05 Dec 2004The Sunday Times Magazine cover

FEATURING: Rolling alone: the art of Ronnie Wood. Plus unseen pictures from the age of exploration

December 5, 2004

WHY GERMANY ISN’T WORKINGIs this the result of reunification? Fifteen years after Germany

promised the west would rebuild the east, the nation is more divided than ever

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They say a great movie starsimply plays themselves onscreen. So is the subtle,mouthwatering andintelligent woman we seein the cinemas, reallyJuliet Binoche? LesleyWhite meets the real thing

When the wall came down 15 years ago, east Germans were promjobs flowing in from free Europe. Instead a new, invisible wall ofleaving semi-derelict ghost towns and growing hostility. Special

December 5, 2004 The Sunday Times Magazine 31

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ised their lives would be enriched with new homes, money andhopelessness has been erected — and millions have moved west,investigation by Christine Toomey. Photographs: Thomas Meyer

Documentary

Worlds apart: Lüneburg(left), a prosperous townin former West Germany;Wittenberge (right), adeserted town in the east

32 The Sunday Times Magazine December 5, 2004

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he illuminated hands of a vastclock sweep relentlessly above the desertedPackhof quarter of Wittenberge;the span of thedial,over 20ft across,makes it the largest clock incontinental Europe.That such a giant timepieceshould dominate this small town on the banks ofthe Elbe river seems almost like a taunt;a larger-than-life reminder that,as far as many areconcerned,time is running out for Wittenberge.

For this once booming town in the formerDemocratic Republic of Germany now has amore dubious claim to fame.Since the fall of the Berlin Wall 15 years ago and subsequentreunification of East and West Germany,Wittenberge has seen the most dramatic exodusof people of any place in the former communisthalf of the country.Contrary to the “bloominglandscape”the former chancellor Helmut Kohl predicted East Germany would become,when he basked in the collective euphoria of83m Germans celebrating turning into onenation again,all that flourishes among this town’smany crumbling buildings are weeds.

Streets stand deserted.Nearly a third of thepopulation – more than 10,000 people – haveleft.In the former DDR as a whole,nearly 3m –17% of the population – have moved out, leavingwell over a million apartments empty.Most havegone seeking work to the west of what wasknown as the “anti-fascist protection barrier”–the border that once split the country in two.

Wittenberge’s famous clock tower looms 100ft above what remains of a sprawling disusedsewing-machine plant,once the town’s mainemployer.Alongside it sit the abandoned hulks ofan oil-seed mill and textile factory.In recentyears the brick facade of the mill has served as abackdrop for a small annual opera festival;an attempt by the town to breathe life into thisabandoned part of town for a few days eachyear.The only other flurry of activity the Packhofquarter sees from time to time is the arrival offilm crews shooting post-second-world-wardramas.There’s no need to build a set:the partiallyderelict,deserted streets offer the perfect location.

The one,hugely expensive,modernisationproject completed here last summer,amid greatfanfares,was a £52m upgrade of the railwaystation.But even this was blown a big raspberryby many residents,who viewed the upgrade,mainly of tracks,as a means for trains to thunderthrough the town even faster.Only once,early inthe morning,does a gleaming Berlin-Hamburgexpress stop here for two minutes.On the rare occasions it stops a little longer,observedDer Spiegel,one of Germany’s leading newsmagazines, it is so that the driver can hop out “topiss on the floor of this small town before leaving

the place once more forgotten by the west”.When Chancellor Gerhard Schröder arrived

to crack open a bottle of champagne toinaugurate the new station,he was greeted by acrowd of hecklers.The protest was just one signof how deeply disenchanted many east Germans,“Ossies”,are with their west German,“Wessie”,neighbours and vice versa.

