Mühlhausen before Autumn 1989

Crossing the border between East and West Germany had been a risky undertaking for anyone without a permit more or less since the end of World War II, but on August 13th 1961 the Wall was built through Berlin and the border from the Baltic to Bavaria was reinforced, so that crossing it illegally meant risking your life. By the early 80s the fortifications had been intensified and extended and a five-kilometre zone closed off all along the border which only approved persons were allowed to enter. For some whose homes lay within this arbitrarily restricted zone this meant compulsory relocation, sometimes with only a few hours warning. As well as the East German border troops there was a large Russian presence near the border and a Russian garrison in Mühlhausen itself.

The diagram (published by the Minister für Bundesangelegenheiten of Lower Saxony (West Germany) shows the heavily fortified border between West and East Germany in 1980. In 1983 the self-firing devices were removed but otherwise the system remained the same until 1989.

From Thüringen alone 28 people had been killed trying to cross the fortified frontier to the West and three had committed suicide when being forced to leave their homes within the frontier area. Mühlhausen lay only seven kilometres from the restricted zone in an area where surveillance was strict. It took no more than a faint criticism of the authorities to get oneself arrested and imprisoned. Those who belonged to the SED (Socialist Unity Party) not only controlled public and much of private life but were in a position to earn more than most, hold the plum jobs, enjoy privileges and access to goods unobtainable to the rest of the population.

All this caused an enormous build-up of resentment throughout most of the population, who were not privileged to have better homes, cars, use of hard currency shops and holidays in Western Europe. Life for the average non-privileged, non-political East German was a struggle made bearable by withdrawing into a close circle of family and friends. Career success meant suppressing any urge to question the often ludicrous diktats of the Party. Higher education depended on how well you joined in all the politically correct school activities or on whether your parents and siblings toed the party line. Children of parsons and members of a church were frequently excluded from university. Military service of a year and a half was compulsory for all young men and pressure was exerted to make them do a full three years. Apprenticeships were awarded by an arbitrary quota system which allocated only a certain number to each trade. Just about everything you required for a reasonable way of living depended on being “in” with the right people. Private cars and telephones came to you only after years of waiting unless you were in a position to pull a few strings or do someone a favour. To stay resolutely on the outside of the system required courage and the support of your family who could well suffer the consequences of your actions. To quote one of my friends here, you never knew if something you said or did or failed to do might be used as a pretext for taking away some hard-won acquisition, for calling you in for interrogation or for starting an action against you, sometimes years later. In other words you could never feel quite safe from arbitrary state interference.

For private citizens the simple business of acquiring items of food, clothing, car parts (if one was lucky to have a car) and building materials for repairing one's house meant hours of queueing, often in vain. Most of the population lived in flats, sometimes in crumbling old buildings which, with rent restrictions, no owner wanted to repair. One of my earliest memories of Mühlhausen just after Reunification was a certain smell that reminded me of London train stations. Many of the old buildings in the City centre were still heated by coke-burning stoves.

However, by the 80s whole sections of the old city had been pulled down and replaced by modern blocks of flats, mostly outside the Walls, standardised constructions but a good deal better built than many in the West or, for that matter, in Britain – one needs only to think of the Tricorn Centre in Portsmouth, which I well remember.

Catastrophically bad economic planning in the central government caused shortages of materials even for the Erfurt Baukombinat, the big local state-run building company, which was responsible for the entire construction industry in the area, but which also had much of its manpower commandeered for construction work in Berlin for years on end. Other large organisations had similar problems. Private firms were rare. Like many Socialist states there was a general suspicion of individual enterprise of any kind. When I look at the published history of local firms in the Mühlhausen area I am struck by its strange reticence on the subject of expropriation. No doubt there is a desire to let sleeping dogs lie, at least while the generations who were involved are still alive. Yet records do exist of the many long-standing family firms who were compulsorily and suddenly deprived of their businesses. In Mühlhausen, for instance, all the various flourishing textile manufacturers were taken over by state-run organisations. This was not so much an economic measure as a political one. It was a way of terrorising old middle-class companies who were seen as a counter-influence. It frequently led to family tragedies as factory owners were imprisoned on trumped-up charges. In September 1990, just before official Reunification, 80 firms in Mühlhausen applied to be re-privatised. Some were returned to their original owners and are doing well. Others were thwarted in their attempt to restart by the machinations of their West German competitors.

In 1989 things began to happen. Thanks to satellite television we were able to see all the events unrolling in Czechoslovakia, in Hungary and then in Leipzig and Berlin. Television was making history, literally. What we could see, 80% of East Germans could see, too. Only in the remoter eastern areas was reception of western TV impossible. East German TV either ignored the beginning demonstrations or presented them as rowdyism. It seems that Plauen in Saxony was where the protest started, but it never reached the screens. The movement,however, spread fast. Churches, particularly Protestant churches, became the meeting-place for a variety of different groups including the peace movement. They were reluctantly tolerated but also infiltrated by informers. During 1989 churches throughout the GDR were the scene of Prayers for Peace at which people could voice their fears and in the end plan the peaceful demonstrations that were to bring down the government.

Contrary to the impression created by the media, in 1989 there were demonstrations against the Socialist regime in well over 100 East German towns and cities between August of that year and April 1990. Filming them or just taking photographs risked serious reprisals including imprisonment. The famous Leipzig demonstrations of October 1989 first appeared on television screens in the West after two East Germans had smuggled a camera onto a church tower in the centre of Leipzig and then managed to secrete their pictures over the border with the help of a West German journalist..