The Berlin Wall, a brutal, iconic structure made of concrete and barbed-wire, rose to split a city overnight in August 1961. Then just as quickly, and again overnight, it was breached in November 1989 when glasnost spread through eastern Europe. As an impressionable student in the Eighties, hungry for icons, not brutality, I found that the Wall cast a compelling spell. And if my grant couldn’t get me to Berlin at the time, then cultural touchstones worked instead. There was the music of David Bowie (whose albums Low and Heroes were made at the famous Hansa studios, by the Wall). There were certain fashions to follow (baggy coats and macs, surely the attire of spies). And, of course, there were books to devour, with accounts of the Wall covered by most genres. So, with twenty years approaching since that momentous breach, what would I read again to mark the event?
Perhaps a weighty history, describing how two Berlins eyed each other across a barrier that came to symbolize, potently, the Cold War era. Or a memoir, celebrating Berlin’s distinctive counter-culture and enduring ‘decadence’. Or even one of those many thrillers, written in the ’60s and ’70s, which fed on the Wall’s myth and mood – on Checkpoint Charlie and matters of surveillance.
My book of choice does open in thriller-ish style, with echoes of Len Deighton. The twilight approach to Berlin is unpredictable, mysterious:
In order to land against the wind, a plane from the west must cross the city and the wall dividing it three times: initially heading east, the plane enters West Berlin airspace, banks left across the eastern part of the city, and then coming back from the east, takes the barrier a third time . . .
But in Peter Schneider’s short work, The Wall Ju
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Subscribe now or Sign inThe Berlin Wall, a brutal, iconic structure made of concrete and barbed-wire, rose to split a city overnight in August 1961. Then just as quickly, and again overnight, it was breached in November 1989 when glasnost spread through eastern Europe. As an impressionable student in the Eighties, hungry for icons, not brutality, I found that the Wall cast a compelling spell. And if my grant couldn’t get me to Berlin at the time, then cultural touchstones worked instead. There was the music of David Bowie (whose albums Low and Heroes were made at the famous Hansa studios, by the Wall). There were certain fashions to follow (baggy coats and macs, surely the attire of spies). And, of course, there were books to devour, with accounts of the Wall covered by most genres. So, with twenty years approaching since that momentous breach, what would I read again to mark the event?
Perhaps a weighty history, describing how two Berlins eyed each other across a barrier that came to symbolize, potently, the Cold War era. Or a memoir, celebrating Berlin’s distinctive counter-culture and enduring ‘decadence’. Or even one of those many thrillers, written in the ’60s and ’70s, which fed on the Wall’s myth and mood – on Checkpoint Charlie and matters of surveillance. My book of choice does open in thriller-ish style, with echoes of Len Deighton. The twilight approach to Berlin is unpredictable, mysterious:In order to land against the wind, a plane from the west must cross the city and the wall dividing it three times: initially heading east, the plane enters West Berlin airspace, banks left across the eastern part of the city, and then coming back from the east, takes the barrier a third time . . .
But in Peter Schneider’s short work, The Wall Jumper, no Harry Palmer or Colonel Stok jumps down on to the runway. It’s post-Cold War now, and though the unnamed narrator of this fictional reportage is on some sort of mission, it’s smaller scale. He has come to learn how citizens of both Berlins live with the concrete and the wire, two decades after construction. These are ordinary folk, though their special relationship with the Wall – in effect, their ‘Wall stories’ – singles them out vividly.
Berlin has dangerous drivers. Berlin has 90,000 dogs. And Berlin has the German Alpine Association, whose members climb a hill made of bomb-rubble. Early on Schneider draws us into his city with such snippets. Then a paradox, about the thing that overshadows all: ‘The Wall’, he says, ‘is hard to find on a map of West Berlin,’ and sole mention comes under the title of ‘sights’. Yet modern lore has it that if you look at Earth from space you’ll see only two structures with the naked eye – the Great Wall of China and, yes, the Berlin Wall.