The days when millions of East Germansstreamed across the newly opened border to beembraced and offered flowers by those in thewest seem long past.The moment when ordinaryGermans,eastern and western,stood,armslinked,singing “We are one people”is longforgotten.According to one recent opinion poll,12% of east Germans think it would be a goodthing if the Berlin Wall were re-erected;twice asmany west Germans think the same.So why hasthe dream of a reunited Germany turned so sour?

Some have likened what has happened to aonce friendly “company takeover”of the east bythe west that has turned hostile.Certainly thosein the west resent having poured over £1,000billion into what has become an economic blackhole;while those in the east are disillusioned thatthis investment,much of it in infrastructure,hasfailed to prevent huge job losses.But the truthlies deeper than economics.It has its roots in asplit in the German psyche – a fundamentaldifference in mentality that exists between thoseliving on either side of the former border,onceso brutally enforced by the DDR that over 1,000of its citizens were killed trying to cross it.

Heinrich August Winkler,one of Germany’sleading historians,describes it as a “mix ofeconomic weakness and long-term disposition”,with its roots in the country’s authoritarian past.“As West Germany was liberated by the westernallies and not the Soviet Union,it had a chance

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Below: in December 1989, after almost 30 years of brutal division, jubilant Germans mount the Berlin Wall, embracing the country’s reunification

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The stocky 42-year-old is a born entrepreneur.Even under the old communist regime,helaunched a series of lucrative black-marketschemes, including reproducing pop posters as aboy and learning how to blow glass,rolling outdozens of orders a week for family and friends.

When the wall came down,Benecke started abusiness repairing umbrellas.But as one factoryafter another closed in Wittenberge,and the massexodus from the town began,he saw a newopening in the market – he invested first in oneremovals van and now has a fleet.Discussing thefate of the town where he was born,he switchesoff his phone and becomes earnest.

“When the factories closed,everything wentto the dogs.Those in the west just decided theeast would become a region of consumers,not aplace where anything was made any more.Littlethought was given to what the future would looklike here after that.So,first, the men left to findwork.Then they took their wives and children.Most of those left are either old or very young 33

to open itself to the political culture of the West.The real tragedy for East Germany was that oneform of dictatorship [Nazism] was exchanged foranother,which had a tremendous psychologicalimpact.It has taken West Germans time to realisethis is a united country but still two societies.”

In the heady first years after reunification,there was talk of the “wall inside people’s heads”,expected to last well after the watchtowers andconcrete barricades were torn down;15 yearson it seems,for many,this mental wall has grown.To find out why,there could hardly be a morepoignant place to start looking than Wittenberge,and from there trace the stories of those along asection of where the border once followed theElbe river – across which East and West Germansoldiers once regularly exchanged fire.

) ) ) ) )

The headline of the newspaper cutting framedon Detlef Benecke’s office wall declares him tobe “the luckiest man in Wittenberge”.Beneckeruns a removals company and business is brisk.

‘I PAID THE HIGHESTPRICE BECAUSE OFTHE WALL. I CAN’ TUNDERSTAND THOSEWHO WANT IT BACK’INGE LEMME (left)In 1974, Inge’s son, Hans Georg, was killed by DDR guards while swimming across the Elbe river to the West. Above: a memorialstone ‘for the border victims of the Elbe’

or have nowhere else to go.This place is turninginto a ‘pair of dead trousers’ [a ghost town].”

One of the reasons the east’s economy was gutted so quickly was Kohl’s decision toexchange old East German ostmarks fordeutschmarks on a one-to-one basis.Whilepopulist and politically shrewd,this was largelyaimed at stemming a potentially disastrous floodof people moving to the west.And in the shortterm,it did boost the east’s economy by givingthose with limited savings some spending power.But in the longer term,it wrecked any chancemany East German industries had of remainingcompetitive;overnight, the wage costs of a muchless efficient workforce were hugely inflated,virtually quadrupling the cost of their products.

