Schicksalstag
Schicksalstag is what they call today in Germany - the day of fate. Several important anniversaries coincide, all of which had a profound impact on the country. This year, of course, the day has special resonance, with the 20th anniversary of the Berlin Wall's fatal breach.
If there’s one thing Berlin isn’t short of it’s history, and that's been brought home to me whenever I've been there. In Schoeneberg, I happened across the Nollendorfstrasse apartment that Christopher Isherwood once called home. A modest wall plaque explained that Isherwood’s Berlin stories would one day be transformed into a musical called “Cabaret”.
Schoenberg is an instantly likeable district where respectable residences rub shoulders with trendy boutiques and gay bars. It’s here that Marlene Dietrich made merry in twenties, and David Bowie made music in the seventies.
Around the corner from Isherwood’s apartment, I found another plaque, this one recalling Berlin’s darker past. A passer-by offered a translation of the inscription on the pink marble triangle: “Quickly killed, quickly forgotten. As many as 55,000 gay men were deemed criminals by the Nazis, 15,000 of them died in concentration camps.
The killing didn't end with the war. In the Berlin Wall's hideous history, over 200 people died attempting to reach the West. There are still remnants of the Wall around the city - the example above is near the Martin Gropius architecture museum.
This memorial, close to the Brandenburg Gate, commemorates those who lost their lives trying to escape the DDR.
One of the first to die was 18-year-old Peter Fechter. A year after the Wall went up, he made an attempt to scale it. A border guard shot him, and he fell back into the eastern sector, where he lay bleeding to death for an hour. It's, perhaps, a cruel irony that Peter made a living as a bricklayer. He built walls.
Back in Schoenberg, I spent an evening getting quietly sozzled in Woof. At the bar, the locals roared at the tv monitor as a rubber-clad Dafyd declared - in perfect German - that he was unquestionably the only gay in the village.
I got chatting with some of the regulars about the night the Berlin Wall came down. “I was a student in Stuttgart”, said Peter, now an architect, “so I listened to it all on the radio.” His partner, Kurt, shook his head, “I just went to bed. I knew it would be repeated for days.”
Then Michael spoke up. Now in his fifties, with a full, bushy beard, Michael's’s eyes sparkled as he recalled that historic night. “I went straight to Brandenburger Tor. it was great just being with all the happy people, and I stayed there until the sun came up.”
Michael arrived home next morning to find his boyfriend unexpectedly back from working in Hamburg. “Martin wasn’t interested in the Wall, he just wanted to know where I’d been all night - and who I’d been with.” It was the beginning of the end of their relationship. Just as one union was being reforged, another was falling apart.
As Michael paused to remember Martin, I thought of Isherwood, of Dietrich, of Peter Fechter, and all those persecuted for swimming against the tide.
We raised our glasses to Berlin, and to absent friends