[In Part 5 of my “Berlin Memoir,” I try to describe some of the unusual—you might even say weird—experiences that occurred daily, or at least weekly, in the West Berlin of the Cold War. As you’ll see, living in this little island of democracy inside the German Democratic Republic, especially as a Military Intelligence agent, could be . . . well, odd is a moderate way of saying it. If you haven’t read the first four parts of this series, I suggest you go back and catch up on them before setting out on part 5. It provides background for much of what follows and I explain and define some things in the earlier sections that come up again in the rest of the series. (Parts 1 through 4 were posted on 16 and 31 December 2016, and 20 January and 9 February 2017.)]
The city of Berlin is a slightly peculiar entity in
itself. It’s a very old city—something like 750 years now, I think—and,
like New York, it grew out and swallowed up other towns which became
boroughs of the city. Unlike New York, with its discreet five boroughs,
Berlin had some two dozen (reduced in recent years to about a dozen), and some
of the official boroughs had neighborhoods that seemed more like separate
boroughs. When someone asked a Berliner where she lived, she’d usually
start with the borough or neighborhood: Tempelhof (where the airport was),
Kreuzberg (where a surveillance fiasco in which I was involved happened),
Zehlendorf (where the U.S. HQ was), Spandau (where the infamous prison that
held Rudolf Hess was), and so on. The Wall split Berlin in two parts,
each with its own boroughs; the Soviet Sector was approximately one-third of
the old city (about a million people) and the Allied Sectors about
two-thirds. (The reason that the three Allies shared two-thirds instead
of the obvious three-quarters of the city—the same had been true of Germany as
a whole—was that at the Yalta and Potsdam wartime conferences, the Soviets
rejected an equal share in the Occupation for France, so the U.S. and Britain
agreed that the French zone would be ceded from their areas.) The Wall
did not always conform exactly to the border dividing the eastern section from
the west; the Soviets built the Wall within its territory and sometimes
construction, roads, or the Spree River meant that the Wall was many yards east
of the actual border.
One aggravating result of this formation of the city is that
streets with the same name could exist in several boroughs but not be connected
at all—like Fifth Avenue in Manhattan and Fifth Avenue in Brooklyn. But
the reverse is also true: the same road might change names as it passes through
each borough. If someone gave you an address to find in Berlin, you
needed to know in which borough it was in order to find it. Driving in
Berlin was hard enough—an old city with unplanned street layouts and narrow and
crowded streets, not to mention my big, American car. (I had a red 1970
Ford Torino I got after I graduated from college. Man, it was a pretty
car! And did it attract attention on the streets of Berlin and the roads
of West Germany! Candy-apple red with airplane bucket seats, a black
interior, and a fastback. Mmm-mmm.) I’ll never know how I
learned to drive around that town—but I did. (There was a tiny little
stretch of Autobahn in Berlin, and I used to take the Torino on it and let ’er
loose for a couple of miles to let the engine run after weeks of cramped city
driving. There are—or were in those days—no speed limits on Autobahns,
even within Berlin. I’d get ‘er up to 100+ mph for a few minutes, once up
and once back.)
The Wall went up beginning in August 1961 and took about a
year to construct—though it was always under alteration and sections were
rebuilt and sometimes shifted from time to time. Mostly, however, the
Wall was a constant presence in the city and in the minds of Berliners for 28
years. It was grey concrete and ugly—a scar across the middle of the
city. I arrived in Berlin just before August 1971, the tenth anniversary
of the Wall’s construction, and was immediately added to the Station’s
contingent of observers for the massive demonstrations that were planned for
the commemoration. One of the tasks we had was demo coverage—watching
political demonstrations to note who was there and what anyone said or
did. I know that this sounds totalitarian, and I suppose in the abstract
it is. But we only observed—we did not disrupt any demonstration, hassle
any participants, bug anyone’s office or home in connection with a
demonstration (we did for other reasons), or in any way try to prevent a
demonstration.
