Personally I’m always ready to learn, although I do not always like being taught.
— Sir Winston Churchill
For a sneak peek at the first 20+ pages of my memoir, Walled-In: A West Berlin Girl’s Journey to Freedom, click “Download a free excerpt” on the home page of http://www.walled-in-berlin.com
Is there a parallel between the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989 http://www.walled-in-berlin.com/j-elke-ertle/who-really-opened-the-berlin-wall/ and the uprising of East German workers in 1953? Maybe. Both confrontations started with relatively small requests for policy change and ended in calls for freedom and democracy. The big difference is that Soviet tanks rolled in 1953, but not in 1989.
In spring of 1953, the East German state budget was in serious trouble. Sixteen percent of the budget supported the military, rearmament, occupation costs and reparations, leaving little for the production of food and consumer goods. In addition, expropriations and land reforms had caused droves of East German farmers to walk away from their farms. There simply was not enough food being produced. Staples continued to be allocated with ration cards in East Germany until 1958. Even with the cards, people could put only half the amount of meat and fat on their table as they had done prior to WWII. Long queues regularly lined up in front of shops. Residential power cuts often began at nightfall to meet the needs of industry during peak hours. And most importantly, price levels in East Germany were well above those in West Germany. While the average income in East Germany in 1952 was 308 marks, one kilo of butter cost 24 marks, one kilo of sugar 12 marks and one kilo of pork 15 marks. http://www.bstu.bund.de/DE/Wissen/DDRGeschichte/17-juni-1953/Ursachen-des-Aufstands/_inhalt.html While a bar of chocolate cost 50 pfennigs in the West, it sold for 8 marks in the East. In short, the prosperity gap between East and West Germany was very obvious to the people in both East and West.
The East German government recognized that corrections in the centrally planned economy were necessary and proposed to increase taxes and reduce salaries. But on 11 June 1953, the government announced a new direction: There would be no tax or price increases and no more power cuts. Instead, production norms would be raised by 10%. The planned increase in norms translated into a reduction in wages, which triggered widespread discontent among workers.
The next day, there were peaceful protests in many villages across the country. On 16 June, workers at two major Berlin construction sites – the gigantic reconstruction project on the Stalinallee, http://www.walled-in-berlin.com/j-elke-ertle/karl-marx-allee-post-wwii-flagship-project/ and the new hospital construction project in Berlin-Friedrichshain – dropped their tools and marched in protest to the seat of the government. Not getting any satisfaction, they called for a general strike and a protest meeting at the Strausberger Platz in the Stalinallee (now called Karl-Marx-Alleee) the following day. On 17 June, thousands marched to the seat of the government again. Along the way, more and more workers stopped work and joined in. As the protest gained momentum, demands no longer focused solely on production norms but also on free elections and the resignation of the leadership. Spontaneous protests broke out that day in over 700 cities and towns across East Germany.
Soviet tanks and East German police fired into the crowd. Demonstrators responded with sticks and stones. Many were injured or killed. Others fled to the West. The East German Uprising of 17 June 1953 was bloodily squashed. East Germany did not revolt again until 1989.
Demonstrators throwing rocks at Russian tanks in the Stalinallee during the East German Uprising of 17 June 1953. www.walled-in-berlin.com
For a sneak peek at the first 20+ pages of my memoir, Walled-In: A West Berlin Girl’s Journey to Freedom, click “Download a free excerpt” on my home page and feel free to follow my blog about anything German: historic and current events, people, places and food.
Walled-In is my story of growing up in Berlin during the Cold War. Juxtaposing the events that engulfed Berlin during the Berlin Blockade, the Berlin Airlift, the Berlin Wall and Kennedy’s Berlin visit with the struggle against my equally insurmountable parental walls, Walled-In is about freedom vs. conformity, conflict vs. harmony, domination vs. submission, loyalty vs. betrayal.
How come only two people run for U.S. President and over fifty run for Miss America?
–Anonymous
For a sneak peek at the first 20+ pages of my memoir, Walled-In: A West Berlin Girl’s Journey to Freedom, click “Download a free excerpt” on the home page of http://www.walled-in-berlin.com
The Karl-Marx-Allee in Berlin, Germany, was East Germany’s post-WWII flagship reconstruction project. The majestic 1.25 mile-long boulevard is almost 300 feet wide. Between 1951 and 1965, 8-story to 10-story buildings were constructed on both sides of this grand boulevard. Shops, restaurants and cafés were built to line the ground floor. Around 5,000 apartments were constructed above. Today, all of the buildings have been restored to their former glory, and the entire street is a designated historic site.