My pile of history books tells me it sealed off the Soviet sector from the American, British and French sectors, and stemmed the increasing flow of people from East (Deutsche Demokratische Republik) to West (Bundesrepublik Deutschland). Thrillers conjure up the exciting defections that followed – that’s East to West. But The Wall Jumper follows in the footsteps of those who went against expectation. They had to ‘escape’ the other way – West to East.
Schalter, an entrepreneur, funds his house in the West by doing deals in the East, but he realizes it is the woods and lakes in East Berlin that really bring him back. Lena fell for the glamour of West Berlin’s grand boulevard, the Kurfürstendamm, only to miss her stay-at-home sister with her villa and her vocation, as she herself ends up with little from the land that promised. There’s also Mr Kabe – fifteen times a jumper – who is fed and watered by DDR officials every time he’s rounded up. Are you a ‘border provocateur’, they have to ask, meaning a political activist. ‘No,’ replies their visitor, ‘but sometimes it’s so quiet in the apartment and so grey and cloudy outside and nothing’s happening that I think to myself: Hey, let’s go jump the Wall again.’ Mr Kabe is classified as eccentric yet he jumps for the simple, understandable reason that walls need to be jumped from time to time.
Schneider does introduce some West-bound movers. There are three boys – two Willys and a Lutz – who are mad about movies, and better movies can only be seen in the West, at a Cinemascope on Kurfürstendamm. So, finding a ‘loophole in surveillance’ (that is, when the guards aren’t looking), they jump every Friday for Once upon a Time in the West, Marlon Brando in Queimada, and The Big Country. They like their Westerns, yet they jump back East to happy homes. The narrator can’t resist a flight of fancy here, and pictures the Willys and Lutz passing a certain Mr Kabe after one excursion. The four stop and start talking – ‘Why do you boys go West? Well, Mister, why do you go East?’
Schalter, Lena, Mr Kabe and the boys . . . I won’t reveal their destinies, but some border officials are more clinical than others. Meanwhile, their stories are given depth by Schneider’s skill with narrative, and telling detail – East Berlin at night (shiny, empty streets), the smell of its cafés (teak and gauloises), the ever-playing soundtracks (Jimi Hendrix and Stevie Wonder). But the physicality of the Wall is mainly absent; its presence in the 1980s seems largely psychological. After more crossings and sessions over beer and gauloises, the narrator grasps an essential truth. East-West or West-East, it’s all the same. Most people from a split city believe that ‘It will take longer to tear down the Wall in our heads than any wrecking company will need for the Wall we can see.’
The Wall in the head takes over Walter Bolle, who spends much of his life crossing sectors as an operative. Working for the DDR? The BRD? Freelance? He informs on all, is routinely arrested and released, and finally breaks down as ‘a lost man’ – all sense of identity gone. So he stops jumping and decides to destroy the structure that has, ultimately, destroyed him. It makes for a great Wall story, the ex-commando planning a breach, yet the narrator can’t get to the bottom of Bolle’s case. Facts become ‘clouded’. Some authority in the West (or is it the East?) did stop him, but by the time of this last release the scent has gone cold and Walter Bolle, possibly the outstanding jumper in Schneider’s group, has left Berlin ‘for parts unknown’.
Constantly seeking stories, the narrator himself has reason to outjump everyone, even Kabe and Bolle. There’s a scene at the end of his quest when he’s barred further entry to the East by genial guards. It’s wonderfully done – droll and wise – and alone should put The Wall Jumper top of the reading lists for this anniversary year. Berlin has changed since reunification and you can’t see much from space these days. But in Schneider’s slim book a bit of history lives on.
Extract from Slightly Foxed Issue 23 © Duncan Minshull 2009
About the contributor
Duncan Minshull is a radio producer and anthologist, and visits Berlin every year. Next time, he hopes to follow in the footsteps of his younger self and travel there by train.