Following the fall of the Berlin wall on November 9, 1989, and the opening of the border between West- and East Germany, my friend and colleague working at the Nuclear Research Center near Karlsruhe invited Professor D. for Radiation Protection Physics at Dresden's Technical University.
She arrived for the usual semi-annual meeting of our West German working group on the measurement of ionizing radiation at the beginning of December. We had long and good conversations feeling strange, for in previous years when we met East German colleagues at international conferences, they were not allowed to talk to us. We all were overwhelmed by the new German-German togetherness.
So, in a follow-up, Professor D. invited three of our working group to her annual International Symposium on Radiation Physics at
Gaussig, a cozy castle east of Dresden used by the Technical University (TU) for meetings and on other occasions.
During the winter, I prepared my paper:
Personal Neutron Monitoring in an Accelerator Environment and was eagerly looking forward to my visit to Germany's heartland. At the end of March, I called my host in Dresden and asked her whether she needed something I could take along:
Well, the participants of the seminar organize at least one party, and any contribution would be welcome.
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A Bocksbeutel, half full
(©Wikipedia/Mussklprozz) |
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An empty Bocksbeutel
(©Wikipedia/Prince Grobhelm) |
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So I decided the best would be to furnish some wine they possibly had not tasted behind the iron curtain. The day before I crossed the now open border into the still existing German Democratic Republic (GDR), I stopped at
Iphofen's winery. I loaded the trunk of my car with six boxes of Franconian wine bottled in
Bocksbeuteln.
Then I took a night's rest at
Bad Hersfeld, and heading east reached the border in the gray of dawn. I approached a wooden shed lost in the middle of nowhere, bordering a tared strip as an
ersatz for the non-existing road. Two sleepy border guards looking out of a window rounded up the surrealistic scene when they, utterly bored, nodded at me to pass. Border guards under the
Ulbricht regime would have taken my car to pieces. Apparently shocked by the lift of the iron curtain, they even refused to ask for my passport.
I am on my way to my first stop:
Eisenach, the place of a German myth, the
Wartburg. The oncoming traffic was heavy with one two-stroke engine
Trabi after the other heading west filling the air with the typical smell of burned oil. People suddenly were free and eager to travel to the capitalistic enemy territory buying goods that they did not find in the GDR.
Entering the town of Eisenach, the smell changed to the typical taste of sulfur dioxide caused by the burning of lignite, the only energy source the GDR had plenty of. I parked my car near one of the ascents to the Wartburg and climbed up the hill in beautiful sunshine. It still was early in the morning, but already streams of people flowed in both directions.
German History on Wartburg Stamps
Weimar Republic
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| 1923: Inflation, a stamp of 5000 marks |
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1932: Great Depression,
a semipostal of 4+2 pfennigs |
Nazi Germany
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1933: Wagner's Tannhäuser or the Wartburg song contest
(Der Sängerkrieg auf der Wartburg), a semipostal of 3+2 pfennigs |
Divided Germany
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1966: Agnostic GDR commemorating
the 900th anniversary of the Wartburg |
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1967: Religious FRG commemorating the
450th anniversary of the Reformation.
Luther concealed at the Wartburg
translated the Bible into German |
I wanted to buy some picture postcards. The vendors only accepted western currency. How did they know that I am not a
Bürger der DDR (citizen of the GDR)? I rushed through the historic site: Luther's study, the
Kemenate (Cabinet room) of
Elizabeth of Hungary, the hall (19th century) of the
Wartburg song contest overdecorated with mosaic.
I tried to be in Weimar at lunchtime, but potholes slowed down my progress while Trabis ignoring them overtook me flying by. Eventually, at noon I parked my car near Weimar's central marketplace on an abandoned bomb site. I walked over to the
Elephant Hotel to have lunch at its famous
Elephantenkeller, the basement restaurant. Entering the place, a doorman stopped me:
We are jam-packed. I asked for the second service:
There is none. I handed him over a 10 DM bill. Becoming friendly, he told me to come back in twenty minutes.
