The banana republic

July 10, 2023

The image of all those Trabants crossing the border when it opened has become ingrained in history. Most turned round and went home after the novelty had passed. So many carried back bananas, that were rare in the DDR, that Germans joked they had become a banana republic. The flag keeps the smile alive.

MARIENTAL-HORST - There are times in this ride that we might be the only people alive. Not literally, of course, but we progress to the uninterested gaze of blackbirds. And nothing else.

The place is disturbingly empty for a country with the same density of population as Britain. Once more, we have been riding through tidy fields that grow magically without attention. An occasional sprinkler shows that someone got there before us. It is rare to see a tractor. Sometimes there are sheep, but never cows.

Even villages are quiet. A hiccup in the street would bring cross letters to the newspaper.

Kurt Lichtenstein was probably depending on that. But it didn't work out. He became the first person to be shot after the wall went up.

Kurt Lichtenstein was one of thousands of Germans killed by fellow Germans in the decades of the border's existence. His cross stands beside the rural road where he fell

The odd thing is that he was a communist, killed by fellow believers. The West called him a martyr, the East a provocateur.

Lichtenstein was reporting on the border in the months after the fence went up. He crossed from one side to the other and asked questions on both sides. To Berlin, that was provocation and guards at the border had his picture.

On 12 October 1961 he talked to DDR border guards and drove over the ditch intended to restrain him and into the West. All the time, he was watched from the East. The guards opened fire when he ran. He fell dying partly in the DDR, partly in the West.

The case has swirled with rumours and allegations ever since. Who was he working for? What did he want to reveal, and why? Was there something as yet unknown in his background? Why did he leave the communist party after so many years?

His wooden cross reads, in German: "A German, shot dead by Germans, Kurt Lichtenstein 12.10.1961." Demonstrations have been held there ever since and sympathisers put up their own signs insisting that his death was murder.

A united Europe brings the exchange of cultures. Surprising, though, that "ACAB" should have been borrowed by a country that doesn't speak English. It stands for All Coppers Are Bastards

Those years have been clear to us today because we have spent much of it on roads of individual concrete slabs that serviced the eastern side of the border. Today they have run in parallel strips, one each for the wheels of army cars and lorries.

So many worked on the DDR's fortifications that they had multi-level accommodation blocks beside the road. They stand now, most of the blocks, shabby through abandon, glass broken behind metal grills, doors boarded over.

Maybe the modern army has no use for them. It's far smaller, after all, and there's no border to monitor. Perhaps there is no call to convert them to flats. Who knows?

But not every barracks has been left to time and weather. To our silly delight, we found one that had been converted by today's soldiers. It looked a cheerful place by the standards of an organisation that has never seen cheerfulness as a mission.

Was it that lack of cheerfulness, then, or a wry joke that the army had left the old machine-gun post at the gate?

There was no one to ask; having no one to ask has been the theme of the day.

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