Typical apartment building along Karl-Marx-Allee. photo © J. Elke Ertle, 2015, www.walled-in-berlin.com
In the Golden Twenties the boulevard was known as the Grosse Frankfurter Strasse, a notoriously poverty-stricken locale. During World War II, the Red Army turned the area into a wasteland of rubble. In the aftermath, some 2 million volunteers cleaned up the debris with bare hands. They picked thirty-eight million bricks out of the rubble and prepared them for reuse so that 70% of the project’s bricks were salvaged ones. http.//www.walled-in-berlin.com/j-elke-ertle/legacy-of-rubble-women
In 1949, the Grosse Frankfurter Strasse was renamed Stalinallee in honor of the Soviet leader’s 70th birthday. Two years later, a 16-foot-high bronze statue of Stalin was unveiled, but during a November night in 1961, that statue vanished. It was melted down as part of the East German government’s de-Stalinization process. When residents awoke that morning, they saw brand new street signs, and the Stalinallee had been renamed Karl-Marx-Allee, after the German philosopher and revolutionary, Karl Marx.
The post-WWII reconstruction project was conceived not only for the purpose of building apartments, shops, a movie theater, public offices and schools, but the boulevard was also supposed to reflect the new social order. Therefore, in October 1952, a special commission was formed for the “artistic decoration of the Stalinallee,” as the boulevard was still called at that time. Elements were developed to give the boulevard its unique appearance: Huge candelabras, columns, balustrades, Meissen porcelain facings, fountains, clocks and other elements. Dual towers were constructed at both ends of the boulevard, the Frankfurter Tor and the Strausberger Platz. During 1966/67, a floating ring fountain was added in the center of the Strausberger Platz. The fountain, made of copper sheets welded together, gives the impression of crystals floating in the air above the water.
Famous Floating Ring Fountain at Strausberger Platz. photo © J. Elke Ertle, 2015. www.walled-in-berlin.com
For the times, the Karl-Marx-Allee apartments offered workers a fairly high quality of living. Rents were affordable. The apartments were spacious and equipped with modern amenities such as hot water, central heating, elevators, tiled bathrooms, bathtubs, built-in cupboards, balconies, even garbage chutes and house phones. http://coldwarsites.net/country/germany/karl-marx-allee
Therefore, the Karl-Marx-Allee became a source of great pride for the people of the former East Germany. In 1953, however, when the production norms for laborers on the project were raised by 10% without a correspondent pay increase, it was also the site of a massive uprising. http://www.walled-in-berlin.com/j-elke-ertle/east-german-uprising-of-17-june-1953/
1953 – For an 860 square-foot, three-room apartment with kitchen and bath, as described above, the original tenants paid 78 DDR Mark (East Mark) in monthly rent. That amount represented 21% of the average resident’s income.
1979 – The rent was still 78 DDR (East Mark) per month. It had not changed in 26 years and now represented only 10% of the average tenant’s income.
1990 – Following the 1:1 currency exchange to DM (West Mark), the monthly rent remained fixed at 78 DM, which amounted to a mere 6% of the average renter’s income.
1991 – Following reunification, rents rose to 620 DM (West Mark), a shocking 51% of income for many.
2000 – Following repair and renovation of the apartments, rents rose to 931 DM, which represented 40% of income.
2013 – Following the adoption of the Euro, rents settled at 650 Euros for original tenants and at 720 Euros for new renters, representing 48% of the average income.
Today, Berliners of all ages still scramble to secure one of the bright, spacious apartments on the Karl-Marx-Allee. Rents are still rising, but potential tenants value the broad sidewalks, the public gardens and the proximity to cafés and restaurants. They might even catch a movie at the Kino International, a popular spot for viewing international films.
Kino International on the Karl-Marx-Allee, photo © J. Elke Ertle, 2015. www.walled-in-berlin.com
For a sneak peek at the first 20+ pages of my memoir, Walled-In: A West Berlin Girl’s Journey to Freedom, click “Download a free excerpt” on my home page and feel free to follow my blog about anything German: historic and current events, people, places and food.
Walled-In is my story of growing up in Berlin during the Cold War. Juxtaposing the events that engulfed Berlin during the Berlin Blockade, the Berlin Airlift, the Berlin Wall and Kennedy’s Berlin visit with the struggle against my equally insurmountable parental walls, Walled-In is about freedom vs. conformity, conflict vs. harmony, domination vs. submission, loyalty vs. betrayal.
Music is what feelings sound like.
