat myself so that in case people weren’t here last week or perhaps because in some way I confused them or you didn’t know, although I guess everyone listening knows this story well, East Germany had been the Russian area of occupation while West Germany had been the three Western Allies area of occupation. That is to say America, Britain and France. So that was what was set up. So the first point to make in terms of German history is the unification of Germany, which had been obtained by Bismarck in 1871 at the end of the Franco Prussian War is ended, broken, by the end of World War II. There is no unified Germany in 1945, but two Germanys emerge, West and East Germany. So all of Bismarck’s dream has gone.

Now there has been a new book published by an excellent historian, which I’ve put on my blog. In fact, I put on my last book list and I put it on the book list I’ve done today. It’s called “Beyond the Wall,” by Katia Hoyer, H-O-Y-E-R-. And she is attempting in this book, “Beyond the Wall” means East Germany. And she’s attempting in this book to say that we need to study East Germany and we need to take a more nuance view of the history of East Germany over the four decades of her existence. She writes this, “Whatever problems the infant West Germany may have had, the prosperity and stability it had produced were like a comfort blanket to a population that had known little but tumult since the end of the First World War. West Germany was a Germany to be proud of. West Germany was declared the continuity state and East Germany the anomaly.” Now it’s the continuity state, of course, not to Nazi Germany, but to the Weimar Republic of 1922. So it’s claiming this historical legacy of democracy from Weimar. As such, West Germany politicians and historians viewed East Germany as an anomaly. They hope that one day there would be, again, a Bismarckian reunited Germany. But, of course, it wasn’t the only anomaly in modern German history. There was the anomaly of Nazi rule as well. Also, the anomaly of dictatorial rule by the generals in effect at the end of World War I. So the idea that in 1871 Germany would be moving, gradually you might say slowly, but gradually towards democracy. Was broken by World War I, reinstated in full glory with the Wiemar Republic and broken again by the Nazis in 1933. And then in 1945, broken by half the country.

That is to say, East Germany. So the Germany story is very unlike the story of democracies elsewhere in Western Europe. And we cannot ignore that. We simply can’t say Wiemar has led to West Germany and West Germany led to current Democratic Federal Republic of Germany because that ignores the authoritarian rules that I’ve been talking about from the 2nd decade of the 20th century, the 3rd and 4th decade of the 20th century and the four decades at the end of the 20th century. So Germany history is complex and that complexity simply doesn’t go away. That complexity is there in the Germany of today. If other countries are divided by their past, for example the relationship between Britain and Scotland, or in France, for example, these are historical. They lie in the past. Napoleon isn’t going to come back. No Bonaparte is going to take France back to an Imperial rule. But in Germany, one’s not quite sure. We had very little democracy in Germany. The Weimar Republic ‘22 to '33, and the Federal Unified Republic from 1990 to 2023. That’s it. And however you define democracy, that is it. So we need, as Katia Hoyer says, to look at East Germany. Because the danger is taking my argument everything about East Germany was bad. In the same way, we might say everything about Nazi Germany was bad. Well, in that case, it was. But East Germany is more complex than that. And in her book, she argues for a more balanced, I use the word nuanced view. It’s no good placing Nazi Germany and East Germany in a block and put it away. This is authoritarianism and we don’t want to think about it 'cause history doesn’t work like that. History has a very nasty habit of coming back and biting you in some way. In fact, East Germany lasted longer as a Marxist state than Weimar and Nazi Germany’s years added together.

This wasn’t a mere ship passing in the night. This is four decades of communism. And it left a mark. I’ve just said here, this is me. I wrote this when I was preparing this. The context of modern Germany must take into account Germany history of the 20th century. We can’t simply start it in 1990 as year zero. We have to look at the 20th century. And, of course, there are many Germans who were brought up in either the West or the East of the country still alive today. East Germany was, to state the obvious, was a satellite state of communist Russia. Although it was recognised as an independent state and as such, gained membership in the United Nations at the same time as West Germany in 1973, which we noted last week. So it’s a member of the United Nations. So in 1973, you might have been mistaken in thinking that this division of Germany would be there forever. And indeed if I’d been lecturing in 1974 on Germany, in those days I wasn’t, but if I had been lecturing, I would have said, “Well, it looks as though this is cast in concrete.” Because after all, I would have said, this is simply going back to a pre-Bismarck era of division in Germany. And how wrong I would have been. And how wrong you would have been and how wrong were many of our politicians in the West who saw this as a status quo that would last a long time. It lasted until 1990. In all its 40 years of existence, it depended on its very survival on the USSR, on Russia. What from the West? No, not from the West. Not from the West, but from internal dissent in East Germany itself. The West were very unlikely to go to war with Russia. Okay, I know about the Cuba Crisis. That’s the nearest we got, but it wasn’t a European issue at the time. It was not an occasion in Europe at which the West was likely to challenge Russia.

