Office politics

This is Part II in a series on my time in East Germany. Part I is here.

By the time I reached the second floor I was already aware that there was a figure waiting for me on the third. I could see the silhouette of a middle-aged woman doing up a stray button on her cardigan. I set my face to a look of positivity I did not feel and walked up the final flight.

‘Ich bin Frau Henkel,’ she said, putting out her hand for me to shake and looking at me inquisitively. I introduced myself.

‘Dah-vid?’ she repeated my name back to me giving it a heavy German inflection. She pondered for a second, then smiled. ’You mean, like the king in the Bible?’

I felt my muscles relax a little. It seemed like the first friendly thing anyone had said to me since I’d left home. ‘Yes,’ I said with a nervous laugh. ‘I suppose so. Like the king in the Bible.’ She could hardly have made a more incongruous comparison.

‘Well, then, come along. Come along,’ she said. ‘Klaus is waiting to see you. I’m sure he can sort all this problem out.’

I followed her along the corridor silently, rather disheartened at being referred to as ‘this problem’. We passed door after door on both sides. All of them were shut.

‘It’s not far. It’s not far,’ she said. I felt I should be making conversation, but I had some instinct that the things I wanted to say were best left unsaid.

‘Here we are,’ she said at last as we came to a stop at a door on the left. It opened up into a small office that had two desks, one of which was hers. Behind the other sat a man I guessed to be Klaus. As we entered, he looked up and beamed.

‘Mein lieber junger Freund,’ he exclaimed, standing up and taking my hand to shake it with a vigour that almost knocked me over. ‘Welcome, welcome. I am sorry. I am so very, very sorry for the trials you must have gone through to get here.’

‘Danke schön. Ja.. Ich meine.. Man wusste nicht..,’ my German language skills deserted me completely as I stumbled to put any coherent thoughts together.

Klaus looked at me quizzically for a second. He was tall, in his forties, with greying hair and huge round glasses.

When it was clear that no further words were forthcoming from my mouth, he shook his head with a laugh. ‘Don’t worry. There will be plenty of time for talk. Now we must have coffee, cake. Kuchen für unseren neuen Kollegen!’

Hearing myself referred to as the new colleague gave me a jolt and reminded me why I was there. My heart sank as I considered what impression my risible attempts to speak German must have made.

Frau Henkel had left while Klaus had been talking and now she returned, and not alone. Suddenly the room was full of people.

‘You must meet everyone,’ Klaus cried out as they came in. ‘Comrades! Meet your new co-worker. Just now arrived from the West.’

I was bewildered. Faces crowded around me. My hand was shaken again and again. Voices came from all sides. ’Wilkommen in Berlin.’ ‘Herzlich wilkommen.’ ‘Wilkommen in der DDR.’ My own voice repeating my name and saying ‘Danke’ over and over as if it was the only word I knew in the entire German lexicon, which at that moment it might as well have been.

Cake was pressed upon me, which I somehow managed to eat despite having no appetite. Coffee was poured, offered, refilled and offered again. I struggled to give an impression of being anything other than a grateful idiot, thankful for everything given, but unable to say anything further. Everyone was smiling and friendly. And every now and then I caught the flash of lapel pins – lapel pins denoting membership of the ruling communist party – to remind me where I was.

Gradually, people dispersed, drifting back to their own offices. Klaus, Frau Henkel and I were left alone. Frau Henkel sat down and began leafing through papers. Klaus told me to draw up a chair next to his desk and shook his head sadly. ‘We had no idea you were coming today. None at all. We knew you would be coming eventually. Yes. That we did know. But not until much later this month. Sometimes, you must understand,’ he gave an odd little smile, ‘communications between us here and your authorities, er, over there, can get – how shall I put it? – interrupted.’ Frau Henkel looked up and gave a little snort. I did not know whether Klaus was making a joke or trying to convey some meaning that eluded me.

‘Yes,’ continued Klaus, ‘you must be tired after your long journey. No work for you today. That can wait until the morning. We will have plenty of time to discuss all the details. But,’ his voice rose as a thought struck him, ‘oh my goodness, where are you to live? And do you have any money?’