–Anonymous
Music touches the heart, www.walled-in-berlin.com
For a sneak peek at the first 20+ pages of my memoir, Walled-In: A West Berlin Girl’s Journey to Freedom, click “Download a free excerpt” on the home page of http://www.walled-in-berlin.com
Oranienburg holds the dubious distinction of being the most dangerous town in Germany. That is because the heaviest concentration of unexploded World War II ordinance in all of Germany is regularly discovered in Oranienburg, a town on the banks of the River Havel, just 22 miles north of Berlin. Seventy years after World War II has ended, German bomb disposal teams continue to find and deactivate unexploded war-era bombs. It is estimated that another 350 to 400 bombs are still buried under the city.
Between 1940 and 1945, U.S. and British forces dropped 2.7 million tons of bombs on Europe, half of them on Germany. Oranienburg dates back to the 12th century. Hitler chose the town as a hub for his armaments industry. He located an arms depot, an aircraft plant, a railway junction for trains to the eastern front, and a research facility for his atomic bomb program in Oranienburg. To destroy these sites, the Allies dropped about 22,000 incendiary and explosive bombs over the city, 10,000 bombs between 1944 and1945 alone.
http://www.theatlantic.com/international/archive/2016/05/germany-unexploded-bombs/484799/
It has been suggested that another reason for so many bombs being dropped on the city was to keep the Nazi research out of the hands of the rapidly advancing Russian troops. http://www.smithsonianmag.com/history/seventy-years-world-war-two-thousands-tons-unexploded-bombs-germany-180957680/?no-ist,
Seventy years after World War II, more than 2,000 tons of unexploded munitions are uncovered on German soil every year. As many as 10 percent of the bombs failed to explode, which means that tons of unexploded ordnance still remain beneath German cities. Since 1991, bomb disposal teams have found and defused 159 unexploded bombs in Oranienburg alone.
One of the reasons that unexploded World War II ordinance is so dangerous is that thousands of the bombs were equipped with chemical time-delay fuses rather than percussion fuses. While the latter are designed to explode on impact, time-delay fuses are intended to ignite up to 24 hours following impact. The impact is supposed to set in motion a chain reaction, which eventually leads to the decomposition of a critical part of the bomb and subsequent explosion. But in many bombs decomposition did not take place. The ordinance remained buried in the sandy soil, and over the years, these critical components have become so brittle that the risk of instantaneous explosion has become very real.
Thousands of tons of unexploded bombs are uncovered every year in all parts of Germany. German bomb-disposal squads are among the busiest in the world. The Kampfmittelbeseitigungsdienst – KMBD – (bomb disposal team), made up of firefighters and police, is responsible for defusing these bombs. Before any construction project begins in Germany the ground must first be certified as cleared of unexploded ordnance. Oranienburg is the only city in Germany, which pursues a systematic search for unexploded ordinance based on postwar aerial photos and magnetic or radar underground measurements for metal.
It is impossible to predict how many years it will take to clear Germany of unexploded ordnance. So far, the bomb disposal teams have dealt primarily with open spaces. They still will have to systematically look beneath houses and factories. It is suspected, however, that a hundred years from now unexploded bombs will still be resting in the soil of Germany.
For a sneak peek at the first 20+ pages of my memoir, Walled-In: A West Berlin Girl’s Journey to Freedom, click “Download a free excerpt” on my home page and feel free to follow my blog about anything German: historic or current events, people, places or food.
Walled-In is my story of growing up in Berlin during the Cold War. Juxtaposing the events that engulfed Berlin during the Berlin Blockade, the Berlin Airlift, the Berlin Wall and Kennedy’s Berlin visit with the struggle against my equally insurmountable parental walls, Walled-In is about freedom vs. conformity, conflict vs. harmony, domination vs. submission, loyalty vs. betrayal.
Father and son on different wave lengths: “When I was your age,” the millionaire bragged to his son, “I carried water for a gang of bricklayers.” The son thoughtfully said, “I am mighty proud of you, Father. If it hadn’t been for your great determination, I might have had to do something like that myself.”
— Anonymous
For a sneak peek at the first 20+ pages of my memoir, Walled-In: A West Berlin Girl’s Journey to Freedom, click “Download a free excerpt” on my home page and feel free to follow my blog about anything German: historic or current events, people, places or food.
Walled-In is my story of growing up in Berlin during the Cold War. Juxtaposing the events that engulfed Berlin during the Berlin Blockade, the Berlin Airlift, the Berlin Wall and Kennedy’s Berlin visit with the struggle against my equally insurmountable parental walls, Walled-In is about freedom vs. conformity, conflict vs. harmony, domination vs. submission, loyalty vs. betrayal.
The Allied High Commission (Alliierte Hohe Kommission) was a form of Allied military rule following World War II. It was established on 21 September 1949 by the three Western Allies (The United States, Great Britain and France) and superseded the Allied Control Council
The function of the Allied High Commission in Germany was to regulate and, if necessary, intervene in areas of military, economic, and foreign policy matters of the newly established Federal Republic of Germany (West Germany).
