My Berlin

MY BERLIN

Its People from Hitler to the Present

By Detlev Kichgatter

Copyright Detlev Kirchgatter 2001

All rights reserved

ISBN # 978-1-55349-126-2

Published by Books for Pleasure at Smashwords

DEDICATION

To my daughter Fiona

To my son Stephan

To my wife Eloise

To my Friends

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

I would be amiss not to acknowledge the help extended to me in the preparation of this book. There is first of all my family, who put up with my idiosyncrasies.

Then there is my friend, Frank Zierach and his wife, Marise, who, whenever I am in Berlin extend their hospitality to me. Not only that, but Frank supplied some of the most poignant photos and cover design.

In addition, there are all those people of different creeds and origins who were willing to listen to me, and patiently answered my questions. A thank you to them all.

Detlev Kirchgatter

Victoria, B.C., Canada – 2001

INTRODUCTION

Thoughts and memories...

Berlin has been featured in the headlines of the world press ever since the war. This has not been the wish of all the ordinary Berliners, who would have preferred to live a normal and peaceful existence. But—have ordinary people ever been asked?

And there are Wanderers between the Worlds, like my friend Detlev Kirchgatter and his wife. He, having left this city after a rather turbulent childhood, never really taking a return to the places of his youth into consideration during a long period of unrest and the pursuit of happiness for himself and his family, was—call it fate—finally called back to Berlin to more or less make his peace with the past. He was to meet a city which he had not left. A city belonging to the western world: lively, modern, sparkling, colourful—and a city which was also dull, backward, frightened and grey, belonging to the east. Both clearly illustrating the differences between the two systems they now belonged to. A city, torn between the partly superficial lifestyle of the American Way of Life and the depressing life in a surveillance state under the influence of the communist ideology. Both completely different from the illusion or picture he had in his mind. But still—it was the same city, it was Berlin! And I think that it still represented all the values he had taken in during the days of his youth, unconsciously influencing him in all his thinking and feeling, having made—and still making him—cross with himself sometimes.

At that definitely moving, frightening, and decisive moment for him, I, a representative of the post-war western part of the city, born only a few weeks after the final breakdown of the Hitler regime, was lucky enough to meet him and his wife in his last teaching year at my school in Berlin Spandau.

Nearly fifteen years since then, uncountable letters and phone calls and many meetings in Canada and in Berlin have brought us close together. I think we both profited greatly from the exchange of thoughts—and feelings.

He is the brother I always wanted to have— and I may have given him back the feeling that there is something he has always been looking for, a link with the ideal world of one’s youth. A first step to close a chapter of the book of life—not looking back in anger any longer. A feeling of still having a home, a place one can come back to, a friend and family in the old Heimat—it is always the people who make a place a home!

The book offers the experience of a long, long journey—and allows a look into the heart of a Canadian, who in his heart has always stayed ein Berliner!

Frank Zierach, Berlin, September 2001

PART I

CHAPTER 1

AS I SAW THE WAR

Looking back upon one's life from the age of sixty-eight in the year 2000, one can afford to smile indulgently at the vicissitudes of man. That is, those of man in general, and of mine specifically.

When born in 1932, did I emerge with the Rousseauan blank slate, upon which all later impressions were to be imprinted? I cannot vouchsafe that. I can guarantee an existence as colourful as that of a kaleidoscope.

What are my early imprints? A one storey house in a sylvan setting. Tall pines, a resinous scent, a sandy soil, a furrowed, unpaved roadway in front of the fence. At the far end of the garden an uninterrupted forest. While I am not a friend of the often gruesome Grimm's fairy tales, one could call this a peaceful, pleasant idyll. On stormy days, such silence only interrupted by clamorous, interlocking crowns of tall pines.

Apparently I spent many hours in my baby carriage listening to all sounds. I was born in the house my father built. A sister preceded me by three years, born in a hospital. Mother had not been happy with such clinical birth. So, while I had hardly any choice in the matter, I was delivered at home in the presence of a midwife. Considering this in the year 2000, one may doubt that Mother considered herself a pioneer of home birth. Even less so in a village on the rural outskirts of Berlin. While often reported that peasant women may give birth at the filed verge, only to resume their work afterwards, this was not the case with mother.

As far as I can piece this together, she had been a secretary and sometime after being married, they had moved to this village of Schulzendorf. Father had been an apprenticed printer and typesetter. He too, of Berlin origin, had learned his trade there, but was born illegitimately. Today, in a time of single parent families, this may not raise an eyebrow. From the very few comments recalled, I presume this to have been a burden for him, in his time. Born in 1899, he would just be of the right age for the draft towards the end of WWI. Since his apprenticeship had by then been completed, being a journeyman, he managed to avoid the draft for considerable time. He had started to 'journey', never working long enough in one place for the military to catch up with him. From a professional standpoint this was a great experience. It exposed him to various parts of Germany and a number of printing shops. The latter asked no questions, being happy enough to employ a printer when there was a dearth of manpower. Of course, eventually the army did catch up with him. He had some serious explaining to do as to how he could have avoided 'the duty to his fatherland' for so long. In any case, other than barrack duty and basic training, he was late enough not to see any action.

When and where he developed his pacifism is beyond my knowledge. I gather his youth with a stepfather, was a tough one. One can well imagine, no illegitimate child prior to WWI, would have been well received, whether in school, or life as such. A time of absolutism and authoritarianism. That may be one reason for attempting to avoid Prussian militarism and the cadaver obedience associated with it.

Sometime in the 1920's the two had met. It must have been at the height of the hyper-inflation, for they reported on being paid daily. With pay in hand they were given the opportunity to spend this money. If they had waited for office closures, the funds paid at noon would no longer buy anything by evening. Everybody was a millionaire, millions which were worthless.

One might well digress here for a moment to the Versailles Treaty, imposed by the Allies on Germany in 1919. It would probably be fair to say that this treaty laid the foundation for the failure of the Weimar Republic, and ultimately the emergence of Hitler. Unreasonable reparation payments, loss of industrial areas in east and west, the war guilt clause, to mention only a few impositions, later gave Hitler special grist for his mills would lead Germany eventually to accept a totalitarian government. The accompanying starvation, one of my aunts died that way shortly after the collapse, the periods of civil war, high unemployment, the reckless printing of money, the weakness of the Weimar Republic, all combined to further prepare the ground for the man who 'promised' stable government and a return to law and order.

Against this background my parents eventually married and attempted to eke out a living. Since their union, father was fortunate in his employment as a linotype operator, setting type in Berlin Newspapers, among them the 'Vorwaerts', a socialist paper. This employment was to lead later to complications. Before that, the 1917 Communist Revolution in Russia, had resulted in mass emigration of the intelligentsia. The targets of these refugees were Prague, Berlin and Paris. One shop, my father had been working in, was bought by White Russians who