Remember that Berlin was not only the spy center of Europe,
so keeping an eye out at such large political gatherings was no more than
watchfulness, but the city attracted large numbers of young anarchists and
militant activists who were performing terrorist acts all over Germany. (Students in Berlin were exempt from the German draft, so many West German young men came to the city for university.) I
mentioned the RAF/Baader-Meinhof Gang; there were other, smaller cells, too,
such as the Movement 2 June and SPK (Sozialistisches Patientenkollektiv
– Socialist Patients’ Collective). These folks had a habit of blowing
things up and kidnapping people. And people like Michael “Bommi” Baumann
(1947-2016) and Red Rudi Dutschke (1940-79), radical student
revolutionaries, were active in Berlin. Prudence dictated that we
keep an eye on them, especially when something as charged as the Wall was the
subject of an action.
Those 1971 demos—there were two, one leftist-oriented in
favor of the Wall and one rightist, opposing it—were both aimed at the same
spot: the saddest place in Cold War Berlin—the Peter Fechter Memorial.
Fechter was a 19-year-old laborer in East Berlin who made an escape attempt
with a friend in 1962, one of the first after the Wall was erected.
Fechter and his friend hid in an abandoned building next to the Wall on the
eastern side—the Soviets kept the area uninhabited, unlike the FROG which
encouraged people to move into the area near the western side—and watched the
Vopos (Volkspolizei, or “people’s police,” the East German police and border
guards.). When they thought there was a gap in the coverage, they made a
run for it, scaling the fence that formed the eastern side of the no-man’s
strip (sometimes, for obvious reasons, called the death strip) on the eastern
side of the Wall. They made it over the fence and through the death
strip, and Fechter’s friend made it over the Wall into West Berlin, but Fechter
was shot in the hip as he scaled the Wall and fell back into the no-man’s
land. Western Observers, including journalists and some U.S. military,
were prevented from helping Fechter by the Vopos who threatened to shoot anyone
entering the strip. No one from the East went to Fechter’s aid,
though he screamed in pain for help for several hours as he bled to
death. When he died, the Vopos did enter the no-man’s land to recover his
body. A memorial plaque was mounted in front of the Wall on the Western
side at the spot where Fechter fell and died.
Both demos, numbering several thousand each—maybe even tens
of thousands—were headed for that same spot. Everyone knew that if they
got there together, there’d be a street battle between the leftists and the
rightists, and no one wanted that. (We observers, following along with
one or the other march, also knew that we didn’t want to get caught either
between the two groups of protestors or between the protestors and the
police. We had a special code word to shout at the police line as we ran
toward them for protection—we were not armed, of course—so they’d let us
through their ranks and not shoot us in mistake for attacking
protestors.)
This was the most astonishing example of competence,
resolve, and steadfastness I have ever witnessed. When signs of violence
broke out—some stones thrown, some sticks that had been holding up protest
signs snapped off and swung—the police moved in to clear the streets.
They had been lining the streets—just standing still along the curb, in riot
gear, with tall shields, and the biggest German shepherds I have ever
seen—until the violence started. Now they just moved in slowly, walking
with their shields in front of them, forming a moving wall. They simply
herded the protestors, from whichever side, down the streets and into the
subway entrances. The message was clear: You can stay in the subway
station or you can get on a train and come up somewhere else, but you’re not
coming back up here.
Not one billy club was swung, not one weapon was drawn (much
less fired), not one cop shouted an epithet or insult (some of the protestors
did, though—but the cops didn’t overreact). They just calmly and
professionally—and evenhandedly—cleared the streets and restored order before
things got out of hand. Bang, it was over. No riot, no serious
injuries, no nothin’. The protestors got to march, carry their signs,
make their statement—and they would have been able to make their speeches or
whatever if they hadn’t turned potentially violent—and the police kept order
without any excess. Now, the Berlin police had infantry training—the
German army was not permitted to operate in Berlin, so the cops were
paramilitary stand-ins if necessary—but I was still impressed with the way they
handled this situation. Think of it: a generation earlier, the
predecessors of these cops were the guys who roughed up and killed civilians in
the streets. But these cops were in better control of themselves and
their turf than any U.S. force (or the National Guard—Kent State had been just
a little over a year earlier) at the time.
