GDR, memories of a state no more

It's usually just before midnight that I go home from office. My daughter insisted I bring along a jacket. I pulled out the chest of drawers. A yellow jacket came into view. I decided to preserve that one, for it was manufactured in German Democratic Republic (GDR), popularly known as East Germany.

The present Education Minister Nurul Islam Nahid had presented me the jacket.

Memories started flooding in as I closed the chest of drawers. As a young journalist, then working in an NPT newspaper, I required a GO (government order) to go abroad. It was none other than Gias Kamal Bhai who came forward and helped me in this regard.

After reaching New Delhi airport and waiting for connecting flight to Frankfurt, I noticed a lady in the lounge. Prem Kumari Pant from Nepal said she was also flying to Frankfurt and would be attending the same course at Internationales Institut für Journalismus (International Institute for Journalism, IIJ) in Berlin.

Prem Kumari Pant is now the Editor of the Weekly Mirror and President of Nepal-China Society. She edited the book "Sixty Years of Dynamic Partnership - Nepal-China Relationship."

The Berlin-based institution IIJ, offering advanced training for newspaper and agency journalists from "developing, transitional and newly industrialised" countries, since 1964 became a "competence centre" of the Deutsche Gesellschaft für Internationale Zusammenarbeit (GIZ) in 2011.

The flight from New Delhi to Frankfurt was by an early version of Boeing B747 (Jumbo Jet) of Lufthansa. The flights to and from West Berlin were by smaller Pan Am B727s. The Frankfurt-West Berlin short-haul scheduled flights were termed Internal German Services (IGSs).

The flights tended to be rough as they were flown by United States Air Force (USAF) pilots, who would switch to fighter aircraft in case of any "eventualities," explained a German stewardess of Pan American Airways (Pan Am). Lufthansa was barred from operating commercial air services to then West Berlin.

Pan Am aircraft required to fly across hostile East German territory through three 20 mile (32 km) wide air corridors at a maximum altitude of 10,000 ft (3,000 m) to Berlin Templehof airport, she added.

Identified by its blue globe logo (nicknamed "The Blue Meatball"), Pan Am was then the principal and largest international air carrier in the US from 1927 until its collapse on December 4, 1991.

Founded in 1927 as a scheduled air mail and passenger service operating between Key West, Florida, and Havana, Cuba, the airline became a major company credited with many innovations that shaped the international airline industry, including the widespread use of jet aircraft, jumbo jets, and computerised reservation systems (CRSs). It was also a founding member of the International Air Transport Association (IATA), the global airline industry association.

We reached West Berlin at a time when the winter had just gone and leaves had started appearing on trees. It was a beautiful three months - two and a half months in West Berlin and 15-day "field trip" going round different cities of the then West Germany, including visiting the statue of "Germania" in Rudesheim and Lorelei. Lorelei is a feminine water spirit, said to send sailors to their death, by luring them near cliffs of the Rhine with her beautiful singing voice.

At Deutsche Welle In Köln (Cologne), we met Abdus Sattar bhai, who was our colleague in The Morning News, Abdullah-Al-Faruque of Swadhin Bangla Betar and Nazmunnesa. She is now in the US.

Among other cities, we also travelled to Bonn, then the provisional capital of West Germany.

The IIJ was located near Kaiser-Wilhelm-Gedächtniskirche (Emperor William Memorial Church), one of Berlin's most famous landmarks. The damaged church tower is a symbol of Berlin's resolve to rebuild the city after the war and a constant reminder of the destruction of war. The church is located on Breitscheidplatz, at the heart of Berlin's commercial centre, with the Kurfürstendamm (Ku'damm) Avenue and Europa Centre nearby.

In Berlin we travelled between the Institute and "heim," the hostel where we used to reside, by U-Bahn (short for Untergrundbahn, "underground railway"). Trains run every two to five minutes during peak hours, every five minutes for the rest of the day and every ten minutes in the evening. At first we thought how do I get into the trains, their doors opened and shut so quicklty. I became used to it and enjoyed using the U-bahn.

Late Robert H Lochner was Director of the institute, while late Peter Prufert was the course coordinator while his wife was our "mother hen." Another person to mention was our language teacher whom we convinced that our stay in Berlin was too short to learn the language. So she taught some every-day-use words and expressions. She enlightened us on the cultural scenario of those days.

"Lieder" was making a comeback in Germany and "chanson" in France in those days. We witnessed an opera performance at Berlin Philharmonic Orchestra, consistently ranked as one of the best orchestras in the world, and taken to the residences of the classical music greats, which are now museums.

Lochner, the World War II battle-hardened journalist, is said to have coined the emotional words "Ich bin Ein Berliner" for one of John F Kennedy's most famous speeches, the US President had delivered on June 26, 1963. Willy Brandt was the West Berlin Mayor then. It was in his office where John F Kennedy took rest and went to Rathaus Schöneberg to deliver the famous, oft-quoted speech.

We visited the place where John F Kennedy had stood and had pictures taken. We also visited the residence of "Oskar," one of the famous cartoonists of Germany.

The Berlin Wall was a guarded concrete barrier that physically and ideologically divided Berlin from 1961 to 1989. Constructed by GDR starting on 13 August 1961, the Wall completely cut off (by land) West Berlin from surrounding East Germany and from East Berlin until government officials opened it in November 1989.

Its demolition officially began on June 13, 1990 and finished in 1992. The barrier included guard towers placed along large concrete walls, accompanied by a wide area (later known as the "death strip") that contained anti-vehicle trenches, "fakir beds" (wide stretches of nails) and other "defences."

GDR authorities officially referred to the Berlin Wall as "Anti-Fascist Protection Rampart," portraying the Wall as protecting its population from fascist elements conspiring to prevent the "will of the people" in building a socialist state in East Germany. In reality, the Wall served to prevent the massive emigration and defection that had marked East Germany and the communist Eastern Bloc during the post-World War II period.

I just can't laugh at myself when I remember I got "lost" in East Berlin. Relations between then West and East Germany had become less tense by then. GDR authorities were then allowing tourists from West Berlin.

The IIJ took us to a tour of East Berlin, with a museum housing Babylonian ruins. I got so immersed that I forgot, my course mates had boarded the bus and gone to the next tour stop. I suddenly found myself surrounded by East German police. Through their interpreter I praised the exhibits at the museum and explained what had happened. I missed the rest of the tour as the police picked me up and took me to "Checkpoint Charlie" where I was made to wait till others returned.

"Checkpoint Charlie" is also a piece of history. The famous "crossing point" is now in the Checkpoint Charlie Museum in Berlin at Friedrichstraße.

Following our return we used to receive English-language "The German Tribune" and magazine "Scala." Now I follow developments in Germany though The Financial Times, Deutsche Welle and the international wire services. My cultural connection is now limited to listening "Schlager" music on the "youtube."

When the Berlin Wall fell and West and East Germany unified, fellow journalist Sufia Sultana was doing a similar course in Berlin. I requested her to bring some pieces from Berlin Wall. She did and it had a place in the showcase of our house. It had been there until a maid unknowingly threw it away mistaking it for a piece of ordinary brick.

The state of GDR crumbled after the fall of the Berlin Wall. Like East Germany, the yellow jacket is now a piece of history.

The writer is News Editor of The Financial Express.

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