So Russian forces still in East Germany throughout its period of existence were there primarily to stop internal dissent getting out of control as well as a watchful eye and fear of the West. If I asked you before I started, “Would you write down on a piece of paper things you know about East Germany,” I suspect many of you would have written the Berlin Wall. Some of you might have written the Stasi. And others might have written the Trabant car. Some of you, might, if I’d asked you to describe in colour East Germany would be writing grey. That’s our picture and that’s a picture that Katia Hoyer wants to challenge. This is Katia Hoyer writing herself. “The citizens of East Germany lived, loved, worked and grew old. They went on holidays, made jokes about their politicians and raised their children. Their story deserves a place in the German narrative.” Now, not every historian agrees with Katia Hoyer, but I think increasingly outside Germany their certainly do and inside more Germany historians are agreeing that that is the case. Now I thought how do I tackle the subject of East Germany. Very often I fall back on the historian’s backstop of a chronological history. And I thought, no, that is. It doesn’t work and it’s boring. Trust me I tried it. So instead, I’m going to use the following headings to talk about East Germany. Now as I always say, you’re sat there thinking headings are wrong. I would’ve done this. I wouldn’t have put them in that order. Well, you’re very welcome to challenge what I do. That’s the point about adult education. You don’t have to agree with me, I’m just putting forward a case rather like an advocate in court. You don’t have to agree, but to make it simpler for me and therefore I hope for you, I’ve divided it up into seven sections.

Now don’t worry, some of them are very short. First of all, the start of the state in 1945. Secondly, the 1953 internal rebellion against the communist government in East Germany. Thirdly, the security forces, the Stasi. Fourthly, the economy. Fifthly, living in East Germany, Sixth, the Berlin Wall, and a sort of conclusion. I say a sort of conclusion because I’m going to use next week as a conclusion for the whole course to conclude about West and East Germany, reunification and coming out of that. So let’s then begin at the beginning of East Germany. The first fact to note is that the population of East Germany was far smaller than that of West Germany. In the way that I’ve so far spoken, if you knew nothing, you would think I was talking about equal size state. I am not. There is over the period of the 40 years, something like 20 million in the East and something like 43, 45 million in the West. So the West was double the population of the East and that balance had been altered in favour of the West in the early years by immigration from East to West. One of my friends in adult education is Prussian, East German, but her family got out fleeing from the advancing Russians and settled in West Germany. Doesn’t make her any less Prussian, but like many other families at the end of the war, they ran quite literally in some cases to the West to escape Russian control because they knew what that would mean. A further dose of authoritarianism. So many people left that this became the cause for East Germany to begin to build border between East and West Germany and in particular from 1961, a wall in Berlin dividing East Berlin and West Berlin and dividing West Berlin, cutting West Berlin off from West Germany.

Remember that Berlin as a whole is in East Germany and thus West Berlin is totally surrounded by either East Berlin or East Germany. Let me take you to the year 1952 and Hoyer tells this story, and I think this illustrates very well the point I’ve just been making, The date she gives is the 29th of May, 1952, and the place Saxony Anholt. “Analise Fleischer, a 14-year-old girl. was sent home from school. When she arrived, a lorry was parked outside and the family’s belongings were loaded onto it. Nobody knew what was going on. Her father with his leg in a cast from a recent accident stood by helplessly as her mother asked her to help carry furniture and boxes from the kitchen, sitting room and bedroom to the lorry. Where would they be taken? Analise heard somebody say something about Silesia. Sorry, something about Siberia. Eventually the family were told that they were being resettled in an area further away from the border in West Germany. Their home in Saxony lay only a few kilometres from another part of Saxony which lay in West Germany. Between May, 1952, and the building of the Berlin Wall in 1961, a total of 11,000 people were forcibly resettled away from the German border. Residents were not told what was happening. Their new neighbours were suspicious. It was implied that those forcibly moved had done something to deserve it.” “A story,” says Hoyer, “perpetuated to this day.” They were so anxious, the East German authorities and the Russian authorities behind them, to stop this exodus of people from what is meant to be the workers’ paradise of East Germany into the West and West Germany.

Hoyer herself says that this is an example of the panic, the fear, and indeed the paranoia, both in the East German politburo the leadership of East Germany, as well as in Stalin’s Kremlin. This is 1952, a year before Stalin’s death. Indeed, Stalin was so concerned in the last year of his life of the threat from the West, which I suggested to you was not there. He was so worried about a threat from the West, a military threat to the West, He even offered a united neutral Germany. So a Germany that will belong in theory neither to the East or the West. Konrad Adenauer, the chancellor West Germany, turned it down flat believing that that was not likely to happen, that a neutral Germany would be dominated by Russia. Three years later in 1955, West Germany did join NATO in the same way that in eventually Ukraine will join NATO. Because in strength comes the ability to defend oneself against the mighty bear of Russia. Ulbricht, the leader in East Germany, was also rather pleased. Why? Because he was a dedicated Marxist and believed and believed in it and believed he could make East Germany, to use the phrase I used earlier, a workers’ paradise. This is the Charles Rivers editors book, “East Germany.” Now I’ll just read this at short circuits what I want to do. “Ulbricht began as a member of the Communist Party of Germany. He fled when the Nazis came to power in ‘33. Ulbricht rose to power in Russia in Stalin’s circles. He supported Stalin’s purges and he stayed out of trouble. He returned to Germany as part of the Soviet occupation in 1945. The Soviets need a German front man. And so Ulbricht, as it were, put in the convoy that goes to Berlin. He became the head of a new communist party. It was called the Socialist Unity Party.

