And Still a Gray City : East Berlin: Yearning for Its Old Glory

Forty years after the division of Berlin, the two sectors are as different as night and day. West Berlin is flash and dazzle and crowded streets; East Berlin is gray and austere.

In West Berlin, the streets are crowded with Mercedes-Benzes and BMWs; here, the cars tend to be small, with two-stroke engines that foul the air.

There are broad avenues lined with massive East Bloc embassies and trade mission buildings but few pedestrians, for the shops and cafes of the sort that abound in the West are virtually nonexistent here.

When the city was divided among the Allies of World War II, the bombed-out shells of many historic buildings were included in the Soviet sector, among them monuments to Imperial Germany and the Third Reich of Adolf Hitler.

Rebuilding in Progress

Some of them have been rebuilt, and others are in the process of being rebuilt, particularly along the historic Unter den Linden, the tree-shaded avenue that extends from the Brandenburg Gate, at the western edge of East Berlin, to Marx-Engels Square.

Even the equestrian statue of Frederick the Great, king of Prussia from 1740 to 1786, has been restored to its place of honor in the center of Unter den Linden--and facing east toward his old nemesis, Russia.

“It used to be that they didn’t want anything to do with Frederick the Great around here,” a Western diplomat remarked the other day, “but things have changed. The East German leadership has realized that the Germans need a sense of history. . . . They seem to believe that the regime is secure and that they can point with pride to these buildings and monuments built by the Hohenzollern dynasty.

Rival to West

“Now that they have started, they apparently want to restore East Berlin to its former brilliance, and they hope that this will rival the capitalistic delights of West Berlin.”

Some people point out, though, that Communist planners tend to be heavy-handed, in architecture as in other areas.

The new symbol of East Berlin is a needle-like television tower that rises 1,197 feet into the sky, with a restaurant and observation deck at the 800-foot level.

Alexander Square, which extends out from Karl Marx Allee, is developing into the social center of the city, but it is vast and open and lacking in the kind of cohesiveness that draws people to central squares in other cities. The square is surrounded by new high-rise hotels and office buildings.

Karl Marx Allee is considered to be the showcase of Communist life, with a variety of stores, cafes and movie theaters. But the shops are virtually devoid of attractive goods--except for the state stores, where much is available but only for hard, convertible currencies--dollars, British pounds and West German marks.

The East Berliners look much like their counterparts beyond the Wall--the younger people dressed in casual jackets, jeans and athletic shoes, their elders in tweed suits and skirts and dresses.

“It’s a kind of game here to tell the East Berliners from the West Berliners,” a Westerner who lives here said. “But, if you look closely, you can see that the materials on this side are not as good quality.”

A Western official said: “You have to remember that West German television reaches 90% of the inhabitants of East Germany, and all the sets in East Berlin. So while there may be a wall dividing the city, it can’t stop the East Berliners from absorbing the styles and trends being set in the West.

“East Berliners have a sense of what’s going on in West Berlin, even though they can’t cross the border but only see the lights at night.”

Also, many West Germans are allowed to visit relatives in the East. They bring in or send food and clothing parcels, along with hard currency to spend on Western clothing in the state stores.

Few Choices

What makes life difficult for young East Berliners, according to experts here, is the lack of choice in a planned system. And travel is restricted to a few East Bloc countries like Hungary and Romania.

“Young people throughout Europe today have an immense urge to travel and see new places,” a Western diplomat said, “but East Germans are pretty much denied this. Look at a map--East Germany, with 17 million people, is one-third the size of West Germany. From Berlin, it is only 110 miles to the West German border, about 112 miles to the Baltic Sea, some 118 miles south to Czechoslovakia and only 52 miles east to the Polish border. That is not a lot of space to travel in these days.

“Further, at the age of 12 or 13, you are put on a track that will carry you through life--either as a manual worker, a white-collar worker, or a university student. So late-developing talent tends to fall by the wayside because of this early--and permanent--selection. A young carpenter, for instance, cannot upgrade his career to engineer if he shows the ability.

“The apologists say that each person serves in this society, and that all talents are put to work; they are not wasted, as can happen in the West when persons are overtrained or overeducated for the jobs available. But is it worse to have a taxi driver in New York with a Ph.D. in history or an East Berlin bus driver who had the potential for a brilliant medical career?”

