The Wall: Three Years Later

Peter Lohman didn’t get a divorce. But he might as well have. He made the mistake of sleeping in East Berlin the night before the Wall went up . . .

On August 13, 1962, I returned to Berlin for the first time in seventeen years. The last time I had been there was in March 1945, one month before it was stormed by the Red Army. On that day, we could hear cannons rumbling in Frankfurt an der Oder— not so far away—and rumor was rampant that fighting in the city’s outskirts was imminent. It was sheer coincidence that we arrived in Berlin on the first anniversary of the overnight raising of the Wall that divides the city, but it made my first return there a significant one for me. To be sure, this time there was no cannon rumbling in the distance; but there was anxiety in the air, a restlessness that many feared could erupt into demonstrations, even violence. Once again I felt that I was sharing in the somber fate of the city. And before I left Berlin again, the boy Peter Fechter was shot down at the Wall in his desperate escape attempt and left to bleed to death in the street, while people on both sides watched and did nothing.

EK

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E. von Kuegelgen

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Peter Lohman didn’t get a divorce. But he might as well have. He made the mistake of sleeping in East Berlin the night before the Wall went up . . .

On August 13, 1962, I returned to Berlin for the first time in seventeen years. The last time I had been there was in March 1945, one month before it was stormed by the Red Army. On that day, we could hear cannons rumbling in Frankfurt an der Oder— not so far away—and rumor was rampant that fighting in the city’s outskirts was imminent. It was sheer coincidence that we arrived in Berlin on the first anniversary of the overnight raising of the Wall that divides the city, but it made my first return there a significant one for me. To be sure, this time there was no cannon rumbling in the distance; but there was anxiety in the air, a restlessness that many feared could erupt into demonstrations, even violence. Once again I felt that I was sharing in the somber fate of the city. And before I left Berlin again, the boy Peter Fechter was shot down at the Wall in his desperate escape attempt and left to bleed to death in the street, while people on both sides watched and did nothing.