It’s the Communist Party. This is the party that’s going to control East Germany for all four of its decades. Ulbricht has been characterised by history as both a communist radical who pressured the Soviets into the construction of the Berlin Wall, and as a leader more interested in independence and reforms that would move his country in a different direction than the other Soviet Bloc nations. Both He and Honecker who succeeded him are interesting guys. I see Ulbricht as someone who really, as I said, believes in the dogma of Marxism and believes that USSR has strayed from it and that all he needs to do is to impose it in its full glory and all their problems will be resolved. In July of 1952 at the Second Party Conference in East Germany, Ulbricht unveiled what he called an agenda for building socialism. Building socialism. And he meant all the classics, collectivization of farming, nationalisation of all industries, all of these things. And, as it’s an authoritarian state, a secret police. That’s what he did in the middle of 1952. In 1953, an event happened which shook the whole of Eastern Europe, the death of Stalin. In the future, in 100 years’ time when historians are writing about Soviet Russia, they might write that the death of Stalin began, what shall I say, began the sort of unravelling of the Soviet state. Now it’s going to take just under 40 years for that unravelling to occur with Gorbachev. But there really isn’t. You can count Khrushchev if you want to. I’d argue against that. You can’t really say there’s a leader like Stalin or Putin, however dreadful they were and are in that period.

And looking back, I think historians will say, "Look, it’s simple really. Lenin had a view of Marxism. Bolshevism as Churchill always refer to Lenin, Bolshevism, which might have delivered.” But once Lenin had died and Stalin took control, there was no chance. Under Stalin, this is the worst authoritarian state. It continues on in authoritarian state, but without the horror of Stalin and it continually fails to deliver for the people. And when Gorbachev becomes General Secretary and Gorbachev realises that there has to be change, then Gorbachev tries for a little change, a little change, but you can’t have a little change. And Gorbachev will be seen as a failed experiment along with Yeltsin. Gorbachev is a different figure than Yeltsin, but Yeltsin believed in sort of free open capitalism, which was a disaster. Gorbachev believed in modernising communism, both failed. And where do we land up with? A second Stalin, Putin. That’s an aside. In East Germany, Ulbricht and Honecker believe they can establish a Marxist state that works. The answer is they failed. They failed all the way through. I’ve written for myself here as the East German regime was demonstratively failing by the early 1950s, Ulbricht turned to increasing authoritarianism, the Stasi secret police as a solution. And Hoyer writes in this way. “Walter Ulbricht ordered the scaling up of state oppression. By May, 1953, 66,000 people languished in East German prisons twice as many as in 1952. And a huge figure compared to West Germany. The General Secretary’s revival of the or General Secretary Ulbricht. Ulbricht’s revival of the officially announced in the summer of 1952 as part of the state’s building socialism programme had escalated into a struggle against the population, including the working class. Prices for food and essentials were constantly raised while state subsides were cut to try to plug the deepening holes of a bankrupt economy.”

One way of looking at the structure, the social structure of East Germany is there is a committed communist elite. But the interesting question is, beneath that, there is simmering resistance. The people and especially the important people in terms of a Marxist state, the working class, are not solidly behind this state. The elite can remain in power as long as the USSR provides the background of military support to crush internal dissension, if you like. Oh, I read on. “Ulbricht overstepped the mark when he raised work quotas by 10% in May ‘53, asking people to work even harder for less money. While in the shops, the shelves remained still empty.” And we know because I’ve just said so a few moments ago that many people said, enough is enough. Let’s get out and fled to the West. Nine o'clock in the morning, 16th of June, 1953. All those things that I’ve said were done, were done in May, 1953. In June, 1953, 300 construction workers went on strike in East Berlin. They marched on the seat of government and although their demands had begun with an objection to the raising of work quotas, by the time they’d taken to the streets, it had encompassed a number of political issues which we would describe as demands for greater democracy, free elections. The East German politburo was indecisive and bluntly, very fearful that they couldn’t control the situation. But the demonstrations went on and even spread. It is said that 24 of the major cities and towns in East Germany had demonstrations. In fact, it’s calculated 339,000 people were on the streets in East Germany on the two days of the 16th and 17th of June, 1953.

On the 17th of June in East Berlin, the strikers had called for a mass meeting. Soviet troops from their barracks outside of East Berlin now went in to East Berlin. The Russians took tanks with them. And on the 17th of June, the tanks opened fire in front of the main police station, which was being stormed by the demonstrators. The Russians also put down the demonstrations outside of East Berlin and it is said with a lot less force than they used in East Berlin itself. After all, you’ll see East Berlin is, but a, well, it’s not even a stones throw, it’s stepping from one side of the street to the other to reach West Germany. We now know, and this is one of those odd quirks of history, we now know that there were some ex-Nazis involved in these demonstrations. They didn’t lead the demonstrations but they were there, but they had no political significance. We’ll come back to the question of Neo Nazis in Germany next week. I’m just pointing out that in East Germany during the demonstrations of 1953, the rebellion, if you like in 1953 against East German government had fringe Nazis at the side of it. As I said before, Ulbricht’s response to anything is simply to hit back. In fact, in Keith Low’s book, “Savage Continent,” he provides a quotation attributed to Walter Ulbricht who said, “It’s got to look democratic, but we must have everything under our control.” And to have everything under their control, they had set up the Ministry of State Security, which was described by Simon Wiesenthal in this way. Wiesenthal wrote this. If I get the right book I shall read you the right quotation. Simon Wiesenthal said, “The Stasi was much, much worse than the Gestapo. If you consider only the oppression of its own people.” And why that is true is because of the numbers of people employed by the State Security Service.