One odd thing about the Wall (and old Berlin, too) that
has no real counterpart in New York is that, though the Wall did surround the
Western Sectors of the divided city, it also had little orphans. All of
Berlin isn’t contiguous: there are little communities that are legally and
politically part of the city, but which aren’t attached. Like little
islands—maybe that’s where the parallel to New York lies. Think of
land-locked versions of Governor’s Island, Roosevelt Island, and North and
South Brother Islands. Each of these little satellite communities of the
Western Sectors was also surrounded by a wall, since they were still Allied
territory in the midst of the DDR. (Eastern satellites didn’t need this,
of course) Some of these enclaves—they’re not towns, but
neighborhoods—were connected to West Berlin by walled corridors so residents
could get back and forth and the enclaves could be serviced by Berlin police
and firefighters. I don’t know how many of these little islets there
were, but it was at least half a dozen or ten, I’d guess. I never visited
one—I don’t even know if I could have.
Berlin attracted young people, both political and not,
because of a couple of very salient reasons. When I was there, in the
early ’70s, West Berlin was a vibrant and active city, with a full social and
cultural life—a real city of two-and-a-half million inhabitants. (East
Berlin was a little grey and lifeless, even 25 years after the war.) In
contrast, when my parents visited Berlin in the early ’60s—they were there, by
the way, for Kennedy’s “Ich bin ein Berliner” speech—they reported that the
city seemed artificial, that life was sort of staged and forced, like a
Potemkin city.
I mentioned in passing that Berlin Station had to
participate in BB alerts, like any other unit. I also said that there was
an agent on duty all night and over holidays and weekends—like the CQ in
ordinary line units. He spent the night
in an office just inside the building entrance and between the building
entrance and the second entrance, controlled by an electronic lock which
required a numerical combination to open, into the unit’s offices. The DA office was furnished with a bed, a
desk, a TV, a file cabinet (mostly empty)—and a bank of telephones, perhaps a
dozen or so. Some of the phones were ordinary BB lines—one of them
“9666,” our public number. (9666, colloquially known as “Trip-6,” was the
Military Occupational Specialty for counterintel officers, which is what we all
were. There were similar or equivalent
MOS’s for enlisted personnel. This was also the license number of the
CO’s staff car.)
Other phones on the Duty Agent’s desk were special lines
which were used for sources to call in with information and to arrange meets
with their handlers. Since in most cases, these sources had cover
stories, and sometimes so did the handlers, these phones all had to be answered
with specific cover phrases, as if they were extensions at some business, say,
or some innocuous agency. (During the time when junior officers pulled
this duty, none of those phones ever rang when I was DA. I suspect some
were part of defunct operations.) One phone was, of course, the red alert
phone. That rang once a night to check the communications system, and the
DA had to answer it with a prescribed phrase: the name of the unit and the DA’s
initials in phonetic alphabet. So, when I was DA, I’d have to say, “66th
MI. Romeo-Echo-Kilo.” It invariably rang when I was sound
asleep—which I assume was intentional.
(There was one other piece of equipment in the DA’s office
at night. Until I handled money, at the end of my tour in Berlin, except
for the firing range, this was the only time I went armed. At the end of
the day, the assigned Duty Agent drew his weapon and six rounds of ammo—we
carried .38 caliber Police Special revolvers—from the unit armorer.
Standard procedure while on duty was to keep the pistol loaded, but the cylinder
open, and stand it on the desk, propped up by the open cylinder. Since
every DA drew the same rounds, I sometimes wondered if they’d even fire if the
need ever arose. Lord knows how old they were!)
I never got an alert call while I was DA, but during the
time I was in Berlin, we had three or four full alerts. Since we wore
civvies to work, we kept uniforms at the Station to change into, so we all
reported to the locker room when we got the call. Each unit has an
assignment for the outbreak of hostilities, and we are all supposed to go about
preparing for that mission in an alert. The infantry and armor units all
gear up and go to the points they are expected to defend, the MP’s get into
their positions to guard the compounds and other sites and to control the
streets, and so on. Our mission was to round up potential enemy agents
who have been previously identified, secure sensitive personnel and get them on
’copters out of the city, and assist with the security of VIP’s and U.S.
facilities.
