An Unsettling Return to East German Hometown : Communism: Forty-five years later, Gadebusch has been stripped of its inherited values, its people shameful of and angry at ’40 lost years.’

I still remember my grandmother standing in the doorway of her cottage in the early summer of 1945. She was waving goodby as I pedaled my bicycle toward the highway that would take me to Hamburg 92 kilometers away. I never saw her again. A couple of days later, Russian occupation troops replaced the British in an exchange of real estate agreed upon by the wartime allies. Gadebusch in Mecklenburg had disappeared behind the Iron Curtain. My grandmother died in 1947.

Forty-five years later, I went back. Everybody, I suppose, has experienced the clash of childhood memories and reality: the rushing river that turns out to be a trickling stream, the magic garden that is nothing more than an ordinary cabbage patch.

Still, my heart jumped when I saw the railroad station in the woods, with its half-timbered station house. As if ordered for me, a diesel train pulled in. Although it was not the steam locomotive of my youth, I could easily imagine myself getting off the train with my mother, sister and a big suitcase on the first day of summer vacation.

Not far from the station, at the edge of the forest, was a crude obelisk topped with a star. The inscription: “Glory and honor to the heroes of the Soviet Army.” No doubt there had been Soviet heroes in the “Great Patriotic War.” But in Gadebusch? The Americans had liberated the town, then were replaced by British troops. When the Russians arrived, hostilities had long since stopped.

The medieval church and city hall were still there. The iron railing on the stairs leading from the church to the marketplace was even intact. As kids, we used to slide down it.

I turned into Schulstrasse, where my uncle had lived. I remembered the blooming geraniums in the front windows of the houses and the tilted mirrors, called “spies,” that allowed the old ladies to observe the goings-on up and down the street. A cobblestoned alley had completed the picture of small-town coziness.

On my visit, half the houses were deserted, their windows broken, walls crumbled and roofs caved in. A bronze plaque on one of the houses--in my youth, it contained a pub--proclaimed that the local Communist Party had been founded there in 1919.

My uncle’s place, once full of life and activity, was a skeleton. Its walls were falling down, its window frames rotting. I looked into the back yard, where I remembered water running from a well and chickens, ducks and geese picking the ground for food. Nothing but a dusty courtyard with collapsing stables. Not a soul in sight.

And so it went. The beautiful lake, where lovers used to row and kids used to splash, was a muddy pool of water. The manor at the outskirts of town was gone, the only evidence of the once stately approach to the main house a few old trees. Next door, a sewage treatment plant was in full operation.

The road by my grandparents’ house, once a thoroughfare for horse and buggy and herded cows, was a one-way street. An East German Trabis puffed along, brushing the grimy houses with clouds of blue exhaust. Never again would people sit in front of their houses exchanging gossip across this street. In my grandma’s garden was a new building with a communications tower. Until recently, it had housed the state security police (Stasi). All that oppressive might to keep a few thousand people in check. It was depressing.

I looked up a cousin. As we talked, she repeatedly cried. She told me about collectivization in the 1950s. She and others had been hounded for refusing to join the cooperative. They had been denounced on billboards for “withholding bread from the workers” when the cooperative didn’t make its quota. Finally, she and her husband, mentally and physically exhausted, relented. Her husband died a broken man.

Forty years of communist rule have stripped Gadebusch of its inherited values. The middle class of hard-working farmers and skilled craftsmen, who took great pride in their trades, their houses and their town, has been smashed or driven out. The bourgeoisie, as greedy and petty as it may have been, had built Gadebusch, kept it neat and orderly and lively for generations. The communists, unable to create a classless society, only managed to destroy what had been.

Punished for taking care of and having pride in their property, the people are now disoriented and suspicious. Accustomed to the public celebration of lies and the torment of humiliation, the people have fled into niches of privacy, alienated from the commonweal. The shame of and anger at “40 lost years” are barely hidden.

Forty years of saying in public what they knew to be false, of worrying about the trustworthiness of neighbors and friends, of ostentatious flag-waving and sloganeering. And presiding over it all had been those stern prophets of equality who had filled their pockets with the silver of corruption.

The fall of the Iron Curtain and the promise of unification with the West have not made the people more confident. What is going to happen to my hard-earned savings? they ask. Am I going to lose my job? Will I be able to compete with Western workers? Will the owner of the house I am living in throw me out or increase the rent?

When East Germans voted last month, it was not the self-confident act of victorious revolutionaries. It was a plea for help, help from from their countrymen in the West.