Winkler,a professor at Berlin’s HumboldtUniversity and author of a recent two-volumehistory of Germany,accuses west Germanpoliticians of “lacking imagination”.Theassumption was that the east would soon bepulled into line with the west.Some talked a

December 5, 2004 The Sunday Times Magazine 35

of a “second economic miracle”.Much was madeof the “confident,powerful”nation a unitedGermany would become.Some boasted:“Germany will be unstoppable”.That is not howthings now look from Wittenberge.

Benecke,who has become a city councillor totry to shake up the local political status quo,blames a lack of innovative thinking amongthose in power.The same “old sacks”,he says,have dominated Germany’s political landscapefor too long.The bureaucracy,hidden taxes andsocial-security payments burdening Germanemployers are so onerous,they stifle newenterprise.Instead of stimulating the creation ofnew jobs by stripping away the red tape,thecountry has artificially propped up certainindustries and manufacturers and continuedwith a lavish welfare system that the country’sageing population can no longer afford.

Decades after West Germany’s economicmiracle dragged the country from the rubble ofwar to the height of economic power,books havestarted appearing with titles such as Germany:The Decline of a Superstar.With unemploymentat its highest in recent history,and growthstagnant, the country is experiencing what someare calling a “gloom boom”.West Germans blameit on reunification.But economists argue that thedecline would have set in anyway,as Germanyhad evolved one of the most rigid and expensivelabour markets in the world.Reunification,theyargue,actually concealed the problem for years asthe country went on a huge borrowing spree topour money into the east, leaving a national debtthat has breached euro-zone guidelines each yearsince the launch of the single currency.

In recent years,Schröder has begun the painfulprocess of reform,causing controversy by cuttingcherished social programmes.One fallout is thatextremist politicians,both on the left and right,have been voted onto local councils.But fromJanuary 2005 these cutbacks will begin to bite

But the small man has been forgotten.Our liveshave become very hard.We feel used.”

Not that the Overlachs were great lovers of theold system.When he was a teenager,Rudigerescaped to the West by swimming across the Elbe.Incredibly,he swam back,undetected,a few dayslater after feeling guilty about leaving his ailingmother.Loose talk about what he had done led tohim being jailed for two years.When Daniellaapplied for a passport to leave the DDR,it wasdenied.She became one of millions subject tosurveillance by the Stasi, the secret police,amongwhose bizarre methods was the compilation of a“smell database”comprising stolen items ofclothing such as socks and underpants, to helpsniffer dogs track supposed subversives.

“We wanted freedom and now we have it,”saysRudiger,finally slumping in a chair in thegarden.“But what good is it doing us? There isno work.Our young people are leaving.Ourpolice state has collapsed,but what we have beenoffered in its place is an ‘elbow society’whereeveryone is just out for themselves.”

As hard as it was for them,the Overlachsencouraged their only son to leave Wittenbergeto find work in the west.Before I meet him at theend of my trip,when the deep divisions that stillexist between those living on either side of theformer border become startlingly clear,a series ofencounters serve as painful reminders of howbrutally divided physically Germany once was.

One road out of Wittenberge winds through asmall village, little more than a street lined withold farmhouses,where 75-year-old Inge Lemmelives.One wall in her home is lined withphotographs of a handsome,smiling young manwith unruly blond hair; the last photograph takenwhen he was 21, just a few months before he waskilled.This is Hans Georg,Inge’s son.

The last time Inge saw her son,he was wavingat her as he cycled away from their farm afterpaying a short visit home during his period 35

even deeper,as unemployment benefits will beslashed from two-thirds of previous salary to afixed welfare payment of under £100 a week.With the official unemployment rate in the eastrunning at around 18% (unofficially the rate iscloser to 40-50% in some places),compared withjust over 8% in the west, this will lead to muchgreater hardship for those in the former DDR.

