Living next to the chemical works at Bitterfeld ....

From Jane's diary: 11 March 1990, 2am

It's two o'clock in the morning. I am supposed to preach in the morning, and I can't sleep.

The time at Wittenberg came to an end in February. Stephen finally managed to be given a visa and has visited a couple of times. The prayers for renewal are continuing but with far fewer people as in the autumn. The atmosphere is very different now. The election campaign has started, posters are being put up everywhere, even in the shops. I make a speech on behalf of the SPD, the social democrats. It was quite fun, though I have to say even I am not quite convinced that they would get my vote in this situation.

One by one the other students left Wittenberg and went back to their parishes and congregations. It was strange to say goodbye and to know that this part of my life here had come to an end.

I am doing an internship with Axel and Gisela Noack in Wolfen (known for its photographic film factory ORWO, for Original Wolfen. It used to be Agfa until the Second World War). I've moved into the empty manse in Greppin, a small industrial village half way between Wolfen and Bitterfeld. On three sides the village is surrounded by the Bitterfeld Chemical Works. The people of Wolfen and Bitterfeld argue as to who has the most polluted town, but the people of Greppin don't have to argue, they just know that it very rarely doesn't stink here.

From my window I can look over the cemetery to a wonderful view of the factory chimneys. The one that's closest to us has a permanent plume of smoke. It's 2 o'clock in the morning, and I have to hold my first sermon in the morning, and I can't sleep. The air is terrible. The factory seems to pump out even more filth at night than during the days. The noise just carries on. Sometimes in the middle of the night I am a sit up, bolt awake, when the sirens go. I can't get the nightmare out of my mind - what would happen if the chemical works went up in smoke?

(The picture shows the manse in Greppin, from April 2009. The chemical works have gone now. More pictures from this disappeared past can be found here.)

Now off to Poland ...

Jane's diary, 10 January 1990, Wroclaw, Poland
We Wittenberg students have travalled to Poland. Stephan Bickhardt organized the trip. It's his last week with the group, he will soon start work as the general secretary of Demokratie Jetzt (Democracy Now). It's my first visit to Poland, my grandmother was born in this city, when it was still the German city of Breslau. We are being hosted by the Catholic Intelligentsia Club (KIK). We have speant a lot of time talking with them and Solidarnosc about economic issues, but also increasing xenophobia between Germans and Poles. Our discussions have sometimes been very painful, and I realise just how I am affected when there are antisemitic remarks about Jews. But we have also experienced a wonderful and warm welcome. Today we went to Kreisau/Krzyżowa, known for the Kreisau Circle, the name the Gestapo gave to a group of dissidents around Helmuth Graf von Moltke who gathered in his estate at Kreisau. The KIK in Wroclaw is supporting attempts to make the estate a place for intercultural and international exchange and dialogue. As we are going there, I noticed just how poor the people on the land seem to be. The countryside and the mountains are wonderful but where we walked the little stream was a strange dark blue coulour and it smelled of chemicals. Yes, said the priest, today the nearby factory is dying jeans. We also met a wonderful Catholic priest who had a picture of Pope John XXIII in his office. Why John XXIII and not Pope John Paul II, we asked. He said, the church belongs to JohnPaul, but in his office he can chose the pope he wants!

Coming home ...

Jane's diary, 17 December 1989, dateline Brussels
The train was late leaving Cologne and arriving in Brussels, but Steve was there, we went back to his flat in St Josse, drank Champagne and went to bed. In the morning we woke up to hear that Andrei Sakharov had died, suddenly. Amazingly, things seem to be starting in Romania but what will happen ... unbelievable to think that a change might take place there too.

In the evening we went to the Brussels Labour Party Christmas Party, very yummy food, and "terribly" nice and civilised. Full of journalists. It was strange to step back into middle-class British (Euro) culture. Steve in his Guardian sweatshirt was not dressed for the occasion, but it was fun. Then I gave him my diary to read and we stayed up talking about all that had happened in the GDR over the last three months while I was there.

And finally the next day ... he baked me pizza, as I knew he would, it was good and very much a coming home feel. We sat and chatted to his landlord, Jean Pierre and his partner Brigitte. It was hard to speak French, very hard work for me. After three months caught up in a whirl of change, it is strange to think that being here in Brussels is a reality as well.