Not only full-time people, but volunteer part-time people. This is an extraordinary state. The methods used by the Stasi and other Eastern European security forces were no different than that of the Gestapo. and some of you have been to Budapest, you visited the House of Horror there and and so on. I’m not going down that line, but I just wanted to redo this little piece because the figures are very interesting. The sheer extent. This is a book on East Germany, quite a little book published by Harley History. “The sheer extent of the penetration of the Stasi into everyday life in East Germany were staggering. In the Soviet Union where the KGB occupied a similar role, there was approximately one KGB agent for every 6,000 people. In East Germany, if informants are included, there was one agent for six people.” One in six, crikey. One in six. So if 600 are listening to me tonight, 100 of you are informing on me. If 1,200 are listening to me, you get the big picture. It was virtually certain that one was an informer. If there was a gathering of six or more people in East Germany and that informer would make a full report to the Stasi. And of course we know what happened when the Wall came down and reunification. People wanted access to the Stasi files, which were sort of open at the beginning when chaos ruled and people went in and looked through the files. I find my name, what have they got on? Oh God, there’s a whole page on me, and you read it. Who gave this information? William Tyler, and it says all the things that I’ve done, has been known to speak about, has done this, has these contacts. So it’s all written down with dates.

Source of information, Mrs. Jennifer Tyler, wife. Miss Alexandra Tyler, daughter. Your own family were found to have told on you. So if you have suffered at the hands of the Stasi in prison or maltreated before release, and then you go home in the unified Germany and you say to your wife, “Why did you betray me?” And her answer would’ve been, “Well, if I hadn’t betrayed you, they threatened to do this to our children.” And you said to your daughter, “Why did you betray your dad?” And she said, “I didn’t.” So how did they find out? And then of course the penny drops. “Were you asked on Monday mornings to say what you had done with your mom and dad over the weekend?” “Oh yes, we did it every Monday morning. We had to write.” “So what did you write about me?” “Well we wrote that we went to this meeting where you were addressing 10 people in secret.” It was the most appalling. The worst aspect of East Germany is the Stasi. Drilling holes in hotel bedroom walls. It wasn’t necessarily sophisticated. In fact, it wasn’t sophisticated. And there would be someone listening. I once had a secretary who did that. Well, it wasn’t when she was secretary to me, it was when she was secretary to one of my predecessors as principal to City Lit. He’d had to bring back the head of music on a Saturday from a residential summer school because a husband of a female student had complained that she was having an affair with the head of music.

So the principal, who was very moral Welshman, called the head of music back from the summer school and was going to give him a dressing down in his office. And he asked his secretary, who subsequently worked for me, he asked her to come in so that after he’d met with the head of music, he would dictate her a note for the file and the actions to be taken. Well actually the meeting took place and there was a door between the principal’s office and the secretary’s office. And he very quietly after the head of music had left tiptoed to the door 'cause he knew what would be going on, opened it quickly and there was the secretary with a glass fixed to her ear. And he merely turned her and said, “Oh, Mrs. Daley, I believe you’ve heard everything. I won’t need to stay. I can go home. You can write it all out from your own memory.” And that’s the way the Stasi operated. Incidentally, I think she might have been a very good woman. I would’ve been petrified of what she might have found. They were everywhere, in your workplace, in your school. So in a school common room. “Well William, what do you think about this latest plan of the five year plan of the government?” “I’m not very happy.” And someone in the corner is writing it down. Or in your workplace. “I can’t achieve this. I can’t achieve the target targets they set. It’s ridiculous,” and somebody writes it down. Maybe your best friend, this was a decidedly unpleasant society that the Stasi operated in. There is a joke, which which is worth repeating. The jokes from Eastern Europe are fascinating, particularly the Russian ones. This is a East German one. Why do Stasi officers make the best taxi drivers?

Why do Stasi officers make the best taxi drivers. Answer: because you get in the car and they already know your name and where you live. Humour is a way of resisting the regime. Humour is a way of being able in your own minds to cope. And the jokes, well, of course if you were heard to tell that joke by a member of the Stasi, that would’ve been the end. But jokes persisted across Eastern Europe. Russia, as I said, East Germany being two very good examples. I’ve said that the Stasi was the worst element of East Germany. I believe that to be true. But the biggest failure of East Germany we’re back to Clinton, is the economy stupidly. The failure of the East German economy to deliver a high standard of living, particularly for workers in this workers’ paradise clearly failed and clearly failed when compared to West Germany. And by the end in the 1980s, people were able to see, not that they were meant to, but were able to see West German television. Is that how they really lived? Some of you who visited Eastern Europe before the Wall came down and returned to Western Europe, got one heck of a shock. This was actually just after the Wall fell down. I was with a councillor of Europe party visiting what was then Yugoslavia. And I flew back from Belgrade. Now I couldn’t fly back to London. I had to fly back via Switzerland. And when I and a Danish colleague got out of a plane in Geneva, we were knocked back by all the lights, all the colour and all the adverts. And we realised we’d been living in a grey world in Belgrade and Ludhiana. And here we were back in the West.