Obviously, in an alert, there’s not much of that we can
actually do—I can just see us running around Berlin, pretending to arrest
suspected commie agents. That would go over big. So we ended up
sitting around our locker room, after putting on our “unmarked” fatigues—the
ones with the U.S. device where the branch and rank insignia ought to
go—and making jokes until the alert had ended. The recurring theme of
those jokes is what would probably happen if an actual war did break out in
Central Europe. As I’ve mentioned, Berlin is 110 miles inside East
Germany, surrounded by the Soviet 40th Tank Army, a total of about 300,000 Red
Army soldiers plus whatever East German units were out there, and any
additional Warsaw Pact troops that happened to be in the region. The
Soviets, not being stupid, probably wouldn’t fight for Berlin—why waste the men
and time. We decided what they’d do is simply roll some tanks up to
Checkpoints Bravo and Charlie, hang a sign on the boom gates that read “Berlin
POW Camp,” and move on to the real war on the border and beyond. That
would be the end of our participation aside from some Warsaw Ghetto-type
uprising or a sort of hyper-Great Escape.
(By the way—those U.S. insignia for our
fatigues? By this time, all insignia on fatigue uniforms were
“subdued”—no shiny silver or brass or bright yellow chevrons. The Vietcong had developed a habit of taking
potshots at anything that glittered in the jungle. But there’s no such
thing as a subdued U.S. device—they only came in brass because they’re
only officially worn on dress uniforms, not fatigues. So we each had to
get a couple of pair of U.S.’s and turn them in to the unit clerk; he’d
get them painted matte black so we could put them on a set of fatigues to stash
at the Station for alerts, range-firing, and other activities that required
that uniform. I think I still have mine put away somewhere.
Needless to say, since this uniform configuration didn’t officially exist, we
got some stares and wry remarks when anyone saw us dressed in it. Most
people figured we were CIA or something. Of course, we could neither
confirm nor deny . . . .)
I said that aside from the firing range—I think we went out
there once officially; I went privately once to fire Dad’s souvenir Luger he
brought back from WWII—the only other time I was armed beside DA duty was when
I carried Army cash. When an officer is carrying money, such as a
payroll, he must be armed. When I was reassigned to the spook bank for
Intelligence Contingency Funds (ICF) in the Station’s basement, I would
periodically have to buy Marks, Francs, and occasionally other
currencies. We bought Marks at the Army Finance Office in another part of
the main compound, so I didn’t have to leave the grounds—but I had to wear my
sidearm. Just like the cops on TV, I had a holster on my belt, under my
suit jacket. A .38’s not large, especially the snub-nosed Police Special,
but it makes a noticeable lump on your hip beneath the jacket. So, I
walked into the Finance Office the first time I had to buy Marks, feeling
pretty self-conscious to start with, and, of course, there were lots of other
people in there transacting business. The FO is where the GI savings
accounts are maintained, the credit union is, payments are made for such things
as late pay or special disbursements, and all kinds of money business.
And in I walked, packin’ iron. So what did the NCO behind the counter
shout? “I’ll take the guy with the gun first!” Well, I felt like
Butch Cassidy fixin’ to rob a bank! Everybody in the place turned to
took—no, stare at me. And my gun! I felt like I was packin’ a
howitzer! “No, that’s all right. I’ll just wait.” Haw-haw!!
The first time I had to get Francs, which we bought at the
American Express bank in the PX across the street—where everyone had his
personal checking account and what have you—I didn’t know what to expect.
I still had to carry the weapon, but this time I was going out in public.
Thank goodness, nothing happened—but I was very self-conscious. Very
self-conscious.
Needless to add, this was not a job I liked much. Not
that it wasn’t important. It was extremely important. But it was booooring.
First of all, it’s nothing but numbers. Keeping books, checking requests
for disbursements (I did get to know about all the really spooky stuff people
in my old unit and its sister unit next door were doing, which I didn’t need to
know before—but most of it turns out to be routine), reconciling conversion losses
and gains (when the dollar amount is different from the amount of Marks or
other foreign currency because the exchange rates are never an even ratio),
counting up the cash on hand, and such. The most excitement I had was
when we had to prepare for an audit, quarterly by the Class A Agent from Group
or semi-annually by the Class B Agent from USAREUR.