I wanted to say that I did have some Deutschmarks, but I didn’t know whether that would be to commit some horrible faux pas. Instead I committed a worse one. ‘Ich habe kein Ostgeld.’ I said, unthinkingly using the West German derogatory colloquialism for East German money.

Klaus paused, and looked at me very seriously. ’What I think you mean to say is that you have no currency of the German Democratic Republic,’ he corrected. I blushed so hard it burnt my cheeks. ‘No, of course, that’s what I wanted to say, yes, I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to, its just that,’ my voice trailed off.

Klaus saw my confusion and laughed. ‘Oh, don’t look so scared. We’re all perfectly nice people really.’

An hour or so later and my suitcase and I were once again out on the streets of East Berlin. Frau Henkel had been busy on the telephone and had ensured that there was a room for me in a communal flat. Number 7, Marschlewskistrasse. Just by the U-Bahn station of the same name. I also had a cash advance on my first month’s wages to tide me over.

Looking to my right as I left the building, I could see Checkpoint Charlie straddle the street a few hundred metres to the south, and beyond it the flashing neon of West Berlin. The buildings around me were old and tired, and on their walls I could see dozens of bullet holes. Over forty years before, the last straggling German soldiers had defended these streets before the advance of the Red Army leaving these scars for me to find. A stone’s throw behind me lay the bunker where Hitler had shot himself, while a little to the north stood the ruined synagogue of Oranienburger Strasse, a bombed out reminder of a whole world that had gone forever. The horrors of the 20th Century, past and present, crowded about me in this one square mile.

I felt very small. Being away from home was strange enough, without the added sense of playing some complicated board game the rules of which everyone knew except me.

I paid for an U-Bahn ticket with my unfamiliar currency and boarded the train. I changed lines at Alexanderplatz, where the confusing layout of the corridors was a reminder that there was a third line passing through, hidden somewhere, carrying passengers from a very different world.

Marschlewskistrasse was a narrow grey side road off the extravagant avenue of Karl-Marx-Allee. Number 7 wasn’t far. A rather dishevelled looking man opened the door. For the first time that entire day, he was somebody who was actually expecting me. He spoke with an accent so impenetrable I thought it must be foreign, but turned out be Saxon, from the deep south east of East Germany, and one I’d never heard before in my Western-centric German lessons.

He showed me to my room. Small and neat, it had a bed, a table, and a wardrobe with a space for hanging clothes and half a dozen or so drawers. In the corner was a wood-burning stove that he told me I would have to look after myself. There was no other form of heating in the building.

I unpacked slowly. I thought of my parents. I had no idea how to get in touch to let them know I had arrived safely. Loneliness and homesickness pressed down on me.

Shortly after 7.30am the next morning, I was back in the office. The communist work regime was not geared towards late risers. Klaus saw me with my first assignment. He had a pamphlet for me to translate about the Freie Deutsche Jugend – the Free German Youth – the communist organisation for people under 18. Membership was technically voluntary but, as I soon understood, ‘volunteering’ not to join was quite a bold choice.

The text was everything I feared it would be. It could well have been written by a Western satirist poking fun at communism. Everything about East German life was vaunted, celebrated, the benign munificence of its rulers praised, the stern but smiling figure of Erich Honecker, the head of the communist party, was seen again and again. Contrasts were drawn with the evils of Western Europe, the exploitation of its population, the misery of everyday existence. To see my own country, for all its faults, so implicitly vilified riled me a little. I didn’t have the courage to raise objections, though.

Klaus took me through some of his expectations for my work. Some things did not surprise me, of course. I had already guessed that, even in English, the terms ‘East Germany’ or ‘East German’, were absolutely verboten. The country was the German Democratic Republic, which could be abbreviated to GDR, and its population were to be called GDR citizens. New to me, though, was the fact that I was under no circumstances to use the term ‘East Berlin’. The city I resided in was Berlin. The true Berlin. West Berlin was an aberration the least said about which the better. If there should be any confusion in the mind of the reader as to which Berlin was being talked about, I was to use the term ‘Berlin, the capital of the German Democratic Republic’.