On 9 May 1945, Germany unconditionally surrendered to the four allies: The United States, Great Britain, France and the Soviet Union. The four allies assumed responsibility for the government of Germany via the Allied Control Council. Each power occupied a specific zone of Germany. Berlin, located entirely within the Soviet Zone, was to be governed by an Allied Kommandatura.
The four Allies attempted to formulate a common administrative policy for Germany, but the divergent interests among the occupying powers made their efforts futile. In 1946, British forces agreed to an American proposal to merge their two zones to create a bizone for economic reasons. The bizone was established on 1 January 1947, and in June, a plan to include the French Zone was agreed upon. The Soviets blockaded West Berlin. In return, the Western powers counter-blockaded the Soviet zone and organized an airlift to keep West Berlin supplied. The Soviet Union finally lifted the blockade in May 1949, but Berlin remained divided into three Western and one Eastern sectors until the fall of the Berlin Wall.
Meanwhile, a German government was set up in the Western zones. In April 1949 the United States, Great Britain and France published a new occupation statute of Germany governing their respective zones. It guaranteed self-government to the new West German State, with certain restrictions. West Germany’s constitution went into effect in May 1949. In September, the Occupation Statute went into effect, and the Allied High Commission replaced the Allied Control Council in September 1949. https://www.bl.uk/britishlibrary/~/media/subjects images/government publications/pdfs/germany-allied-control-zone-government-publications.pdf
The High Commission took its seat at the Hotel Petersberg and became active as of 21 September 1949. It ceased to function under the terms of the Treaties of Paris on 5 May 1955.
For a sneak peek at the first 20+ pages of my memoir, Walled-In: A West Berlin Girl’s Journey to Freedom, click “Download a free excerpt” on my home page and feel free to follow my blog about anything German: historic or current events, people, places or food.
Walled-In is my story of growing up in Berlin during the Cold War. Juxtaposing the events that engulfed Berlin during the Berlin Blockade, the Berlin Airlift, the Berlin Wall and Kennedy’s Berlin visit with the struggle against my equally insurmountable parental walls, Walled-In is about freedom vs. conformity, conflict vs. harmony, domination vs. submission, loyalty vs. betrayal.
The Petersberg Agreement (Petersberg Abkommen) of 22 November 1949 was an accord between the three Allied High Commissioners (representatives of the United States, Great Britain and France) and the chancellor of West Germany. The agreement expanded the rights of the German Federal government. The rights had been previously defined by the three Western Allies in the Occupation Statute of Germany. The Petersberg Agreement was a first step toward West German sovereignty following the country’s adoption of a post-war democratic constitution on 24 May 1949. The agreement was signed at the Hotel Petersberg http://www.walled-in-berlin.com/j-elke-ertle/hotel-petersberg-germanys-camp-david/. It was signed by Allied High Commissioners John J. McCloy (United States), Brian Hubert Robertson (Great Britain), André François-Poncet (France) and West German Chancellor Konrad Adenauer.
The Occupation Statute of Germany (Besatzungsstatut) of 10 April 1949 specified the roles and responsibilities of the Allied High Commission and the newly created Federal government of Germany. The statute restricted Germany’s sovereignty and, at the same time, admitted the country into the European Recovery Program (Marshall Plan). Based on Occupation Statute, the Western Allies (1) retained the right to keep occupational forces in Germany, (2) to keep complete control over Germany’s disarmament, demilitarization, war reparations, decartelization and coal and steel industry of the Ruhr area and (3) to control certain scientific research, foreign trade and exchange, and foreign affairs. The Statute of Occupation of Germany remained in force until the Treaties of Paris were ratified in 1955.
The Petersberg Agreement relaxed certain aspects of the roles and responsibilities of the Allied High Commission and the Federal government of Germany, as previously laid down in the Statute of Occupation of Germany. http://germanhistorydocs.ghi-dc.org/pdf/eng/Founding 8 ENG.pdf In accordance with the Petersberg Agreement
For a sneak peek at the first 20+ pages of my memoir, Walled-In: A West Berlin Girl’s Journey to Freedom, click “Download a free excerpt” on my home page and feel free to follow my blog about anything German: historic and current events, people, places and food.
Walled-In is my story of growing up in Berlin during the Cold War. Juxtaposing the events that engulfed Berlin during the Berlin Blockade, the Berlin Airlift, the Berlin Wall and Kennedy’s Berlin visit with the struggle against my equally insurmountable parental walls, Walled-In is about freedom vs. conformity, conflict vs. harmony, domination vs. submission, loyalty vs. betrayal.
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