And to imagine that you were there for 40 years and then you saw pictures on the television. I may have told some of you this, or I have told some of you this before. I had a visitor when I was principal of the City Lit, who came from Russia after the collapse of communism and he’d never been to the West. And I asked, well, the two things happened. One, we were having drinks in my office, a group of us. And I asked him who the lady was that was sat in the corner. And he said, “Oh, she’s KGB.” And he waved and said, “Hello love, you’re KGB.” And she sat there just with her folder. We don’t take any notice anymore. But I asked him, “What is the thing that’s impressed you most about the West?” And it’s rather like Erasmus who was asked that way back in the 16th century when he visited University of Cambridge. Was asked what impressed him by Cambridge. And he said, “Beer and women’s kissing.” And it’s not the sort of answer you expect from somebody like Erasmus. And it wasn’t the answer I expected from this Russian academic scientist. And his answer was going into a supermarket in Oxford Street. He said, “I was ready to burst into tears. I’d never seen so much food.” He said, “I don’t know that my wife will believe me.” And that was the grey world of the economy that was in East Germany. This is the book “East Germany,” the Charles Rivers edition, which I’m going read. All these books were on my blog. You can look them all up. I wanted to read this.

“From the earliest days, East Germany’s economy stagnated, falling further and further behind its Western neighbour. Though this was not self-evident at the time. However, East Germany had a number of advantages as well. Most notably the fact that it suffered less bomb damage than the West and had a solid industrial base. Nevertheless, supply chains the region had relied upon before the Nazis’ surrender had been cut off after the war. Crucially, East Germany contained only 2% of Germany’s total coal deposits. It was also more sparsely populated in West Germany, as we’ve seen. And the state haemorrhaged people, again, as we’ve said at shockingly high rates. I found the most important factor in the divergence between the two Germanys was governance and economic management. East German’s ruling communist party embarked upon five-year plans, collectivization and central planning that proved inefficient and at times disastrous.” And that is the truth. The economy failed. And it didn’t fail just at the beginning. It failed throughout. It failed at the beginning. True. And it failed in the middle and it failed at the end. This is “East German” book again. “Even in the more secure environment of the 1970s, the East German regime consistently failed to provide the products its citizens desired as evidenced by the so-called coffee crisis of 1977. East Germans have been enthusiastic coffee drinkers, but arising global prices caused a problem for the government. Unable to secure the hard currency necessary to pay for coffee imports, the government withdrew products from the shelves of supermarkets, effectively rationing coffee to restaurants. The resulting hardship caused an uproar amongst the population resulting in the government developing its own variety of coffee called mixed coffee consisting of 51% actual coffee mixed with additives such as chicory and sugar beet.”

There’s an interesting history behind sugar beet and Germany. It’s the Germans who first used to grow sugar beet and created the machinery to produce sugar from it. That’s a different story. “The coffee crisis passed in the following year, 1978, as world prices declined. But the episode demonstrated East German regime’s economic weakness. The culmination of this and similar privations undoubtedly played a part in undermining the regime’s legitimacy in the eyes of its citizens.” It failed to deliver on its promises. All governments in democracies fail when they fail to deliver on their promises. But governments can fail to deliver on their promises and survive in authoritarian regimes. And it’s difficult to say what would’ve happened had Russia not collapsed under Gorbachev. I think it would’ve collapsed in my view at some point. Even into the last decade of its existence in the 1980s, the gap with the West was arguably getting wider rather than coming together. The whole basis of the Marxist approach was the gap would come to nothing and then the East would take off whilst the West remained stagnant. But the reality was by the 1980s, the gap was growing. Yvonne Jones, who was born in East Germany in 1980 and looked back at her childhood, she’s now an American citizen living in Texas, has written a very short little book called “Growing Up in East Germany.” It’s on my book list. For those of you who like short books, this is lovely because it tells you directly from someone who spent it as a child. And I can’t read, I’d love to read you lots of things, but I will read you two parts. She’s talking about being a child. “During the summer months I was especially excited to go to the bakery.” She’d always was asked by her mom to go to the bakery on her bicycle and collect the bread. “I was especially excited to go to the bakery in the summer. You see our bakery had a window on the side of the building and when it was extra hot, they would sell soft homemade ice cream right out onto the street from that window. They had only three flavours, vanilla, chocolate, and strawberry. But they never sold all three flavours on the same day, only one at a time. In my entire childhood, they only opened that window about five times.