Klaus took me through this seriously, but very genially. Sometimes I suspected his tongue was in his cheek, but I was far too green to tell for sure. ‘There is a very respected slogan here in the GDR,’ he said to me on my second day. ‘Von der Sowjetunion lernen heisst siegen lernen – to learn from the Soviet Union is to learn victory. True, of course, true. Unfortunately,’ he sighed, ‘the Soviet Union is currently making this slogan rather difficult for us. Mr Gorbachev seems intent on making choices that are not entirely in line with our vision of a pure socialist future. And as for the Poles and the Hungarians,’ he grinned suddenly before whispering conspiratorially, ‘best not speak of them at all.’

My first week passed in this haze of newness and alienation. I had never worked in an office before. I had never even had a proper job before. I spoke very little, both because I lacked confidence speaking German and also because I was always worried of saying the wrong thing.

Friday afternoon arrived, and with it the rather intimidating void of the weekend in a city where I was friendless and alone. Klaus asked to see me. For the first time, I thought I detected a note of embarrassment in his voice.

‘There’s someone who wants to meet you,’ he said, avoiding eye contact. ‘A colleague. A senior colleague. She, er, she wants to have a talk with you.’

‘No problem,’ I replied, rather disconcerted by his manner.

‘You should speak to her,’ he continued, as if I had said I wouldn’t. ‘Frau Rohm is very important in our organisation. By which I mean she can be helpful to you. I mean should you need help. Not that you do. At this point. But don’t worry about it though. You have no need to worry.’

He could hardly have chosen words to worry me more as I made my way down to the second floor to Frau Rohm’s office. I knocked, and she immediately opened the door herself. It struck me that Klaus had not told me, and I hadn’t asked, what precisely her role was.

I was surprised at how young she was. I had expected a large elderly matron, but instead found a woman under 40, slim, tall, pretty, in a sharply tailored red dress.

She smiled benignly at me as she shook my hand. ‘You must be our new comrade from Great Britain. I’ve heard so much about you. How lovely to meet you. Come in. Sit down. Do have some coffee.’

She had quite a large office all to herself. It was tidy, almost spartan. On the wall hung a portrait of Karl Marx.

We sat down at a table and I took the coffee she offered me.

‘Tell me,’ she said smilingly. ‘How are you finding it here? I hope your first week with us is to your liking?’

I replied politely and positively. She continued with some bland questions about my accommodation, my journey into work in the morning; I responded equally blandly. It struck me that after less than five days in East Berlin, I was getting skilled at instinctively giving bland replies.

A pause ensued. Long enough to become slightly awkward. Frau Rohm was looking at me. Staring even.

‘I understand it must be difficult for you,’ she said at last. ‘Far from home, with no family or friends nearby. In a foreign country. A country so unlike your own in so many ways.’

‘Yes, a little,’ I said meekly.

She continued. ‘I do want you to know that if you have any concerns, anything troubling you, anything at all, you can come to see me. And it will be in complete confidence.’

I thanked her.

‘In the same way,’ she continued quietly, ‘I would like you to assure me that anything I say to you will be in complete confidence.’

‘Of course,’ I felt compelled to reply. Her words were on the face of it entirely reassuring, and yet they made me ill at ease.

Another pause.

‘You must find life here in the GDR very different from the life you are used to in your society.’

I shifted awkwardly in my chair as I sought to evade answering her question directly. ‘Oh, I’m from a very small town in rural Wales. It’s nothing like this.’

She smiled as if at a rather foolish child. ‘That’s not what I meant. And I think you know very well that that’s not what I meant.’

I felt like a swimmer who suddenly finds that the water has got too deep.

‘Our society,’ she continued with a certain steel in her voice, ‘has values that make it quite different to yours. Values that we believe should be protected. Do you understand?’

‘Yes, I think so,’ I replied.

‘Capitalism cares for the strong. Capitalism is itself strong. It needs no protection. Socialism cares for the weak. And therefore socialism does need protection from those who would seek to damage it.’

I took another sip of coffee.

‘Capitalism doesn’t care about being criticised,’ she went on. ‘The strong do not care when they are criticised by the weak. Why should they? It means nothing to them. But it is not so here. We protect the weak from the strong. Criticism of socialism is not like criticism of capitalism. It is an attack on what is good and noble. It is an attempt to put down the weak and raise up the strong. And that is why our society is how it is. We protect the weak. We make them safe.’

Her words confused me. They seemed to make sense, and yet I knew they were wrong. But I could not see precisely where their wrongness lay.