Second, since I’m not a banker or an accountant and I got
slammed into this job without any preparation, I couldn’t really run the
day-to-day routine until I learned it OTJ. So I had a Spec 4 clerk who
had been there for some time, and he did most of the daily stuff—it was his job
anyway. He was all of 19, by the way—we had lots in common (though
he was a nice enough kid). Third, the job was what it was—I had to wait
in my office until someone needed money for an op. I couldn’t develop
ops, I couldn’t make work; I just waited, drank coffee (not a habit I ever
really developed except here), and read the newspaper or the Sears catalogue
when it came.
Fourth, I was no longer part of Berlin Station. The
ICF Class A Custodian (that’s what I was) is part of HQ—which, you remember was
in Munich. None of my old colleagues were, well, colleagues
anymore. Fifth, my office was in a vault in the basement. Even if a
former colleague wanted to come by to chat—I was way out of the way, with a big
vault door to greet them. As soon as the Army started riffing people,
when the reduction in force began after combat in Vietnam ended, I started
asking around if I could get out even though my tour in Berlin still had six
months to run and I still had a few years on the obligation I incurred to get
Trip-6 and Europe. (Berlin was a lagniappe, but I worked the system to
get Europe.) Also, my name was on the promotion list for captain, and it
used to be that an officer had to stay in for, I think it was a year, in order
to accept promotion. I figured I earned that promotion—it took long
enough, I thought—and I was damned if I was going to be cheated out of it if I didn’t
have to be.
I was hoping that the Army, which was paying people who were
riffed something like $10K for each year over five, I think, they served
(unless they were riffed for incompetence), would jump at the chance to get a
freebie. If you got out at your own request, the Army didn’t pay.
I’d been in just over five years, seven counting senior ROTC—which did count as
enlisted reserve—so the Army’d have had to pay me $20K or so if they riffed
me. I found out that I could accept my promotion—the requirement to stay
in had been dropped when the time-in-grade for eligibility was extended—and
that the Army would release me from the remaining obligation, though I’d still
have to be in the inactive reserve for the remainder of my obligation. I
put in my papers. (I might have stayed in the Army longer if they hadn’t
made me an accountant. Maybe we were both better off in the long run.)
As a parting shot, I recommended that the Class A Custodian,
which had to be an officer—it was actually supposed to be a captain—should be
redesignated as an extra duty for someone. It seemed wrong to waste a
trained and experienced officer like that for so little activity. I
believe they accepted my suggestion, though, of course, I wasn’t around to see
if they implemented it.
I was promoted to captain on 1 December 1973, shortly before
I left Berlin. I had planned a big party at the Officers’ Club, the
Harnack House, to celebrate my 26th birthday (“Closer to 30 than to 20”) in ’72,
but first Harry Truman died (26 December 1972, the day after my birthday) and
then Lyndon Johnson died (22 January 1973), and O-club parties were cancelled
or postponed. So I had a combined belated-birthday/promotion/departure
left-over party: we tried to drink up all my remaining booze. (We did
pretty good, as I recall. And I kept a well-stocked bar in Berlin—it was sooo
cheap to get the best stuff.) At the promotion ceremony in the CO’s
office—I wasn’t part of the unit officially, but they were my administrative
support since the umbilical didn’t stretch as far as Munich—I used my dad’s
WWII railroad tracks. I had had him send them to me just for that
purpose. I still have them. (My dad made captain in WWII, and it
took him about three years, I think—but he started as an EM. It took me
nearly four years, and I started as a second looie. I got first looie
about 12 months in—while I was at Monterey.)
(Speaking of my dad. there was one very personal peculiarity
for me to this assignment in Berlin. Because there hadn’t been a peace
treaty to end WWII, Berlin was still under occupation until 1990 when a formal
peace was finally negotiated. While the Allies had relinquished political
responsibility for what became the Federal Republic in 1949, Berlin remained
occupied territory for half a century. That meant that my service in
Berlin in the ’70s made me eligible for the Army of Occupation Medal.
That’s the same ribbon my dad was awarded for service in the Occupation of
Germany—he was in Cologne after VE Day—30 years earlier. I always found it
a little ironic that my dad and I both wore the same military
decoration from the same war, a generation apart. Maybe I’m the only
one to find this an odd comment about the state of our modern world. I recall there’s a Cold War Recognition
Certificate that was authorized a few years back. I qualify and I think
my dad did, too, since it recognizes all Federal service, military and
civilian; I had some vague idea of getting us both the same award—there’s no
official medal to go along with it, though I think someone has put out an
unofficial one—for some sentimental reason.