But when they did, oh boy, would there be a long line of people waiting on the street in front of that window hoping to get some delicious ice cream.” Well I was born in 1945 and there were still restrictions on food in Britain. But I remember as a small child being taken to ice cream shops around where we lived and there were lots of ice creams I could have had. So small things like that. And then this little quote. “Do you like eating bananas?,” She writes. “Well, back when I was little I adored bananas. I thought bananas were the greatest thing in the world. You know why? Because in the German Democratic Republic, we only got about one banana a year. It was such a luxury. Can you imagine what it be like to eat only one banana a year? And whenever our little village sold bananas, a huge line would form in front of the grocery store. We had to patiently wait in line to get our one banana. Banana day was a glorious and exciting day. And once I had my banana, I would eat it very slowly to be sure to enjoy every single bite.” A life in East Germany was tough to those living it and tough seen through Western eyes. Yet there was no unemployment in East Germany. Sports activities and facilities were excellent in East Germany. If you take out things like history and sociology, schools were excellent, outstanding in East Germany. It was also a very safe place for women to walk the streets in East Germany. In fact, women had far more equality prior to 1990 in East Germany than they had in West Germany. So you have to balance the bad against the good. You could take holiday, okay? You very seldom could take holidays outside of East Germany. But there were nice holidays in East Germany on the Baltic coast, for example. You could also travel with ease and affordable on trains and buses. Very few had cars. However, as the RA history notes for us.

“Some of these things that I just mentioned meant that society developed in East Germany in a desirable way. But it was nevertheless an attempt to create an egalitarian society based on equality and mutual cooperation. For many people living in East Germany, this was a source of great pride. Of course, this must be balanced against the ruthless and brutal repression carried out by the Stasi. Those who spoke out against the government rapidly found themselves excluded from this society and barred from any but the most menial of jobs. East Germany represented a bold experiment,” it says. “To create an egalitarian society with low levels of crime, freely available health and social services, no unemployment, an absolute equality between men and women. However, this experiment came with a heavy price. Freedom of expression and especially the freedom to criticise or even to question the government was non-existent. Those who did dare to raise their voices could find themselves arrested or excluded from society. The surveillance carried out by the Stasi has no equivalent in modern history.” I am disposed having read Katia Hoyer’s book to think that she over eggs the pudding. On balance, I don’t think the good things even women’s equality match the bad things. What is equality worth in that sort of authoritarian society anyhow? Can you lose yourself in sport and ignore the politics? Can you enjoy art and science at school and ignore German literature of the past or a corrected account of history or as an objective account as you can get? You all have to make your own minds up. Don’t let me put you off reading Katia Hoyer’s book, which is an excellent book, but read it with, read it with your thinking caps on.

Nothing, as we noted last week, symbolises the division between West and East culture in Germany and German values then the wall built across the city of Berlin by the East to keep their citizens in rather than to keep the West out. Between 1949 and the start of East Germany and 1961, the start of the building of the Berlin Wall, it took 15 years to complete, one in six East Germans fled to the West. It’s estimated that about 200 Germans died trying to get through, under or over the Wall. There was a killing zone on the East German side before you actually got to the Wall. Yet the Wall provided a magnificent photo opportunity for JFK and the speech that we looked at last week. And then comes another speech in 1987 by another American president, this time Ronald Reagan. And looking back, this speech had a big effect. The West were chiselling away as Russia looked less stable. And like Kennedy, this speech has gone down in history and it’s another resounding speech. And of course Reagan was an actor. He could deliver this beautifully. Now I shan’t deliver it like Reagan. But the words speak for themselves. He stands at the Brandenburg gate, which divides the city, with the Wall behind him. And he says, “Behind me stands a wall that encircles the free sectors of this city. Part of a vast system of barriers that divides the entire continent of Europe, Winston Churchill’s Iron Curtain.” “Standing before the Brandenburg Gate,” Reagan went on. “Every man is a German echoing what JFK had said, separated from his fellow men. Every man is a Berliner forced to look upon a scar. As long as this gate is closed, as long as this scar the Wall is permitted to stand, it is not the German question alone that remains open.

But the question of freedom for all mankind.” That’s the situation is it not that we face in Ukraine. “General Secretary Gorbachev,” Reagan ended, “General Secretary Gorbachev, if you seek peace, if you seek prosperity for the Soviet Union in Eastern Europe, if you seek liberalisation, come here to this gate. Mr. Gorbachev open this gate. Mr. Gorbachev tear down this wall,” said Reagan to resounding applause and a few more bricks tumble from the Wall that is Soviet Russia. It’s Soviet Russia that’s going to cause the collapse because Gorbachev refuses to send the Red Army in to protect the East German government from its own citizens. A story we will return to next week. Two years after Reagan’s speech, the seemingly impossible happened. Not only was the Wall torn down, but it was torn down by ordinary people with bare hands often, but the state of East Germany too fell. And the phrase that many know perhaps from Rudyard Kipling in this instance was proved wrong. Do you remember what Kipling said? Kipling said in a poem, “Oh, east is east and west is west and never the twain shall meet.” That’s what we thought through most of the Cold War. And it was proved wrong because the two parts come together in 1990 as the USSR fails, as no Russian troops were available and as the East German elite are shown to have no support at all. And that’s the beginning of my story for next week. And I’m going to finish with just this final quote from the RA History. “East Germany and its history continue to affect people to this day, even more than 30 years after the reunification.” And that’s a question we will come to next week. I’ll tell the story of reunification. We’ll look at what happened. And then we have to look at the legacy from the division, but the legacy from an earlier past too. A Nazi past, a 20th century past in its entirety. How does the 20th century play out in modern German politics today? So thanks for listening today. Please join me on the final one, which I hope is going to be really as interesting as a conclusion as on any of the other courses we’ve looked at. Thanks very much.