Frau Rohm watched me silently for a moment, as if trying to read the impact her words had had.

Then she spoke again. ‘Why do you think the Wall was built?’

Her question startled me. It felt like she was breaking a taboo.

She shook her head at my evident confusion. ‘You needn’t answer. I know what you are thinking. That the Wall is a dreadful scar. That it is to prevent “East Germans” from having the right to leave. I know how it is presented.’

I felt a chill.

‘But let me talk about rights,’ she continued. ‘Let me talk about a young girl in 1959. She was six years old. Her parents lived with her in Leipzig. They were good people. Building a new society, a better society. Then suddenly the girl’s mother fell ill. Very ill. The doctors said it was a tumour in her stomach. That she needed an operation and quickly. It would be done the following Monday.

‘The girl and her father went to see her in hospital that Monday morning. They stood waiting as the nurses looked at them, embarrassed. And do you know what they were told?’

I shook my head.

‘That the surgeon had gone. He had fled,’ she uttered the German word ‘geflüchtet’ with barely concealed contempt. ‘He had taken the train to Berlin the previous day and crossed over to the West. They tried to find another surgeon to operate. Eventually they did. But it was too late. The mother died two weeks later.’

I was agonisingly ill equipped for this conversation. ‘I’m so very sorry,’ I said, even though it wasn’t at all clear whether the young girl and her mother bore any relationship to Frau Rohm herself.

‘I’m sorry too,’ she said. ‘I really am very sorry. I’m sure that surgeon went on to have a prosperous life in the West. Oh, I’m sure he enjoyed his “freedom”. But what about that young girl’s right to grow up with her mother?’

She looked at me piercingly again. ‘The people left behind had rights too. And the people left behind were the ones suffering. Trying to build a better life, and suffering. The Wall stopped their suffering. The Wall gave them rights.’

I knew I was being manipulated. I was also conscious that the manipulation was beginning to be successful.

‘That surgeon and the people like him are lauded in your society. The mother who died is forgotten. Do you think that’s right?’

‘No,’ I said. ‘That isn’t right.’

‘Whose rights would you prioritise? The surgeon looking for wealth, or the people he left behind to die?’

‘The people left behind.’ I was horrified at what was coming out of my mouth, and scared by my desire to please her.

A subtle smile flitted over her face. She did not reply, but let my response hang in the air. I felt like I’d lost a game of chess to a grand master.

Then she glanced at her watch. ‘Oh my goodness, is it that late already? I’ve kept you far too long. You should go. I’m sure you have an exciting weekend planned in your new home town.’ She put particular stress on the last four words

I blushed and we both stood up.

She shook my hand.

‘It’s been so good talking to you. I feel we have reached an excellent understanding. I’m very pleased with our conversation.’

I was confused. I mumbled something indistinct in reply.

‘Of course,’ she continued, ‘we both know this is in complete confidence. Don’t forget, you must come and see me if anything troubles you. Anything at all.’

I went back upstairs. All my colleagues had already gone. The offices and corridors were deserted.

I wandered through the streets to my flat. For the first time since I arrived I felt not just alone and uncomfortable, but afraid. I looked around. Were the policemen at the corner talking about me? Was the man walking behind following me? Or was I just a stupid naive youngster drunk on Cold War rhetoric and reading far too much into an innocuous conversation with a woman who was, after all, only defending the values of her own country?

The flat was empty. The other residents all had families in the provinces to whom they returned at the weekend. I sat on my bed and hugged my knees. I went over the conversation with Frau Rohm in my head. I felt I had betrayed myself in my replies. How could I have been so played? I thought of the university place I had been offered in Vienna. Instead of sitting on my own in this bleak, desolate city, I might at that moment have been sipping beer on the banks of the Danube. Maybe it wasn’t too late.

Nothing in my life had prepared me for this. I wished I had someone to talk to. But I hardly knew my new colleagues at all. And I had no other friends here. I felt marooned in a world that was entirely alien.

I spent a sleepless night. As dawn broke, I got dressed and forced myself to eat a little breakfast. I pulled open the bottom drawer in the wardrobe. Under the clothes lay my passport. I took it out and held it tight. I had decided what I was going to do.