) ) ) ) )

Rudiger Overlach is bent low over a smallartificial pond,absorbed in creating a miniatureJapanese landscape in the garden of his modesthome on the outskirts of Wittenberge,as his wifestarts talking about how she believes he will fareonce the new reforms take effect.“From Januarymy husband will receive €340 (£235) a month,”says Daniella,48,who has an advanced terminalillness.“Once I’m gone,Rudi is planning onstarting his own business designing Japanesegardens.”From the look of the wilted rushessurrounding the pond her 53-year-old husbandis tending,this could be an uphill struggle.

“Life was good for us before.I worked in abakery.Rudi was a builder.We raised a few pigson the side and made enough money to buildour own house.Our life was secure.When thewall fell,we thought life could only get better.

The huge clock tower in Wittenberge marks time for the all-but-abandoned town in the east

‘EVERY THING WENTTO THE DOGS WHENTHE FACTORIESCLOSED. FIRST THEMEN LEFT, THENTHEIR WIVES AND CHILDREN’DETLEF BENECKE (right)A shrewd businessman, Benecke started up a removals company when the residents ofWittenberge began a mass exodus to the west

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December 5, 2004 The Sunday Times Magazine 37

Further along the river, in the hamlet of Vockfey,Hans Ebeling,an elderly farmer with asmallholding that had once sat precariously closeto the electrified fence following the line of theElbe,recalls sometimes hearing gunshots fired atthose trying to cross the border.“We neverthought contact with the west would come sorapidly.The sudden freedom was both beautifuland unexpected,”says Ebeling,who became alocal councillor when the wall fell,and foughthard for the community of Neuhaus,withinwhich Vockfey sits, to be incorporated back intothe west German region of Lower Saxony,towhich it traditionally belonged.This has broughtthe area some financial benefits.But it still lagsfar behind the prosperous Lüneburg across theriver and,further afield,Hamburg,one of thewealthiest cities in Europe.“Young people todayhave no idea how it was back then,”says Ebeling.“They look back and think things were better.”

You do not have to search far to understandwhat he means.The young in nearby Neuhausare unanimous in their belief that their only hope of a job lies across the river in affluentLüneburg.And yet they express a strong sense of nostalgia – or “Ostalgie”,as the Germanshave dubbed it – for the East German way oflife their parents knew.

Drawing a veil over the fact that it was asociety more spied on than any other in history,they, like many others, talk of the former DDR asa cosy,communal Heimat (homeland).Suchsentiments have made the recent German filmGood Bye Lenin! a hit,and meant former foodstaples such as Bulgarian plums,ersatz coffee –made from charred vegetables – and the old-fashioned Trabant cars that families waited yearsto acquire are now undergoing a revival. 37

“It’s now or never.”The captain of the boat thensystematically raked his craft backwards andforwards at speed until he felt the propeller meetresistance,then announced with satisfaction:“That’s got him.”The propeller had slicedthrough Hans Georg’s skull.His body was left torot in the water for three weeks in the hope thatthis would disguise the exact cause of his death.

When his body was returned to his family,hisparents were told they were to blame for“bringing him up improperly”and “filling hishead with false ideas”.The family had relations inWest Germany with whom they exchangedlimited correspondence.Six years ago an attemptwas made to prosecute the captain of the boat formanslaughter.But his crew mates suffered asudden bout of amnesia,claiming they could notrecall what had happened,and he was acquitted.

“I paid the highest price possible because ofthe wall,”Inge says.“I understand how desperatea lot of people feel because they have no work.Itis not an easy situation.But I cannot understandanyone who says they want the wall back.”

‘IT IS THE EAST, NOT WEST, THAT ISTHE LAND OFOPPORTUNITY’SILVIO OVERLACH (right)Disillusioned by their new life in Lüneburg in thewest, Silvio and his wife plan to return toWittenberge, where his parents (above) still live

of compulsory military service with the EastGerman army.It was a sunny Sunday afternoon,August 1974.Later that day,Hans Georg was due at a nearby military base,before being postedas a guard to a high-security camp for politicalprisoners in the north of the country.When he failed to report for duty,soldiers were sent toquestion Inge and her late husband.Theygenuinely had no idea where he was.“He wantedto protect us,”says Inge,absently stroking a photograph of her son.“Only later did wediscover he had admitted in a letter to his unclethat he did not know how he was going to getthrough his military service.”