Warmed by the April sun outside, I suddenly felt hungry for the smell of
Thuringian bratwurst filled the marketplace. I could not describe my feeling of taking my first bite. Still overwhelmed by the first all-German food, I approached the entrance of the
Elephant in time. The doorman guided me to a single seat on an otherwise fully packed round table.
When I sat down, all conversation stopped for the men around the table smelled the westerner. I greeted them friendly, starting to talk about this year's early spring. Slowly they became confident, and suddenly I listened to an argument: who of them following the
Wende (political turnaround) had taken off his United Socialistic Party (SED) party badge first. They took me into their political discussion so that I do not remember what I had for lunch.
In the evening, I reached Dresden, and the following morning Professor D. showed her three West German invitees around her TU institute. Two facts immediately were undeniable: too many people were working on research projects, of which half would never have been funded in the West. What followed over the following years was a dramatic reduction in staff doing useless or socialistic research. Now we know that one of the reasons for the fall of the Berlin wall was that the GDR was bankrupt. No wonder, for no capitalist government would have paid the relatively high salaries to so many "researchers."
The symposium in Gaussig developed into an extraordinary experience wet with tears and wine. I will spare you the scientific details but will mention two nostalgic moments:
1. For the first time after more than twenty years of abstinence, I tasted salt potatoes (
Salzkartoffeln). In contrast, Elisabeth always boils potatoes in the skin (
Pellkartoffeln) to conserve their natural taste and nutrient.
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| Salzkartoffeln (Photo Wikipedia) |
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| Pellkartoffeln (Photo Wikipedia) |
The change in food culture was palpable. While in the East, potatoes were still regarded as
Sättigungsbeilage (staple food in GDR-German) potatoes in the West had made the transition to a vegetable bought at the grocery in selected varieties and small quantities daily.
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My teacher, classmates and me peeling staple food potatoes
during a fortnightly stay at a youth hostel in 1948.
Red Baron is just in the middle (the fifth from both left and right). |
I still remember those men carrying potatoes in sacks of 50 kilograms (one Zentner, i.e., hundred German pounds) into our basement in fall filling up aired wooden boxes. Although these potatoes were stored in a cool dark environment, their quality in the following year had deteriorated so that they had to be peeled, taking off nearly half their mass in cutting deep.
2. In 1942 I spent the summer in a small place near the
Elbsandsteingebirge (
Elbe Sandstone Mountains) called
Lichtenhain famous for
its artificial waterfall.
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| Lichtenhain's waterfall (Photo Wikipedia) |
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| Bastei panorama in the Elbesandsteingebirge |
Driving my host and colleagues to the
Bastei on the free afternoon of the International Symposium, we made a detour to the place of my youth. We found the house where I once stayed easily:
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During the summer of 1942, my friend Dieter and I lived in the house located on the photo
in the lower right corner |
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On the photo from left to right, Dieter and I. You recognize our house in the distance.
Dieter was stricken with myatrophy, and therefore (?) a precocious child.
I drove my parents crazy, always talking back, putting their words into question:
But Dieter said ... Dieter's father, a lawyer and highly decorated First World War veteran
looked with his white mustache - my father being just 36 - like an old man to me.
He took the above photo and some more with a Leica, developed the films,
and made the prints himself. During the war, I lost track of Dieter and his family. |
Entering the house where I had spent a couple of weeks of my early youth, everything, including the room where I once slept, seemed so small, but nothing had really changed. Even the water faucet halfway up the narrow staircase where I had my morning wash was still in place.
I knocked at a door, and from the inside, somebody said:
Herein! I opened the door. There the whole family was sitting around a table manufacturing Easter decorations. I knew that in the West, people were already working on decorations for Christmas. I bought some Easter bunnies, paid them with Western currency, and handed the purchased souvenirs to my colleagues.
It's all history.
