 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
No Man's Land
by Kathryn Schleich
The first picture was taken sometime in the summer of 1968. It’s tiny at 3 ½ x 3 ½ inches, the black and white images flat and slightly blurred. My husband, Terry, and his younger siblings Tim and Therese are positioned in front of a cement wall. The second photograph is alive with brilliant color. In this picture my husband stands exactly where he and his siblings stood nearly 40 years earlier. Taken by me in July 2004, there is no longer a wall but a bustling street with polished buildings and expensive cars. The photographs, mounted in a hinged frame display the stark divisiveness of the Berlin Wall in 1968 against the gleaming free Berlin of 2004.
Terry grew up in an Air Force family; the summer they visited Berlin they were living in Germany for the second time. His Dad had enlisted as a career soldier and they had lived on military bases in Virginia, Georgia, and Illinois. By the time they left for Germany again in 1967, his Dad was only a few years shy of 20 years service and retirement. Living in Europe his parents made a special effort to be sure their children experienced places most American kids only heard about in school.
We certainly didn’t have photos of exotic places like Germany in our albums. My family owned a real estate company in Nebraska and put down roots long and deep. In the realm of worldliness, Terry and I were complete opposites. He had traveled extensively and I had been nowhere. To me, a photo of he and his siblings in front of a genuine artifact of the Cold War was fascinating.
“How old were you guys when this was taken?” I wanted to know.
“I was 10, Tim was six, and Therese was four.”
“I’m surprised they’d even let you take a picture,” I said.
“Mom wanted a picture of us at the Wall, and she wasn’t going to be denied,” he explained. “She kept saying, ‘Back up! Back up!’ We were right against the wall, with armed guards on either side. The three of us were starting to get scared and just wanted her to take the picture and get it over with.”
In the photo, the children are small and stiff against the concrete barricade stacked high behind them. Wearing a white sweater, Therese stands out against the drab gray; the boys in darker clothing blend in with the desolate landscape. Therese has her left foot in front of her right, as though she’s ready to run to safety at the first opportunity. No one smiles.
After the picture was taken, Terry and his family walked up onto a viewing platform, where they could see across the barren 100 yard strip separating the two countries.
“From the platform, you could look across no-man’s-land and see into East Germany,” he explained. I didn’t understand what he meant. When I thought of no-man’s-land I imagined a deserted, uninhabitable place.
“Why was it called that?”
“There were barbed wire fences, barricades, minefields, and guard towers between the two sides. All the buildings around it on the East side were either bricked up or boarded up. They didn’t want anyone to escape, and it really was no-man’s-land”.
The photograph reminded Terry that his parents had also filmed their visit that day. I knew his family had shot home movies of their travels in Europe, but this video was one I had not seen before. Terry had to beg his parents to transfer the film to CDs, in their mind these were just boring vacation spots no one else would care about. But the brief, silent film is much more than that. The eerie images in the grainy black and white footage move slowly over the spiked barricades and minefields, on across to the checkpoint and vacant buildings beyond. Whoever shot the film pans the camera along the ominous wall, briefly lingering over a wreath left at the site.
“Why is there a wreath?” I asked.
“It’s a memorial. Someone tried to escape at that spot and they were shot and killed,” he said; his tone matter-of-fact.
I really had to stop and process this. The Berlin Wall was something taught in history books, but to actually see the magnitude of evil perpetuated was chilling. The fact that people risked, and often lost their lives to escape the malevolence was even harder to fathom.
As the camera followed a winding street, Terry stopped the film. “This is the street where you took my picture,” he explained, running his finger along the curve of the road on screen. “Checkpoint Charlie was one of eight checkpoints, and only government officials and vehicles had access.”
This wasn’t no-man’s-land, this was hell on Earth. You get a sense of that in the earlier photograph, too. Beyond where the kids are standing, the ground is rock hard and scalped of any vegetation. The children’s fear of what’s on the other side is evident. It reminded me of a heartrending story that Terry had used in his preaching, of exactly what existed across that vast expanse between West and East.
“Tell me what you saw on the viewing platform,” I said.
“When we were on the platform, I noticed a German family standing next to me. As I watched the parents and kids, I realized that they were waving at someone on the other side. I looked across and saw the grandparents waving back. It was the first time I could associate something physical with sinfulness,” he said.
Even at age 10 Terry recognized the horror he was witnessing in families split up by man-made boundaries and ideology. He would never forget the image of a family still trying to stay connected despite the barriers.
After Terry had been ordained a Catholic Deacon, we would escape our own no-man’s-land in the form of an oppressive diocese. At our new parish in Minnesota, he gave his first homily at a Mass celebrating graduations. He talked about that family separated by the Berlin Wall, and recognizing the existence of sin.