Helplessness and resignation?

Jane's diary, 14 December 1989, written in the train from Cologne to Brussels

What a crazy few days, writing Christmas post, washing, buying, packing ... 10 December was international human rights day, Friedrich Schorlemmer received the Ossietzky prize on behalf of Demokratischer Aufbruch. In Czechoslovakia, the Communist Party is now in a minority in the new government, Husak's final act as president was to swear in the new ministers, some who have been in jail until as little as a fortnight ago. Change seems even faster there than here in the GDR. Dubcek or Havel for president? All the shops were open in Wittenberg this afternoon, a Sunday, the 2nd advent, a cold clear day with yellow winter sunshine and a Father Christmas being driven in a horse and trap along the main street throwing out sweets to children.

I was full of cold for my last few days in Wittenberg. On the Sunday I made it to church. The church was cold and the sermon somehow missed the mark but the BBC Radio 4 service was coming from the United States and I was back in time to hear Barbara Harris finishing her sermon and then celebrating the Eucharist, the first woman to be elected a bishop in the US Epsicopal Church. That was special.

I got an exit visa in Wittenberg but when I got to the border in Berlin the border guards couldn't tell me whether or not my new entry visa was there. I crossed into the West with two of the other students who like me were in Berlin for a meeting with students from our sister seminary from West Germany, Soest. The other two went off to get their church Begrüssungsgeld from West Berlin (hard currencyto which otherwise East Germans had no legal access). The people there wanted to give me some too - quite seriously. Very odd!!! Then we set off on the 54 Bus for Spandau, which I knew very well from the gap year that I had spent working in a church-run children's home at the Johannesstift there. It was strange seeing the Christmas market in Spandau gain, just as it had been eight years ago, and the kitsch almost worse then the stuff in Wittenberg. Then out to an evening with the Soest lot at a Pizzeria at Savignyplatz in West Berlin where red wine was consumed. I stayed over in West Berlin.

The next morning back to the border, where, amazingly a visa was waiting for me - and free of charge!! But the Polish visa office in East Berlin was closed - I needed to a get Polish visa for a trip our group was to make to Poland in the New Year. Then to the church headquarters in Augustrasse still a little worse for wear from the night before. I managed to make it back to the Soest meeting at the Auferstehungsgemeinde. I found myself in one group suddenly feeling like an easterner in a strange sort of way, chafing against the wishy-washy western liberalism. The crux of the question is not whether the we feel the "experiment" of socialism in the GDR should go on, but what are we willing to give up, we privileged Westerners and the answer is, "not a lot".

Earlier in the day at the foreigner's registration office at the police in East Berlin, I interpreted for a very sweet but rather clueless Australian who kept trying to pay in the wrong currency. This then led the overworked woman behind the counter to extend my residence permit until June 1989 - in my hungover state I didn't notice, but later in the evening the border guards didn't seem to mind too much, "just make sure that you get round to registering properly"!

Berlin was so wet and disgusting that I simply wanted out and away. On the train I thought back again to the German question, our sense of helplessness and resignation, no new ideas in the face of its inevitability and the lure of the Deutschmark. Whatever happened to "We're staying here!" On the train the guard noticed my ticket had been bought in GDR Marks in East Berlin and didn't ask me to pay the supplement for the InterCity train, it's strange being a token GDR citizen.

Over the Wall and back again

Jane's diary: Wittenberg, 20.11.1989
What a weekend! I was so tense on Thursday, the train to Berlin was late and I had to work hard to keep calm. Then to the foreigners' registration office at Alexanderplatz in East Berlin. Finally after a bit of to-do the man at the office gave me an exit and re-entry visa meaning I could go to West Berlin and come back to the GDR. I tried to phone West Berlin and it just wouldn't work. All lines engaged. It's been like that for days I reckon.

Walking along Friedrichstrasse towards Checkpoint Charlie I bumped into Christa Gengel (ecumenical officer of the Evangelical Church of the Union) and Keith Forecast (moderator of the United Reformed Church general assembly). Quite a ridiculous coincidence, the previous evening he had been preaching in Mansfield Chapel (in Oxford where I did my theology studies) and they had said, 'Of course you won't see Jane but if you do, tell her we miss her and give her our love'. Suddenly I felt a pang of homesickness for them all, miles away from German Sachlichkeit.

