More than thirty years before 9/11, when we feared Communism more than terrorism, when we measured threats by overkill rather than civilians killed, when the Soviet bloc was more menacing than the Axis of Evil, when the Cold War loomed large and there was yet no War on Terror, I visited Berlin. Back in 1978, about eighty Harvard musicians packed their instruments and bucked the first week of classes to attend the Herbert van Karajan Competition—an international festival that pitted symphony orchestras “against” one another from then-Soviet Georgia, Japan, Austria, and the U.S.
It was really two events. There was the music competition itself, an incredible opportunity for cultural exchange between nations who rarely moved in the same circles. Each orchestra prepared a program that included a required work (the Overture to Verdi’s “La Forza del Destino”) as well as a piece representing their country (we chose the beautiful “Appalachian Spring” by Aaron Copland). We rounded out our program with Schumann’s “Rhenish” Symphony and the lush “La Mer” by Debussy. Our performance was inspired—one of the best ever given by our orchestra—but the event was marred by the politics we had hoped would be transcended by the music-making. There was the almost exclusively German jury, and the snarky judge who announced our third place finish, in part, he said, because “Schumann has never been a Berlin composer.”
The other “event” was the rare opportunity to visit Berlin as Americans. The trip itself took on an eery feel, as the plane entered the airspace over East Germany. I had always thought of the Berlin Wall as a barrier—the famed “Iron Curtain” dividing the east and west parts of the city--but it became clear that West Berlin was fully enclosed in the barrier. I could never fully shake this sense that I was surrounded; even the citizens seemed to enjoy their freedoms with a bit of caution.
There was a lingering sense of the urgency with which the Wall had been erected in the early 60s. The subway system, which serviced all of Berlin proper, remained intact; there were stations where the train slowed but did not stop. Armed guards policed these ghost stations, appearing to passersby as if they would keep us out. We knew, however, that their patrols were to keep in those who would gladly flee East Berlin for the West.
Our trip was extended beyond what was necessary for the competition itself. Originally, there was to be a performance where members of the competing orchestras combined for a super-symphony conducted by van Karajan himself. Unfortunately, the maestro suffered a heart attack just before the start of the Festival, which erased this possibility. Thus, we were free to wander Berlin, sampling the various wursts from the imbiss stands by day and holding down the pubs by night. Each day, more and more of us ventured in small groups to visit East Berlin. I was reluctant (terrified) at first, but with a little coaxing I joined a group and penetrated the Iron Curtain.
Our point of access was “Checkpoint Charlie.” This was my first trip outside the U.S.; I had been admonished to maintain physical control of my passport at all times. The first thing that happened when you “applied” to enter East Berlin was the seizure of that passport. There was a structure that looked like a movie ticket booth with a glass enclosure and a small mouse-hole opening. The glass was lined from the inside with a curtain, so you could not see who or what had pulled the passport from your hand. I was given a strip of paper with an 8-digit claim number on it. At that time I realized that numbers were being read in German from a loudspeaker. I needed to wait until my number was called, a feat which required some passable recognition of German numbers. Fortunately, one of the members of my group had taken German and was put on number-listening duty. Unfortunately, he was the first one called and ushered to another waiting room, leaving us on our own to decipher the announcements. One-by-one we were called until I was the last one waiting—alone in an East Berlin holding room with no friends and no passport.
Eventually we were all granted access. We were required to exchange 50 Deutche Marks for East German Marks at a 1:1 rate (the Eastern Marks were valued at a fraction of those from the West). We emerged onto the Alexanderplatz (the site of the large spire that is now the symbol of unified Berlin) surrounded by functional gray structures punctuated by occasional shacks and tents—the equivalent of our kiosks or newsstands. We came to learn that everything was owned by the Government with the exception of the small businesses in the temporary structures. No one was allowed to own or lease real property for business, so self-employed entrepreneurs were limited to these small pop-ups. Unlike West Berlin, where—as in other European capitals—you could always rely on people’s speaking enough English to complete a transaction, in East Berlin there was no English spoken. In one government-owned bookstore a blonde girl approached us and asked, “will you speak English to me?” She explained that she studied some English in college, but that most people in East Germany do not study English “because they have no hope of being able to use it.”
Although the few hours we spent in East Germany were interesting and a memory I cherish today, I was extremely agitated in the moment. I had never visited a land where there was a constant military presence, where soldiers lined the streets and stations armed with automatic weapons. Was it my imagination, or was there a grey cloud over life here? Had we transitioned from Oz back to the farm and found ourselves in black-and-white? It was a chilling experience and I lacked the context with which to process it. My rising sense of fear was not completely groundless. There were those within our group who smuggled East Germany Marks into the country in order to have greater purchasing power. East Germany was the home to major music publishing houses; several of the orchestra members went on a buying spree. I was terrified that we would get in trouble for breaking some misunderstood law and simply disappear. I had trouble breathing.
Eventually we headed back to Checkpoint Charlie, reversing the process begun earlier in the day. We each had to account for spending our 50 inflated Marks or surrender the rest. Feeling a growing sense of democratic indignation and civil disobedience, I retained a few pfennige for posterity deep in my pocket. I was less worried this time as my passport disappeared, but nonetheless relieved to be reunited with it on the other side of the station. We boarded the U-bahn and headed out, sitting silently as we again passed the ghost stations, until we crossed back to the West, to the land of rainbows and laughter.
Many of us from that trip gathered a few months ago to mourn the loss of Dr. James Yannatos, our beloved conductor who led us on that trip and the Harvard-Radcliffe Orchestra for 42 years. We each shared our memories of that trip and the thoughts had as we later watched the Wall come down in 1990. I cherish the photos I took of the Wall, the haunting graffiti on the Brandenburg Gate (“freedom ends here”), the “death strip” between the two physical walls, the high barbed wire that stood as a final assault on anyone who reached the outer wall alive. I also think of the young blonde girl in the bookstore and wonder whether she continued with her education. What became of her as the Wall came down? Did she follow her dream of a broader world and into the light?
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