My mom didn’t feel like I did, so I never followed up on this notion.)
I had decided to go to acting school after leaving the
service by this time—I had contacted Lee Kahn, the professor of theater at
W&L, my alma mater, for advice and he was going to help me prepare audition
pieces and, of course, recommend me to the American Academy of Dramatic Arts
where he was a member of the board (and a grad school friend of the director at
the time, Charles Raison). When people asked me what I was going to do
when I got out and I told them I was going to acting school, they thought that
that was a helluva change from the military. “Why?” I asked. “I’ve
been playing the part of an Army officer for five years.” (Mine wasn’t
the oddest change in career path by any means. A friend in Berlin, who
had been an infantry officer and part of our theater group—his dad was a
general, and was furious about this—got out and went to clown school! No
comment.)
I’ve said that while I was living in Germany when I was a
teenager, back in the early ’60s, I knew while it was happening that I was
having an adventure. When I was in Berlin, my feeling was a little
different. I had this sense that I was into something special and
edgy. It wasn’t so much danger—there was some, but, of course, nothing to
compare to what was happening in Southeast Asia. Maybe I was just taken
with the romantic notion of the world’s second oldest profession—I had read all
the James Bond books and, of course, the movies had already been around for a
decade. Not to mention Man from U.N.C.L.E., Get Smart,
Mission: Impossible, The Spy Who Came in from the Cold, and so
many other fictionalized renditions.
(I’ve already mentioned our unofficial theme song, “Secret Agent
Man.”) But I had this pervasive sense that I was involved in something
special. The fact that other people with whom I came into contact treated
me somehow differently—some with a kind of hostile resentment, some almost with
awe—didn’t hurt, that’s certain. (Flashing our “box tops”—what we called
our badges and credentials, also known as “B’s & C’s”—was a lot like being
in a neat movie. Special Agent
K*****, Military Intelligence. I used to watch The FBI and now
I was in it!) But on top of any of this, was the feeling that I
was actually doing something fairly important—even the background
investigations. My decisions would affect the security of the country,
even if it was at the lowest level. Drilling with an idiot stick or
driving a tank in an exercise just didn’t match that, not in Berlin. Of
course, I was all of 24 when I arrived in Berlin, and my sole Army duties up
till then had been going to class: armor school, language school, intel
school. Now I was getting to do something, and something for which
I was specially and uniquely qualified—and I’m sure that had a significant
effect on my attitude. But, man, I got to know things—things other
people weren’t supposed to know. How cool was that?
Being back in Germany was also part of my
consciousness. As soon as I got off the plane at Tempelhof and drove off
with Chuck through the city—remember, the airport is right downtown: you drive
through the city as soon as you leave the arrivals terminal—I felt a surge
of nostalgia. (I had never been to Berlin when I lived in Germany before,
but a German town is a German town in many ways. If nothing else, all the
street and store signs were in German.) It felt like, not being home
again, but being someplace very familiar. I’m sure I was projecting, but
nevertheless . . . .
(I remember watching Wim Wenders’s Wings of Desire,
about two angels who hang around Berlin and watch as the humans live their
lives until one of them decides he wants to become human and experience life
himself. The movie was released in ’88 and meanders around odd parts of
Berlin, including some sites near sections of the Wall. I’m not sure I
can make this make sense—I’ve never articulated it before—but at one point, one
of the angels crosses a street and passes in front of a row of buildings that
all looked as if they dated from the immediate post-war period—’50s and ’60s or
thereabouts. It was only a few seconds of film, and it wasn’t in the
least significant to the movie, but it made an odd connection for me. For
those few seconds, the scene could have been anywhere in West Germany where
those kinds of buildings were ubiquitous in the early days of my family’s time
there. They were just little shops—bakeries, groceries, tobacconists, and
such; I don’t even know what they were, but it could have been any street in
any West German town where new buildings had been erected to replace older ones
that had been destroyed in the war—they went up fast as Germany was recovering,
and they all looked alike.