Q&A and Comments:

I’ve got some questions. When I last looked, there were four questions and it’s now goodness knows how many questions. I can’t remember.

Yes, but they had no choice in the matter. I’m sorry. I mean they had no choice. If they had not conceded, Russia would simply have taken and there was no way that the West could stop. There was no way that America and because it would’ve been America would’ve gone to war in East Germany. There was no way that America would’ve gone to war in Poland or Ukraine or anywhere else you care to mention. We were finished with that. And although Churchill wanted to press on in ‘45 from Berlin to Moscow, it was clearly one of Winston’s daydreams. And the Americans were never ever going to do that.

Val, oh, thank you. Yes, absolutely. You’re absolutely right. Val. Want to mention an excellent German film, “The Lies of Others” about East Germany. “The Lies of Others”. Absolutely.

Sandy, in '51 I attended the world. Did you? Fantastic. Sandy says in 1951, I attended the World Youth Conferences in East Germany. Being all of 15 and not too bright, I’m sure that’s not true, I missed my stop on the subway and finished up in the West. As a result, I may be one of the very few who escaped from the West to the East, rescued by a friendly streetcar, which stopped and helpful passengers called me on board. That is a wonderful story, Sandy.

Fantastic. And then you say in a separate message here, which clearly you wanted to be separate because it’s a serious comment. It was a grey, sad and suspicious place and you were 15 and you have said that and noticed that.

Yana and Alfred, the shops remained empty. Precisely. Production itself doesn’t drive an economy. Consumption is the driving force. It should drive production. The need for which drives or should drive economic strategy. As a parallel, American trickle down economics is a mirage. Unfortunately, one that still continues to be a major principle of the Republican party. I’m not going to get into American politics, but yes. We’re not unfamiliar with trickle down economics in Britain either.

Betty says, “Our friends who had immigrated from Russia sent their parents photos of their local supermarket in Toronto and their parents replied that these photos were Western propaganda and did not really exist.” Oh, how sad.

Naomi, William, early in the Soviet immigration to Israel, my husband and I were guests at the. Hello, Naomi. I should have said hello, Naomi. William, early in the Soviet immigration to Israel, my husband and I were guests at the Annual Technion Students Dinner, seated with their chairman, who was a young Russian. He told us his grandmother had been the family housekeeper since his birth. And in Russia had kept them all well fed, clean and content. In Israel she found it harder, not used to choosing what to buy in the shops. She was trying to adapt, but went frequently over her difficulties saying it was easier when she bought whatever she saw that would suffice. It’s terribly sad stories you’re coming up with.

Sheila. It sends shivers down my spine, stash type tactics from South Africa. In 1970, we had demonstrations in Cape Town against Winnie Mandela being rearrested straight after being released using the different laws, 90 days, 180 days detention, et cetera. And I was questioned at Caledonian Square when I was 11 as a member of Habonim, oh, I hope I pronounce that correctly, a Jewish youth movement. They were collecting information on everyone it seemed. Apparently they hoped one might then spy for them. My approach was that I might as well do even more than I had been doing.

Paul, did not the economy suffer a lot from the extensive seizure of East Germans post-war. Yes, that’s also true. Some East Germans were sent to Russia, but the biggest loss was those who fled to the West.

Q: Jeff, can you comment on the Soviets dismantling of German factories and shipping them back to Russia?

A: Yes, of course that happened too. And that didn’t help East Germany as opposed to West Germany. Absolutely right. And remember from last week the use of the Marshall Plan money in West Germany to improve the infrastructure.

I love this when people say Zoom user.

Q: So Zoom user says, “I was in Romania during the communist regime and I looked into grocery stores and saw that in the supermarkets in Israel on Romania week, we had doubled the amount of products there. So where are we going today after rampant capitalism in our democratic world?”

A: That’s a deep question and Zoom user that I can’t answer in two words.

Monica. Right? It’s a good question. Monica, I still remember when after visiting my grandparents as a child during summer vacations in the East, how the tight belt of fear around my chest gave way only when back home in Munich. My grandparents feared and were suspicious of everyone and everything. The provisions I had brought were welcome, but my brother and I were told to eat the East German food and leave the good stuff for them. They had to apply for ration cards for us at the village town hall. The storekeeper was later revealed as a Stasi member. Monica, how awful.

Q: Paul, also wasn’t East Germany the economic envy of the other Eastern Bloc country?

A: Yes, I didn’t say that Paul and I could well have done, but it was one of those things that didn’t, when you’ve only got an hour slips off the agenda, my fault, mea culpa.

Q: Also wasn’t East German an economic envy of the other Eastern Bloc countries despite its dire economic performance in comparison to the West.