“Anything that puts a wall between us or breaks that connection is a sin,” he explained. “For me, the Berlin Wall was a concrete, visible symbol of sin. Yet even across boundaries, that family stayed connected. The connection wasn’t physical, but spiritual, something no one could take away.”
Then he posed a question to the graduates. “Where do we find those connections? They’re present even at the Berlin Wall, because no place is completely devoid of God. We find most of our connections in family, friends, and the church community. So as you go out into the world, you need to stay connected, but it is a skill that takes practice. Keep in touch with those that care for you, nurture you, and bring out the best in you. Take the time to visit and be present to others, for it’s in that shared connection that we find hope.”
The presiding priest was deeply moved, telling the graduates, “Take the beautiful homily Deacon Terry has given you and keep those connections alive.”
After three years of watching my spouse be continually beaten down; three years of minding every word spoken because you never knew who would report some perceived lapse in Catholic teaching to the diocese; after three years of looking over our shoulders, I cried because we were at last free.* * *
“Be sure and get my feet in the picture,” he said.
The feet were extremely important. Where Terry stood on that July afternoon, bricks have been laid. The brick path exists throughout all of Berlin, designating wherever the Wall divided East and West. The German people never want to forget.
The vacant buildings, barbed wire, and minefields of no-man’s-land have been demolished and the area transformed into an upscale business district. Instead of guard towers, steel and glass office towers rise above the street. Luxury automobiles are parked in tight formation along the curb on the same street Terry would later point out in the video. In this picture there is no fear, just the excitement of a man returning nearly 40 years later and experiencing this monumental change first-hand.
Check Point Charlie still exists, but only as a replica. Visitors approaching from the East encounter sandbags and a cardboard Russian soldier, those coming from the Western side an American soldier. This is to give tourists an idea of what they would have experienced crossing the checkpoint under Soviet rule, but the once infamous spot has traded fear for cheesy reproductions, complete with vendors selling “authentic” pieces of the wall.
“My parents won’t believe this is the same place,” Terry had said, snapping a picture of the checkpoint model.
The new buildings glint in the sun, and go on for blocks. It doesn’t seem possible that we are walking where not so very long ago buried explosives lay in wait and barbed razor wire served as a visible deterrent.
Terry stopped in front of one of the buildings. “We just crossed no-man’s-land,” he said, pointing back down the busy street. “This is where those vacant buildings stood.”
The Wall itself has evolved from world-wide symbol of oppression to a protected historical relic. East Germans were so anxious to dismantle this infamous barrier that segments have been intentionally preserved. Otherwise, there would be nothing left of the Wall for history.
Touring the city that day, we noticed capitalism appears to have been openly embraced, a fact also illustrated in the new photograph. The steel and glass buildings, expensive automobiles, shopping, Western clothing, and souvenir stands are all a testament to its success. At the beginning of our tour, two men traveling with us decided to play a game to see how deeply capitalism had taken hold.
“The best way to know if capitalism is working in the former East Berlin is the existence of Starbucks,” said one.
“You’re on,” his companion replied. “I say we won’t find four Starbucks by the end of the day. We do, and I’ll buy the beer.”
As with the best bets, something fun was at stake. This meant Terry and I had a very difficult time not dropping hints each time another Starbucks came into view.
By early afternoon, the required four Starbucks had been located, with the younger of the two gentlemen pronouncing, “Game over!”
Even more amazing than the transition from communist to capitalist society is the speed at which the transformation occurred. On that July day, it had been less than 15 years since the dismantling of the Wall.
This journey was important for me as well. It was my first trip to Europe and I was finally getting to see some of the places that had made such a lasting impression on Terry. The tourist version of the Berlin Wall was only a shell, and unless you saw the real thing, the terror that went with it can only be imagined. Yet many pictures were taken, most to compare with the stark images in the old photograph and video. But there was another reason – for me, much of Europe represented those striking foreign destinations I’d only read about. Now, I too would have pictures, memories, and a tiny sense of life in another part of the world.
Two photographs – one black and white, one in color. When I look at them I’m reminded of Dorothy opening the door to dazzling color in The Wizard of Oz. Eventually, Dorothy returned to the drab landscape of Kansas (there is no place like home, after all), so perhaps a religious analogy is more appropriate. Three young children stand against a physical symbol of oppression and death, represented in the bleakness of black and white. In direct contrast is the photograph in pulsating color of a smiling middle-aged man, the barren no-man’s-land vanquished; replaced by thriving new life.
Kathryn Schleich © 2009 All Rights Reserved
Kathryn Schleich has been a free lance writer for nearly 20 years, covering both corporate and non-profit publications. Schleich published her first book, Hollywood and Catholic Women: Virgins, Whores, Mothers, and Other Images through iUniverse in 2003, and the text has been used at various colleges and universities. No Man’s Land is her first work of creative non-fiction.
