East Germany Dances at Its Own Funeral

A country danced at its own funeral Tuesday.

The last day of East Germany was ironic that way, as unpredictable as the weather itself.

One moment, the city would be shrouded in a chilly white fog. Then sunlight would pour pure and golden through the autumn trees. Fog would then descend again.

The final scenes of a divided Germany were often surreal at first glance--like the East German policeman waving cars away from a West Berlin border crossing.

“It’s closed,” he said with a pleasant smile. “Unless, of course, you want to set up a sausage stand or something.”

Next to the abandoned border guard barracks stood a small carousel and several carnival booths.

“We’re having a street festival here tonight to celebrate unity, so no one can go across right now,” the policeman explained.

About 15 miles down the road, two men were roasting a whole pig on a spit at a major intersection. They, too, saw nothing odd about their behavior.

“We raised 10 swine at home and usually we would sell them to the state, but there is no state anymore,” said Andreas Seyfert, a 31-year-old construction worker.

So he decided to sell roast pork to passersby on the highway. Business was excellent, much to the delight of Seyfert’s neighboring entrepreneur. She was selling mushrooms from the trunk of her car.

In what used to be East Berlin, there were signs literally everywhere of a country going out of business.

Under the ousted Communist regime, all street and highway signs pointing to Berlin read “Capital of the German Democratic Republic,” after the city’s name, a pointed jab at the West’s refusal to officially recognize East Berlin.

Those words have since been painted out, or sometimes merely taped over. The re-signing of eastern Germany has just begun. Thousands of streets are named after Stalinist heroes or figures the West considers infamous, such as Ethel and Julius Rosenberg, executed as Soviet spies by the United States in 1953.

The hammer-and-compass emblem of the East German state also must be wrenched off buildings, and Marxist statues are likely to be removed from assorted public places.

Arnold Thiermann, 51, was sold out of both East and West German flags--500 in all--by early afternoon.

“East Germans were buying up all the West German flags,” Thiermann said, “and only West Germans were buying the East German flag, because they thought they might be collectors’ items someday.

“East Germans don’t buy them because we had to look at the thing for 40 years and we’re glad to be rid of it.”

Sabine Grabow did save a single flag from the country she was born in and happily watched disappear.

“I also saved some of our old money, and a videocassette of the Wall opening last Nov. 9,” said the 22-year-old shopkeeper from Teltow, about 30 minutes east of Berlin.

She is making a scrapbook for the children she does not yet have, keepsakes of a country they will never know.

The concept of unity is a bit much to grasp for the youngsters at Ilona Milkau’s preschool in Mahlow.

“This morning, a 4-year-old girl told me, ‘Today we celebrate, and tomorrow we celebrate, and then after that, we start practicing politics,’ the school director chuckled.

“We’re not telling them anything special about today, or teaching them the new national anthem or anything like that,” she said. “We’re just singing and drawing pictures about how beautiful autumn is.”

Not everyone was so carefree.

Ulrich Potrafky left work for the last time Tuesday with a valise carrying the few things he had salvaged from his office at the now-defunct East German Foreign Ministry.

“It was a very bad mood in there,” said Potrafky, a 24-year veteran of the diplomatic service.

“I’m doing nothing, waiting for nothing,” he said. “I’ll get 70% of my salary for nine months, then I’m jobless.”

At 53, he is pessimistic about launching a new career.

By the time midnight finally struck, the mood seemed somehow anticlimactic--nowhere near as euphoric as when the Wall fell 11 months ago.

The crowd waiting for the German flag to be raised before the Reichstag came in all shapes and sizes, from punkers in black leather to grandmothers in pillbox hats. All they had in common were the red, black and gold flags they waved.

An elderly man stood alone, seemingly isolated in the sea of people, excitement lighting his weathered face.

He glanced at his diamond watch every few seconds and tapped a small German flag against his thigh.

The man watched the ceremony in silence, then smiled as a stranger’s champagne doused his balding head and fireworks lit up the night.

“That’s it,” he said aloud to himself.

And then, asked what he felt in the very first minute of German unity, he clutched his own little flag tightly and walked off with a single word:

“Satisfaction.”