A: Yes, it was. And when I was in Serbia, just after the Wall came down, there were extraordinary things. There was no sugar available. It was all quite strange. And I was on a flight. Now I’ve got to think where this was. I was on a flight to look from Ludhiana to Belgrade and they obviously realise that in the West you were served alcoholic drinks on the flight. We got a tiny cup of Coca-Cola and they must have thought they were really very Western. Jane writes, “In 1991, my daughter, a language student from Leeds University, was studying Russian at Kiev University as it was then.” Kiev, as it is today. “Food was in short supply. When she returned home, she invited a Russian friend to stay with us. We collected Alexia from the airport and we turned into our street. She asked, 'Which house is the KGB?’ This 19-year-old girl could not believe that we had no state spies report on our behaviour.” Well, I’m glad you didn’t make a joke and point out the house of somebody.

Q: Shelly says, “What subjects were studied in East Germany? What subjects were not?”

A: Well, all subjects were studied. The problem is that things like history and sociology were party controlled. Their history, sorry, their maths and science was extremely good. But the problem was that they didn’t use highly trained mathematician, scientists, technical students properly in the factories to innovate and change because the factory managers weren’t interested in it. All they were interested in was keeping everything docile, the workforce docile and meeting the targets that had been set and they weren’t interested in new ideas. And that was the, that was a big problem. And, of course, it led to fraud when the managers change the figures and so on. We know that from Russia and we know it from East Germany.

Ellie says, “The impact of the East German mentality lingers today. I visited Dresden and Leipzig a few years ago, and they still have very little initiative and there seems to be a so-called brown haze over these cities. By the way, my daughter lives in Berlin in the former no man’s land near the Wall.” Well, I don’t disagree, Ellie, with what you begin with about Dresden. I’ve not been to Leipzig. I’ve been to Dresden. I’ll try and say something next time about the impact of East German mentality.

Q: Ron says, “Are the K as enthusiastic in Russia state?”

A: By that, I take it you mean the KGB. which is now called the FSB. Yes, they are. And not least because Putin had been a member of the KGB and once said, “Once a member of the KGB always a member of the KGB.” And he was a member of the KGB in East Germany, which I understand was the sort of post you didn’t want. If you were sent to East Germany, it was low down the list.

Dennis says, “East Germany’s greatest contribution was surely Angela Merkel”. Yes, of course. Angela Merkel is East German a point I will come to next time.

Maria, “My father brought back bananas from Vietnam. The very first time I saw or ate bananas in my life of 12 years. I’ve never forgotten this gift.” I’m not sure where you are writing from Maria. It can’t be Britain or America, surely? Maria, if you are still listening, perhaps you could let me know.

Judith, unfortunately, the situation was the same in all Eastern Bloc. I am now living in Canada, but I had a banana shared with my parents when I was 20. But I had a very good education and as a woman engineer, I had the same salaries as men. Exactly the points we were making. Thanks ever so much. They’ll believe you when they don’t believe me. So it was bad, very bad. But as you said, it should be nuanced. Well, thanks very much for that because as I said, people are much like more likely to believe what you said than me.

Mary says, “I think it’s important to note the benefits of dollar shops, access of foreign goods, better food in Soviet Union, East Germany, Cuba, et cetera.” Absolutely right.

James. “Trickle down economics are revived by the left. Self evidently It’s fundamental economic theory. Low taxation encourages investment, creates jobs and boosts the economy, benefits everyone, including those on the lowest incomes.” Ah, let the Americans fight it out between themselves.

George says, and Olga, “I was in East Berlin in 1991.” That’s one year after. “And the city still had unrepaired streets and houses damaged by World War II.” Absolutely correct. I was in Sicily and Palermo not that long ago, and they also had houses damaged by World War II and buildings. But there was lots of big signs up saying, financed by EU restoration. This is in the 21st century, but of course this was Palermo and Sicily, so the money was given by the EU, but how do you put it nicely? Was disappearing before it got anything to do with buildings.

Simon, “East Germany excelled at the Olympics with drugged athletes.” Absolutely right. And also with, yeah, yeah, that’s a whole issue about East German athletes.

Josie. “I would respectfully suggest that comparing unlawful and brutal atrocities in South Africa when informing ourselves about conditions in East European countries, are not terribly informed. Savage police actions and unaccountable killings. Yes.” Sorry, let me read that again. I would respectfully suggest that comparing unlawful and brutal atrocities in South Africa. Oh, that was the other point that was made here.

Q: What about Hanukkah? Myrna says, “What about Hanukkah?”

A: Yes. What about Hanukkah indeed. I will come to Hanukkah next week because it plays a part in the end story of East Germany before reunification.

It was from Vienna, not Vietnam, that the bananas came. I lived in Hungary as a young child then. Now I live in California. What a difference. Thanks very much. I’m sorry, I guessed the word was Vietnam because some of the letters were missing and I should have guessed Vienna. It makes a lot of sense if it’s Vienna and Hungary. Thank you Maria for clarifying that.

Michael says, “There is an excellent TV drama based on the border between East and West Germany running through the centre of village. I cannot recall the name of the series.” I can’t either.

I think I’ve come to the end of the questions. Thank you so much. It’s been really interesting comments. It’s always interesting when people talk about their own experiences or the experiences of their family because whatever I’ve said, which may disagree with, although I think today it didn’t, if I disagree with something that you actually experience, then I have to adjust what I say in the future to take into account your experience because it’s real and it has to be heard. So thank you ever so much for coming on and sharing all of that with us.

Thanks very much. Goodbye. See you next same time, next week.