All of a sudden, and just for a second or two, I was right
back there in ’63 in Koblenz in those first weeks and months when my brother
and I moved there to join my folks. (See my two-part post, “An American Teen in Germany,” 9 and 12 March 2013.) It was the oddest kind of nostalgic
sense—sort of Proustian, I guess. I reexperienced a feeling I remember
having, but had never tried to describe or even, really, recognized until much,
much later. It was this absolutely certain feeling that here I was, doing
this extraordinary thing—living in a foreign country—that I knew was both
unique and special and exciting. I was doing this really, really
different thing—and I knew it. All this came back to me in that brief
piece of movie, just because the setting looked vaguely familiar, the
Germanness of it all, the strangeness, was actually palpable. That’s the feeling that came back driving
away from Tempelhof that first day in Berlin.)
* *
* *
From 18 June to
12 July 1981, the New York Shakespeare Festival (now the Public Theater)
presented a stage adaptation of Wie Alles Anfing (How It All Began) by one of the anarchist militants whom I
mention above, Michael “Bommi” Baumann.
I saw the show and on 1 July 1981, wrote the following brief report (slightly edited), which
I’m appending here as a sidebar to Part 5 of my “Berlin Memoir”:
Based on the 1979 autobiography of former West German terrorist Michael
“Bommi” Baumann (1947-2016), How
It All Began was developed
by the May 1981 graduating class of the Juilliard School’s Theater
Division. It was started as a class
project and both dramatically and thematically, that is what it remains in the
Dodger Theater production at The Other Stage (later the Susan Stein Shiva
Theater) at the New York Shakespeare Festival’s Public Theater. It appeals neither as good theater nor as
good socio-history.
Pieced together from excerpts of Baumann’s book Wie Alles Anfing (How It All Began,
published in Germany in 1975 and in the U.S. in 1979 as Terror or Love?) and other bits of research from the period
of the mid-’60s to the early ’70s in West Germany and West Berlin during the
heyday of Baumann, the Red Army Faction (AKA: The Baader-Meinhof Gang),
Baumann’s Bewegung 2. Juni, and
various other terrorist and anarchist groups, the student actors improvised,
rehearsed, and taped the scenes and transcribed them into the collage presented
here before a tar-black set resembling a ghostly version of a Feydeaux farce,
with several doors, windows, and alcoves which provided access to the myriad
characters of Baumann’s terrorist life in Berlin. Most of the scenes were staged by director
Des MacAnuff in the center of the floor with locale-differentiation
accomplished by the use of odd pieces of furniture. Since most of the actors played multiple
roles (including several women playing men), it was not always easy to know
where we were or whom we were watching.
In the end, though earnest performances were turned in by the young
cast (including Val Kilmer as Baumann, Linda Kozlowski as his lover, Benjamin
Donenberg as “Red” Rudi Dutschke, Jessica Drake as Ulrike Meinhof, Pamela M.
White as Andreas Baader, and Mary Lynn Johnson as Gudrun Ensslin), nothing
unique was accomplished, and it all remained a somewhat curious foray into the
milieu of the leftist terrorist without having learned much at all that we did
not already know.
One thing that I found most disturbing was the (apparently) inadvertent
near-romanticization of Baumann and his RAF comrades. Though passing lip-service was given to the
violence these anarchists (their own term) perpetrated on often innocent people
(an elderly night watchman in Berlin killed in the bombing of a recreational
yacht basin; two sergeants and a captain blown up at the U.S. Army headquarters
in Frankfurt), they were allowed to come off as lost little children, searching
for vague justice—sort of Robin Hood-cum-Peter Pans. It was my experience while I was in Berlin
between 1971 and 1974 that they were no such things. I knew that captain in Frankfurt: he had a
wife and two little girls. he was not a
threat—or even a symbol; just a man.
Baumann, Baader, and Meinhof were not attractive, romantic outlaws, and
they stood for nothing concrete. They
were violent and politically fuzzy-minded.
One important bit of research the young students missed was the reaction
of the people for whom the RAF claimed to fight. There was little support outside their
radical student enclaves at Berlin’s Technical and Free Universities. They were not the German counterparts of our war-protesters or even the
radical Weathermen. This missing element
rendered How It All Began a vaguely troubling experience.
[I hope ROTters will return on 11 March 2017 for "Berlin Memoir, Part 6," which will
continue with my life as a GI in West Berlin and some of my escapades on and
off duty.]