Inge believes the prospect of being posted toguard political prisoners,and the cruel conditionsher son was expecting to have to enforce there,pushed him to attempt to escape.He was a strongswimmer,a lifeguard.He thought he could makeit across the Elbe.But as soon as he was reportedmissing,border guards ordered floodlights to betrained on the stretch of the river nearest to hishome.He didn’t attempt to cross that night.Thenext night, the floodlights were still on,but hefelt desperate enough to attempt his escape.

The details of what happened next onlyemerged after the Berlin Wall fell and records ofborder fatalities were scrutinised by authoritiesseeking prosecutions of both politicians andmilitary officers considered responsible for theshoot-to-kill policy enforced along the border.

Hans Georg, it was recorded,almost made it to the western bank of the Elbe before beingseen by an East German patrol boat that had beenploughing back and forth looking for him.When the boat drew level with him and tried topull him on board,according to one crewmember,he dived below the surface,shouting:

Gerhard Schröder reopens the railway station inWittenberge; he faced a mob of disgruntled locals aRI

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one recent banking report noted that eastGerman workers,on average,clock up 100 hoursmore per year than their western counterparts.

“As far as I’m concerned it is east Germany,not west, that is the land of opportunity,”Silvioconcludes.“Just like in America,when thepioneers started moving out to the Wild West.”

Few exemplify this “pioneer”spirit better thanDetlef Benecke;even if, in his case, it has a rather macabre edge.Once Benecke has helpedall those who want to leave Wittenberge,I inquire,what direction does he see his businesstaking? Without missing a beat,he replies that he has been thinking about opening a funeraltransportation service,maybe a crematorium.“It looks like only the old will be left here soon,”he says.“They will need catering for eventually.”

But if others like Silvio Overlach start movingback,bringing new business opportunities withthem,there may be hope for Wittenberge yet.The future of the east, says the historian Winkler,depends on a “renaissance of civil society”.Andalready,he says, there are “positive symptoms”.

On my way out of Wittenberge,I glance up atthe giant clock and note it is running 15 minutesfast.Rather than time running out for places likethis,optimists like Silvio would argue they could,eventually,find themselves ahead in the race to galvanise Germany and rid it of its reputationas the sick man of Europe.But at the moment,in east Germany,optimists are in short supply s

38 The Sunday Times Magazine December 5, 2004

Without meaning it as a metaphor,Iris Goigal,a17-year-old pupil at Neuhaus’s high school,says:“At least you knew where you were when thewall was there.”She means it literally,explainingthat her mother used to get lost in East Berlin andcould only orient herself by looking at the wall.But it is as if not only her mother’s generation buthers too now feels so lost, they can only find their bearings by referring to the psychologicalbarrier that still separates east and west.

Little remains today of the real Berlin Wall.Most of it was ground to rubble and used as the foundation for a network of new autobahnsacross east Germany.Potsdamer Platz,once a no-man’s-land across which concrete barriers andbarbed wire stretched,now has a McDonald’sand Starbucks.When an artist recently re-createda portion of the wall in the capital near theformer Checkpoint Charlie,erecting 1,065wooden crosses in memory of those who losttheir lives trying to cross the border, it caused anoutcry.The installation was condemned as a“Disneyfication”of the cold war.But many sawthe row as a sign that those in the west wouldprefer to forget the country’s troubled past.

Sitting in a classroom discussing their hopesfor the future,Iris and other pupils in Neuhausconstantly repeat the message they receive fromtheir parents: that life was more secure before thewall fell.A job,at least,was guaranteed,healthcare was free and the education system better.