It was interesting to speak about the current situation with Christa Grengel. The woman who works with Christa looks well and relaxed, opening the borders really has opened people up. But Christa Grengel seems rather pessimistic about the way ahead - things are going too quickly, the church had proposed the gradual opening of the border and not the current free for all.

Were there any native Berliners in East Berlin at all? Everyone I tried to ask the way was Polish or Russian or from outside Berlin. Very odd.

Finally, after my interrupted evening I crossed at Friedrichstrasse, much quieter than earlier. So strange, the whole atmosphere was so different, much more friendly. It was so incredible to be on the S Bahn to Bahnhof Zoo in West Berlin. Then on to our friend Horst's where Stephen had arrived as well as other visitors from the GDR.

West Berlin was like I have never known it - but then it's never been like this. What an incredible atmosphere. All along the Wall people have their hammers and chisels and are making holes in it, taking chunks away to sell to the Americans - now the West Berlin police are doing their best to protect the wall. At Potsdamer Platz - what used to be the heart of an undivided Berlin, a new crossing point has been made, the Wall simply torn down. Nearby British solidiers are doling out free tea and coffee (a very British form of deterrence), with the East German border guards looking on.

A truly amazing weekend but at the end I had to walk back into East Berlin through Checkpoint Charlie by myself. Stephen came with me to the border and went through first but the border guards still wouldn't let him into the GDR. He came back out and said they had been much more friendly than the last time he had been refused entry but their records still said that he was "unwanted" in East Germany. So through the dark streets of East Berlin with tears on my cheeks to take the train back to Wittenberg.

Thorns in the side

Posted by Jane (from the Stranzblog) :

I first heard the passage below being read aloud in the chapel in the Predigerseminar in 1989. In the midst of the huge political upheaval of East Germany's peaceful revolution, Gabriele who led that morning's "Andacht" simply let the text speak for itself.

I was surprised and pleased to find it again the other day at the beginning to Stephen Cottrell's splendid little book "Hit the Ground Kneeling". I'm not sure I've come across it in any of our Sunday lectionaries, which is a shame. I have used it in some youth work and training sessions with elders though.

Reading it through again now I wonder about whether bramble or thorn bush would be my favoured translation and I must go and check whether the Hebrew word is the same as the bush which burned and was not consumed in Exodus and whether the Septuagint translation for thornbush is then picked up in the gospel term for crown of thorns. This is how linguists think I suppose - even when they have a bus to catch and must write fast!

None of the other trees wanted to give anything up in order to sway over the other trees - not the olive its oil, not the fig its sweet fruit, not the vine its glorious juice and wine. So the thorn bush, the bramble, accepts. The thornbush is an uncomfortable symbol of humility in the Bible, it is about a different kind of leadership. Today reading this text I was struck rather by the way the supposedly greater trees don't want to take up office, they want to hold onto their current roles and riches and place in the scheme of things and not chance the risk or humility of leadership. Them holding on to their power and riches and roles makes the leadership role of the brambly thorn bush yet more difficult. Easier to be a celebrity than a leader? Easier to hold on to riches than follow vocation?
A fascinating and powerful parable which is deeply prophetic.

The parable and prophecy of the trees in Judges 9
The trees once went out
to anoint a king over themselves.
So they said to the olive tree,
“Reign over us.”
The olive tree answered them,
“Shall I stop producing my rich oil
by which gods and mortals are honoured,
and go to sway over the trees?”
Then the trees said to the fig tree,
“You come and reign over us.”
But the fig tree answered them,
“Shall I stop producing my sweetness
and my delicious fruit,
and go to sway over the trees?”
Then the trees said to the vine,
“You come and reign over us.”
But the vine said to them,
“Shall I stop producing my wine
that cheers gods and mortals,
and go to sway over the trees?”
So all the trees said to the bramble,
“You come and reign over us.”
And the bramble said to the trees,
“If in good faith you are anointing me king over you,
then come and take refuge in my shade;
but if not, let fire come out of the bramble
and devour the cedars of Lebanon.”

