Il Gran Rifiuto

von Marcus Krug

I should have stayed with Anna that night. The love of my life? She was in for some adult naptime, our debut. But I rather wanted to go on a drinking binge with my friends. With a mocking smile on her beautiful face, she simply said “Oh, you silly men!” So much wisdom from an eighteen year old girl is so unbearably painful when you think about it now, after all what happened.

It was the night after our last exam of the Reifeprüfung. As a son of politically reliable working class parents, I was granted the privilege of attending extended secondary school. I excelled in languages. Russian, Chinese and Italian were my favourites, among others. Because of that, I was chosen from an early stage for diplomatic service. That was the way it used to be in my country. My country needed young and promising people like me. We wanted to build the first socialist model state on German soil.

Anyway, that night we had other – sillier – plans. After a pub crawl we had given ourselves enough liquid courage to challenge the system we all profited from. Fuelled with spirits, we staggered along the streets, singing songs from our school songbooks, dripping with ideology. The tone changed, however, the closer we got to the Wall. We were just in front of theAntifascist Protective Bulwark, pretty close to the first fence and half way into Bob Dylan’s most recent song “Blowing in the Wind”, bawling out “Yes, and how many years can some people exist, before they’re allowed to be free?” when the sirens went off and the searchlights came on.

There was a lot of commotion – people bumping into each other, toppling over. I toppled over, fell and got stuck in the barbed wire, but the others were able to make a run for it. There are still visible scars on my hands and my arms and my knees and my legs, up to this day. Pale scars that tend to change colour and hurt a bit when the weather changes. Equally long lasting and painful but invisible scars, I was inflicted with shortly thereafter.

Soon enough, I was surrounded by border guards. The barrels of their guns pointing at me. Young men, barely older than myself. Nervous fingers trembling at the triggers of shaking guns. Shortly after that cars arrived, spitting out men in greyish trench coats and hats in similar colour. The coats ran around and asked questions. All sorts of questions.

With my hands cuffed behind my back, I was taken to one of the cars by a border guard, an order from a high ranking coat. “Jawohl, Herr Hauptmann!” said the young guard. “Don’t let him bleed on the upholstery, put him in the boot!” was the coat’s reply.

I didn’t know where I was brought, because I had no idea, how long I had been cowering in the car. I couldn’t tell whether it was moving or not – the car. It could have been somewhere in Berlin or some other place far away. The only thing I knew, it was some kind of a prison. And they kept me there for four weeks straight.

The interrogations began soon after I had sobered up. I was brought into a room with two chairs and a table. Placed on a chair, I sat with my back to the door. Next to the door hung a portrait, depicting Walter Ulbricht, the Chairman of the State Council back then. I sat facing the Hauptmann from the scene at the Wall. The one who gave the orders. Now he ordered me “Hands under your thighs, inmate #1138!” I followed his instruction.

An impish smile unexpectedly appeared on his face, “What would you like to tell us?” I stammered that I didn’t do anything wrong, whereupon he started to read the indictment, “You are charged with attempted desertion of the republic.” Then he looked up at me and went on “I think you are familiar with the less bureaucratic term Republikflucht?” Even though he stopped after that, I didn’t say a word, for his face didn’t look like he was expecting any sort of response from my side. He just gave me time to let it sink in. “You were found trying to remove forcefully the protective measures from theAntifascist Protective Barricade. We know you were not alone, you had help. And we want the names.”

I was interrogated for hours on end during the nights. They wanted the names of my friends and the men behind this heinous crime. It was ridiculous. Insisting that I was on my own, I somehow managed to keep the names of my friends a secret. It was anything but easy, they, for some reason, seemed to buy into it.

During daytime I was kept in my cell. I was allowed to walk around or sit on the bench. But as soon as I tried to lie down, a guard would come and force me to sit up again. This went on for forever and a day. The sleep deprivation made me completely lose track of time. But I lost more than this. I eventually broke. It started with wetting myself and went on with crying fits – in the cell and even in front of the interrogator.

They were only after the organisation in the background now. My friends were of no interest anymore. To get out of this situation, I told them what they wanted to hear. I fabricated a story with fake names and fake plans. I couldn’t think of anything else, I was a mere picture of misery, having nightmares while daydreaming.

They must have gone after my names and story and found out that it was absolute nonsense and the whole ‘deserting the republic’ thing only a silly schoolboy prank. After some time they even let me sleep for some short intervals.

Close to the end of my stay in Hohenschönhausen their tone changed completely. Since they couldn’t pin anything on me, they tried to use me for their own purpose. I was asked to ‘inform’ for the Ministry of State Security, helping them to safeguard the Dictatorship of the Proletariat. They wanted me to spy on my friends, family and classmates. In return they already had tied up a very comprehensive package for me.

After the obligatory military service I would be offered a place at the college of the Ministry for State Security in Potsdam. Language Department and International Operations. After that a very auspicious career would wait for me in the Main Directorate for Reconnaissance, the foreign intelligence service of the country. “And think of all the perks that come with this offer, like international travel!” the Hauptmann said in one of our last ‘meetings’. Smiling conspiratorially, he added, “With your skills and talents, you’ll make it to the top!”

After this conversation I was given twenty four hours to consider their proposal. In my quarters, I was pacing the cell like a trapped animal or was just sitting on the bench. I didn’t even want to lie down and sleep. My head was spinning. My thoughts were racing. My vision blurring.

The next day, on the way to the interrogation room, I saw my reflection in a glass door. I looked as wrecked as in my first days here. In the room I was read the offer again. With a hopeful smile on his face, the Hauptmann was waiting for my answer.

The NO hit him off guard, I could see that. Still smiling – though the hope had vanished – he reached into the right pocket of his jacket and produced an envelope, placed it on the table and pushed it over to me. “Get ready then, in half an hour you’ll be taken back to your parents’ house.” were the last words the Hauptmann said to me. I would never see him again.

Blindfolded and hidden in a van, they drove me home and dropped me close to my parents’ apartment building. My family was more than happy to see me. They had been fed a pack of lies about what had happened and were left in the dark about my whereabouts. But I wasn’t allowed to talk about where I had been for the last four weeks and what had happened to me in the course of my absence.

I had waited until I was at home to open the envelope. It contained two letters. The first letter declared the results of my final exams invalid. The second one was my expulsion from school. I was cut off of education, I was never allow to attend any school again, anywhere in the country.

Even finding a job proved to be impossible. Wherever and whatever I applied for, I was rejected. I became unemployable. Over the years, I somehow managed to get some money from jobs, friends would be able to get me underhandedly on a short term basis. But these jobs didn’t fetch much money to sustain or even have a family. So Anna left me for the local party secretary.

To be honest, money wasn’t the real issue. We were, after all, living in a dystopian communist dictatorship (which tried to present itself as a utopian socialist society) that provided for all basic needs free of charge and was only asking for one thing in return – total submission. Bleak desolation, however, had to be covered with thick layers of soothing and mind numbing spirits. My increasing consumption was what drove Anna away.

After all the essences of the different substances eventually had evaporated from my consciousness, among humiliation, isolation and frustration, integrity and dignity where the two most important things left. And when asked, if I today would do it again, I again would say NO, meaning yes.