What critics see as the dead hand of communism is felt in cultural areas as well. Artists and athletes get favored treatment.

“The problem,” the diplomat said, “is that when a young actor gets a job in the theater, he cannot be fired or shelved. State regulations keep an artist on, even when he is no longer suited or capable. This tends to make for cultural mediocrity in the long run.”

For a generation of American thriller-readers, “Checkpoint Charlie” has been the key crossing point from West Berlin to East Berlin, with its armed guards and the sign that warns: “You Are Leaving the Allied Sector of Berlin.”

But most West Berliners authorized to cross to the east simply take the S-Bahn, the elevated, or the U-Bahn, the subway. An American can do the same thing, after applying for a one-day visa from hard-eyed immigration police, who scrutinize you carefully and may confiscate your Western newspapers and magazines.

Black Market

Visiting foreigners find it easy to talk with East Berliners. Often, it is they who make the overture. But after a few exploratory sentences, it frequently develops that they are interested mainly in changing money. The East German mark is inflated to about five times its value on the free market, and East Germans are eager to accommodate the unwary tourist.

The East German mark even looks depreciated. The notes are smaller than those in the West and the coins are made of a light-weight alloy.

In the cafes and bars, a visitor sometimes gets the feeling that he has been caught up in a movie of international intrigue. Naive Westerners are looked on as targets for the efficient East German intelligence service, the Stasi.

In the bar of the Hotel Unter den Linden, an American admiring the murals that show Berlin in its prewar glory was approached not long ago by a young man who complained about the repressive nature of the East German regime.

He said he was writing a letter to the United Nations to complain about losing his job. He grumbled about the lack of opportunity in the city and the attraction of taking a chance on doing better in the West.

He gestured toward a number of attractive young women at the tables nearby and said they were “business girls, prostitutes.” The government, he said, lodges many important foreign visitors at this hotel, especially official delegations, and they are victimized by the women.

“The girl takes a visitor to his room, which are all bugged,” he said. “She makes some money. She reports back to the Stasi. They’ve got something on the guest. Everybody is happy.”

Truth or fiction, or a little of both in an attempt to compromise the American? Who can say?

No Place to Dissent

“There are a lot of people on the make in East Berlin,” an expert on the subject said. “There are agents and double agents, but I would be surprised to meet a real dissident at a bar in a hotel catering to hard-currency foreign guests.”

Every year, the East German government allows several thousand young people to emigrate to the West, including a number of spies who will attempt to find employment in a sensitive agency of the West German government.

Still, even though life in the East seems gray and monotonous, not every young East German wants to leave.

“You probably have 20% who agree with the system,” a German analyst based in West Berlin said. “There’s another 20% who really can’t stand the regime, and it is from this group that the emigres come.

“But the other 60% have decided to get along. They have their jobs, their relatives, their small vacation cottages, their security. They are stoic about the system. While they might like the freedom of the West, they are also worried about the negative side they see on Western television--the drugs, the crime, the unemployment. They stay and make do.”

The issue of reuniting East Germany and West Germany still comes up from time to time, but it does not appear to be Topic A on either side of the wall.

“I don’t think that people here think in terms of a reunited Germany as they may have once,” a knowledgeable observer said. “The subject is simply not a burning issue. The border is the border for the foreseeable future.”

A diplomat commented: “Bonn may want reunification, and London and Washington may pay lip service to the idea. But the British and the French really don’t want a united Germany in the center of Europe. Neither do the Russians. A Soviet official told me the other day, ‘You look after your Germans and we’ll look after our Germans.’ ”

No Sign of Bunker

Whether because of or in spite of the restoration process, it is very difficult for the visitor to find any sign of the place where Hitler spent his last hours, in a bunker beneath the Chancellery. No marker has been raised there.

When a visitor asks, the answer almost invariably is: “A hundred yards south of the Brandenburg Gate, where all the ministries were. You’ll see a mound.” But no mound is visible in that area.

A construction worker nearby was asked, and he replied: “Don’t ask me. It’s none of my business.”

Another pointed toward a bulldozer clearing the way for a public housing complex, and said: “I think it was over there somewhere. Who cares?”

Finally, a woman secretary striding along the street was asked, and she replied briskly: “It was right there where those men are working. Right where they’re building the new housing. That’s where Hitler died.”