Only one boy,Denny Lengkeit,dares to say:“We wouldn’t want the wall back,or the spies orthe border guards.”But,with the brashness ofyouth,he voices the belief,widely held but rarelyexpressed so openly that:“Even so,there was a lotabout the old system that was good.”At this thegirls in the group talk enthusiastically about the“community spirit”their parents once enjoyedand they crave.There is little doubt that underthe extreme conditions of a totalitarian state,neighbours and friends (ones not signed up by theStasi, that is) had to support each other more todevise ways of loosening society’s straitjacket.

) ) ) ) )

On the outskirts of Lüneburg, in the driveway ofthe smart house that Daniella and RudigerOverlach’s 29-year-old son,Silvio,has built forhis family,a new Mercedes CLK 200 sits as agleaming symbol of newly acquired wealth.While the car is mainly used for driving back toWittenberge to visit his father and ailing mother,it is clear that, in material terms,moving toLüneburg has enabled Silvio,his wife,Kathrin,their young son and baby daughter, to achieve acomfortable lifestyle.Not that it wasn’t hard won.When Silvio first moved west he says heencountered the sort of discrimination manyEast Germans complain about.Employed by aconstruction company for almost half the wagepaid to his West German counterpart,he and theother Ossies were given accommodation in a

‘YOUNG PEOPLEHAVE NO IDEA. THEYTHINK IT WASBET TER BACK THEN’HANS EBELING (above)A farmer from Vockfey, a hamlet just next tothe Elbe river, Ebeling used to hear gunshotsfired at those attempting to cross the border

had been,things began to wear thin.From thewest German perspective there is a feeling that we struggled for 40 years to pull this countryout of the ashes of war and yet those in the eastexpect their lives to be transformed overnight.”

Medge is too diplomatic to admit that basicprejudices arising from different mindsets alsorun just below the surface.While Ossies seethemselves as more open- and social-mindedthan those in the west,Wessies view them aswhiny and slow-thinking.And while Wessies seethemselves as modern,sophisticated andexperienced in the ways of western capitalism,they are viewed in the east as arrogant andmaking Ossies feel like second-class citizens.

As far as Medge and most Germans areconcerned,it will take another generation,maybe two,before the tensions between east andwest ease and the mental wall that continues to exist in many people’s minds finally crumbles.But right now,for Silvio Overlach,the differencesare simply too great.He has recently decided to try and move back to Wittenberge.Hisexpanding business,he feels,can be conductedjust as well from there – if not better.“Workers in the west have had it so good for so long they don’t put much effort in and,I have found,are unreliable,”says Silvio.“I’d rather employsomeone from the east any day.I know they’llshow up for work.They need the money.”Thereis some documentary evidence to support this:

removals container.“We were considered cheaplabour,so naive and desperate for work that wewould take whatever we were given.”

When his wife joined him and started work asa book-keeper,they were able to rent a small flat.Silvio then started an internet company sellingornamental swords and daggers,which grew outof his passion for the martial arts.To his surprisethe company quickly took off,enabling thefamily to buy a plot of land and start buildingtheir own home.But this led to further trouble.

Their elderly neighbours appeared to take aninstant dislike to them,eventually complainingto the police that Silvio had exposed himself inthe garden,a complaint that the police foundgroundless.Silvio believes at its root was a feelingof resentment many Wessies feel for their Ossie neighbours.“People here seem to simplylook for reasons to pick a fight,”he laments.

In the comfortable setting of Lüneburg townhall,Ulrich Medge,the mayor,tries to explain what he believes lies at the root of suchantipathy.“In the beginning,those from the east were welcomed with open arms.Butwhen the euphoria subsided and reality set in,west Germans realised east Germans would becompeting with them for jobs,and then there was this huge outflow of money from theirpockets to try and shore up the former DDR.When all they heard in return were complaintsfrom those in the east about how hard their lives