Diary of a revolution

Wittenberg, GDR, Jane's diary dateline 7 November 1989 (Tuesday):

The official GDR news agency ADN is reporting that 23000 people left over the weekend. The Politburo meets on 10 November - many new members will have been elected. The situation at the top is drastic. Krenz is unlikely to hold onto his position for much longer. There's just no trust in him, but if he goes the chaos at the top will become even more obvious. But it seems difficult to think that he should stay just for the sake of stability.

Of course people like Otto Graf Lambsdorff (the leader of West Germany's Free Democratic Party) really don't help by telling the GDR to pull down the Berlin Wall. What utter nonsense, surely he realises that would be economic catastrophe. Of course in some way the Federal Republic is going to buy up the GDR anyway. Even before the Wende there were rumours of all sorts of entrepreneurs gambling on unification and buying up land. Of course it is very cheap here.

One of the other students led a meditation on Psalm 126 this morning. Very movingly she spoke of the almost dreamlike existence we all feel we are in at the moment, the changes, the unreality of this situation. But dreaming and dreams are important. Dreams are the roots of growing trees, the water and sap of our life.

...

Tonight it was the prayers for renewal again. It's strange. It seems normal to be in a church bursting at the seams. Tonight the phone rang three times. The caretaker came out and said, "The government has resigned!". Of course it doesn't mean that Krenz has gone, just that Willi Stoph and co. have stepped down. Tears came to my eyes as we sang, "Watch and pray". What is going to happen to this country? Who is going to take responsibility?

The justice commission of the central committee?, the Volkskammer? is going to look at the travel law again. As Gregor Gysi said yesterday, to be allowed to travel 30 days a year is not exactly a human right. People are not happy about it at all.

Things are moving so fast. A new electoral law might quieten things down but who knows? Maybe the leaders of the SED should wear sackcloth and ashes, as a symbol of what they have done wrong - how often will they have to say sorry?

Meanwhile the Trabbis are queuing up to leave into Czechoslovakia. Last night they crossed over at a rate of 500 an hour, today 200 an hour. How many more are going to go? How many will come back?

The synod of our regional church, the Church Province of Saxony, came up with some very thoughtful resolutions at its meeting, They sound a bit like the Barmen Declaration. I'm sure I can detect the hand of Heino Falcke behind them.

4 November 1989 - from Jane's diary

Dateline 5 November

Yesterday a huge demo in Berlin on the Alexanderplatz. Friedrich (Schorlemmer) spoke, it was strange to see him on televion. We crowded into the smokey room at midday and in the typical way of students laughed at our lecturer. He wasn't as bad as we wanted him to be, but it was obvious he was nervous and not as in control as he encourages us to be in our homiletic classes. He had written his speech and spoke it for the applause, not consciously I'm sure, but it's easy to know what will please people, what they want to hear at moments like the current "Aufbruch". He spoke of dealing with guilt according to the law, and not becoming like oppressers and going down the road of retaliation.

He was followed by Christa Wolf, she left pauses for applause but didn't orinetate her speech so much in that direction. She spoke beautifully, she has such a way with words, and wonderful images. Towards the end she said, " just imagine, it's socialism and no one goes away" - a wonderful reworking of "Imagine it is war, and no one joins up". I saw the tears springing in the eyes of one of my fellow students and felt my own body prickling with emotion. Sitting in this smelly and uncomfortable room watching history being broadcast live on GDR television. Quite amazing, and so difficult to believe. Can this really be happening?

The most amazing woman, Steffi Spierer, came on at the end - utterly spellbinding. She had three words for her great-grandchildren - no more have to swear on the flag, no more blue shirts of the Free German Youth, and that on the 1st of May the people can stand on the tribune as the party marches past.

The Tiananmen Square "solution"

Wroclaw, Poland: the memorial of 10th aniversary (1999) of Tian'anmen Sq. (Beijing, China) massacre, June 4th, 1989
The first version of this memorial was "erected" by Polish students a day after the massacre, June 5th 1989 - as a destroyed bicycle and a fragment of tank-track lying nearby.
The version in the photograph was erected ten years later, in 1999, and the symbolism is identical: bicycles against tanks...

