Number 40 Germany 1991

The first or the last winter in freedom

In 1989 i lived in the house of a friend in United States. When I came home the evening of November 9th the friend sat in his living room staring at the television dumbfounded. We could not believe what we saw. After living in the US for a while both of us had lost track of what was going on at home. We had noticed that there were demonstrations in East Germany, that people who wanted to leave were crowded in the embassy in Prague and others had taken the route via Hungary, which had finally torn down the border fences. But that people were able to ignore the border and stand on the wall in Berlin without brutal consequences, that the border fortifications were even treated with pickaxes and hammers was beyond our imagination. We first thought we were looking at a new fantasy product made in Hollywood. But only two days later the first supermarkets in LA sold bags containing little chips of concrete covered with paint of the dismantled Berlin wall. 

Boats on the snowy beach of Rügen

The demolition of the wall was neither the beginning nor the end of the reunification process. The Brandenburg gate in Berlin was officially opened only by December 22th, 1989. On August 23rd, 1990 the Volkskammer of the GDR signed a resolution declaring the accession of the east German Democratic Republic to the Federal Republic of Germany. The application of the Federal Republic's Basic Law to the territory of East Germany was effective only by October 3rd, 1990. East Germany added five additional states to the Federal Republic of Germany, Sachsen, Thüringen, Sachsen-Anhalt, Brandenburg and Mecklenburg-Vorpommern, which held their first elections on October 14th, 1990. 

The frozen beach

Meanwhile I had moved back to Germany and was living in Munich. Visiting the GDR before reunification had been rather difficult for a west german without relatives in East Germany or other connections. I had been there a couple of times. It had been brief peeks into a different world. Now I myself and many of my friends were eager to go there and have a look before business, commercialism, and the victorious western way of life had changed everything. Probably the same motivation which still continues to drive me out to other faraway countries. 

Ice in the little port of Lauterbach 

I had bought a big Opel Rekord stationwagon which had got the nick-name of “the tank” by some of my friends and “the bluesmobil” by others. In the middle of a snow-storm in the beginning of 1991 we decided to drive it up to the island of Rügen at the coast of the Baltic sea, about the most remote place you could go to at the time in the middle of winter in Germany. In California a little tour of 900 km would have been a relaxed weekend trip. In winter Germany it was an adventure. 

The bluesmobil on the snowy alley roads of the island 

A big part of the motorways in East Germany still had the original concrete plated surface from before WWII. The regular tock tock – tock tock sound accompanied you along the way. At least these motorways usually were free of potholes. Some secondary roads had them in the size of a wheel. And since the fall of the wall the Vopo’s had disappeared. “Volkspolizei”, the people’s police, which were hiding somewhere and trying to fine you or even search, arrest or expel you for any random reason in the time before. 

In the main street of Binz

The motorway ended at the seaport of Rostock, in GDR times their biggest port. From there a secondary road led via Stralsund and a lifting bridge to the island. Since reunification the organization responsible for the road maintenance had received some snow removal equipment, so the main roads were more or less free of ice and snow. That changed on the island. The recently formed districts had little money and the towns even less. The roads were covered in ice and snow. The rear wheel driven bluesmobil had to be handled with utmost care because the light-weight back of the car tended to slide sideways. Fortunately there are few hills in this part of the world, but on some it helped to put my friend into the big loading area of the car to give it some more traction. Downhill the backwheels seemed to like to pass the frontwheels. 

One of the Trabis

Eventually we arrived in the little and almost deserted seaside resort of Binz. That was the time when many people tried to make some extra money by renting out a spare room in their apartment. We rented the bedroom of somebody, while the owner slept on the sofa in the living room. A rich breakfast was included in the very reasonable price. 

Two of the old villas 

The place where we stayed 

Binz used to be a fashionable resort before WWII. There were plenty of art nouveau villa’s with the typical wooden verandas and balconies. In the times of communism tourism was not the first priority. Many of these big places were converted into little apartments by crude subdivisions where whole families lived year-round. The place where we stayed was one of those. 

Restaurants were also rather scarce in the GDR. The service usually was downright rude if they were graceful enough to give you a table in an otherwise empty restaurant while outside a long queue was waiting. Now, in snowy Binz, everything was closed except of the restaurant in the Kurhaus, an old and enormous palace of recreation right on the icy beach. There was also a bar, the only place to have a drink at night. Everything was covered in red velvet. Nobody was performing on the stage. We were basically the only guests. The beer in East Germany was always good and very cheap. You could dream away and imagine the times when this was a place only allowed for high functionaries or foreign guest, where Russian generals had the girls dance on the tables. 

The Kurhaus, seat of the restaurant and nightclub 

The island has a coastline of 600 km. The spray of the waves on the sandy beaches had been frozen to plates of ice. Behind the beaches were campgrounds covered in snow and ice. These were the places where the communist comrades fancied to spend their summer vacation. The most famous part of the coast are the chalk cliffs of Jasmund. The romantic painter Caspar David Friedrich spent a lot of time on Rügen to paint the shiny white cliffs. In this winter they disappeared in the whiteness of ice and snow. 

The beach promenade of beach and the chalk cliffs in the background

View from the top of the cliffs of Jasmund 

The best way to warm up after a walk in the biting cold was to take the train. All the station buildings were open and well heated. The island used to have an extensive network of narrow gauge railways and one line was still operating. The steam engines converted the bleak interior of the ancient wagons into a tropical sauna. There were many trains and very few passengers. 

Vehicles in the streets of Binz

The old Opel was by far the biggest car around. Most of the few cars on the island were still the famous Trabi, the east German car with two stroke engine, plastic body, a loud rattling sound and blueish smoke from the exhaust pipe. In the times of the GDR they were highly esteemed and people had to wait as long as 15 years after their ordered car was eventually delivered. After reunification they quickly disappeared. 

One of the campgrounds on the beach

Each day I was afraid the bluesmobil would not start any more after the cold night. But it did. And we eventually made it back to Munich, but only just, because the car behaved more and more strange and back home it turned out that the camshaft had a problem. 

Old reed covered village houses on Rügen 

I have been back to Rügen several times in the nineties and each time there was some more development. But fortunately, only few weeks before reunification and their own abolition, the East German government made one last, and maybe the only ever far-sighted decision: they converted about 10% of their area into national parks. This and the lesson planners had learned from the development and destruction of many seaside resorts between Scheveningen and Benidorm resulted in a mainly sustainable development of the east german coast which took in account the historic building infrastructure and the countryside. The old villas were renovated and new buildings had to be built in the style of what was already there. The outside of the Kurhaus in Binz looks basically the same as in 1990. The stations along the narrow gauge railway line were renovated and they are still in use. The line was even extended by a short branch and is still operated with the same old steam engines. Availability of restaurants, their quality and service has greatly improved. It is still a fantastic place to go to. But it is not empty any more.

The narrow gauge train in the terminal of Göhren

 

The historic station of Binz

Inside one of the narrow gauge wagons

The winter 1990/1991 was not the last which was really cold. There was another one in 2010/2011. Around New Year I spent a week at the german North Sea coast. The waddenzee was frozen. This week produced some spectacular photos for another story.