I've spent some time this evening reading the Wikipedia article on the Tianenmen Square protests of 1989. It took me back to that Spring in Oxford when I was preparing my third year theology exams, worrying about how I was going to finance my year in East Germany if I got a visa, watching events in China and wondering whether events there would affect my travel to the Eastern Bloc.
I had forgotten how much what happened to the democratic protesters in China affected my mood as I set off for East Germany later in the year. As I read through parts of my diary I understand a little better the fear of violence and an authoritarian crack down that comes through in places. On the surface it may look as if life went on normally and peacefully but underneath there was real fear. The peaceful revolution might not have been so peaceful and earlier in 1989 the world had seen tanks vanquish peaceful protesters for democracy.
In late April 1989 there was still hope that things in China would develop peacefully. Remembering the brutal crushing of those protests makes me realise that those who went to pray in churches and lit candles in town squares in East Germany showed great civil courage.
To say nothing of the courage of the Polish students who in June 1989 set up the first version of the memorial depicted above.

Photo credits here
Posted by Rev J

Introducing Holy Disorder - looking back 20 years ...

This first post on the Holy Disorder blog is mainly a repost from Jane's personal blog.
Gradually as the year progresses Dr B and Rev J hope to post some bits and pieces about the GDR's peaceful revolution to this blog. Dr B has recently finished a doctorate on the role of the churches in the peaceful revolution. Rev J was living in the GDR from August 1989 to August 1990, studying theology and working as a trainee pastor in the Protestant Church. We hope this will be a place for us to remember what was an important time for us personally, but also to jot down some random and not so random thoughts about modern church history. We also hope to be able to keep track of some of the events taking place in Eastern Germany to mark the 20th anniversary and of course this title is just a translation of Gesegnete Unruhe - the official title of the anniversary events.
Dr B sets off on his own on a week long train journey around South Eastern Germany tomorrow. With some of our blogging it may be a little difficult to tell which of us is writing we'll try to sort that as the blog develops. Anyway what were you doing 20 years ago?
There was a lot going on, here's what I wrote just over a month ago:

Twenty years ago this spring I was trying to sort out the various formalities for getting a visa to go the German Democratic Republic to study theology for a year.
In the end it all worked out well and I arrived in Wittenberg in early September 1989. Even today when I mention I studied theology in the GDR many people look very puzzled and ask whether that was really possible.
I lived through world changing events and experienced churches fuller than at any revival meeting. Early on in the demonstrations I also felt real fear about how things would develop. It is quite an experience to stand up in church to lead prayers and face a dozen secret police sitting on the first row.
It was the first and only time in my life that I kept a diary. One of the things I must try and do this year is transcribe some of what I wrote then.
The churches in central Germany are marking the 20th anniversary of the process leading the fall of the Berlin wall with a series of events called "Gesegnete Unruhe"- Holy Disorder. You can even send Holy disorder e-postcards to raise awareness of the anniversary and the events.
This was the revolution of candles, Psalms and Taizé songs, it was the revolution of Justice, Peace and the Integrity of Creation. You can read an interview with the year's coordinator Ralf-Uwe Beck in which he talks both about ordinary household candles as an important symbol but also about how marking the anniversary is important for people in the region today, a way to encourage people's self-confidence and faith - look at what we managed to do together 20 years ago.
When I finished my year in the GDR and went back the UK I wondered whether I would ever again experience the Bible having such immediate personal and political resonance. I grieved for that short-lived time when faith and life and action somehow seemed to dovetail. By the time I got back to the UK the country I had just lived in for a year was about to no longer exist.
"What is past is not dead, it is not even past. We cut ourselves off from it, we pretend to be strangers." is how Christa Wolf begins her book A Model Childhood. Many people from the former GDR have lived through that - a sort of wiping out of their experience. For a while in conversations with West-German friends I felt I had become a sort of honorary "Ossi".
Today this well-known quote from L.P. Hartley also resonates, "The past is a foreign country; they do things differently there."
It may be a foreign country but as the year advances and particularly as the autumn approaches I intend to go to that foreign country and revisit some of what I lived through in that time of Holy Disorder.