Iron curtain lifting for Christmas
By Norman Crossland
18 December 1963
The iron curtain in its most tangible form, the wall that since August 1961, has divided Berlin, will after all be raised during the Christmas and New Year period to allow some 400,000 West Berliners to visit their relatives in East Berlin.
After six days of intense and secretive negotiations in the western sector, during which most people had regarded a breakdown as a foregone conclusion, agreement was reached this morning. The first visitors should by Thursday afternoon be entering the so-called capital of the German Democratic Republic (GDR), which used to be no more than the other end of town.
The agreement was signed in the West Berlin traffic office by Herr Erich Wendt on behalf of the East German Ministerial Council and by Herr Horst Korber on behalf of the West Berlin Senate. It says that visits will be possible between 18 December and 5 January, although in fact the lengthy procedure of application will prevent people from reaching the wall tomorrow.
Capital of GDR
In two places the agreement refers to Berlin (East) as the capital of the GDR, but it has been stressed by the mayor of West Berlin, Herr Brandt, that the formula in no sense implies recognition of the East German capital or of the East German State. For his part, Herr Ulbricht said yesterday that it was never intended to seek any form of recognition during the negotiations.
The western allies have been kept informed of the progress of the discussions and are understood to have approved the form of the agreement.
West Berliners will be allowed one-day passes, which are valid between 7 am and midnight, but as a special concession after New Year celebrations they will be able to stay in the Eastern sector until 5 am on New Year’s Day. They will be able to apply for as many passes as they wish. Only close relatives can be visited, such as parents, children, grandparents, grandchildren, brothers and sisters, aunts and uncles, nieces and nephews.
Berlin’s day of joy – and anger
20 December 1963
There have been scenes of joy and also of angry frustration, in Berlin today – when the first West Berliners to visit the East since the Wall was built two years ago went through with communist passes while thousands of other hopefuls were turned away by pass offices unable to deal with the huge queues.
It had been expected that the flow would not start until 6 am tomorrow, but, for some reason so far not officially explained, at least 32 were allowed through today at three crossing points. And the first to go over were a mother and her child who walked across the border at the Sandkrug Bridge.
A few minutes later a man and his wife with two children walked over the Oberbaum Bridge, where East German guards had knocked a hole in the wall for West Berlin pedestrians last night. They were followed by a youth carrying fruit and coffee as gifts on his way to see his mother. “She doesn’t know I’m coming,” he said. “I hope the surprise doesn’t give her a heart attack.”
Extra staff
Some 59,000 passes have been issued, mostly for Christmas Day; according to the East German news agency, extra officials were sent over to handle the press of business at the 12 pass offices, but still 24,400, many of whom had waited patiently all day, were turned away at night.
A fight broke out among people still waiting at Wilmersdorf and four windows smashed. Crowds broke through police barriers at some schools where the passes were being issued, and at Neukofiln people collapsed and one man had a stroke. First aid workers at some schools had to call for more doctors. At many of the offices people burst into tears of disappointment.
Deputy mayor Heinrich Albertz made a radio appeal tonight for the population to keep calm. “The success of the whole operation depends on keeping discipline, although it may be difficult for many people,” he said.
And a city official in charge of a pass office said: “I am on the brink of a nervous breakdown. I feel the whole operation has brought more misery than joy.” Another incident marred the general elation. A man trying to swim the River Spree to the west was shot at by East German border guards and taken back to the Eastern bank in a police boat.
Still the happier side of the story predominated. Frau Hildegard Meissner, a 33-year-old widow, whose relatives live in East Germany, wept with joy when she received one of the first passes today “We are going to have a real reunion,” she said. “All my people are coming from East Germany to East Berlin for Christmas to meet me again.”
Alfons Wuttig, aged 74, said he had waited seven hours yesterday and had queued again since 6am dawn today – “But it has been worth it. I have a grandson living in East Berlin whom I have never seen. Now I am going to.”
Editorial: Christmastime on the Berlin Wall
21 December 1963
The temporary opening of the Berlin Wall cannot, of course, excuse the cruelty and injustice which caused it to be built in the first place. The East German regime is a politically and morally bankrupt dictatorship, propped up by foreign troops; token arts of human sympathy or even contrition on its part should not blind western opinion to these basic facts. Herr Ulbricht is no less Herr Ulbricht because he has chosen to appear, for a while, as Santa Claus.
That said, this belated East German gesture to human decency should be welcomed – not only for itself, but for what it implies. Any limitation of human suffering is good, no matter how small or how temporary. Moreover, the act of opening the Wall is itself a partial, and tacit, admission that the Wall should not be there. If it is right to let people from West Berlin visit their relatives at Christmas, it cannot be right to prevent them from doing so during the rest of the year. If it is right to allow this traffic from west to east, it cannot be right to stop it in the other direction. Tyranny has a logic of its own; and every smile that flits across a tyrant’s face makes his frowns seem more capricious and more unjustifiable.
But in this there is a danger, as well as a hope. The hope, of course, is that this temporary and limited concession will be followed by others of a similar kind. It is, in fact, in this direction that the best nope of a reasonable solution to the German question now lies. In the past it was possible to hope for the total collapse of the communist regime in East Germany; and it was on this hope that Dr Adenauer’s attitude to German reunification was based Assuming, as he did, that the East German regime would one day collapse, he was naturally reluctant to make any concessions whatever to it or its Soviet masters. That policy was never realistic; and the aftermath of the Berlin Wall exposed it as hopelessly utopian. But once it is recognised that the division of Germany is going to persist for a considerable time, the proper policy for West Germany ceases to be one of inflexible immobility. Instead it becomes a policy of movement, and negotiation, aimed at softening the cruelties of the present regime in East Germany and removing the worst human suffering which the division of Germany entails. Such a policy is not, of course, a substitute for reunification; but it is the only realistic policy for the immediate future.
The danger in such a policy is that to the extent that it works, it may provoke expectations among the East German people which the regime cannot satisfy and therefore lead to a popular explosion. For this reason, the present opening in the Wall has great political significance. It is conceivable that it may make the East Berliners even more discontented with their lot than they were before, that the sudden glimpse of light at the end of the tunnel may make their confinement scent intolerable. In that case, the result would be more repression, and the end of any hope of a relaxation of tension in that part of central Europe. But if the experiment works, from the point of view of the East German authorities, more may follow. A great deal hangs on the outcome.
West angry at Berlin killing
By Norman Crossland
28 December 1963
Any goodwill that might have been generated by the visits of West Berliners to East Berlin has been dispersed by the murder of the youth who was climbing the wall on Christmas Day. Today the West Berlin city government protested to the East Germans about the killing, which would “erect new barriers between East and West.”
Severe damage
The protest was made verbally at a conference of East and West Berlin officials who have been meeting regularly to dis-cuss the progress of the pass scheme. The East Berlin officials were told the guards had no right to shoot Germans “who are merely trying to get from one part of Germany to another.” A similar protest was made today by the United States embassy here to the Soviet ambassador in East Berlin.
The West German press regards the shooting incident as causing severe damage to “anticipated political developments.” It is pointed out that the communists are not really prepared to change their attitude, even though they must realise that to kill a refugee on Christmas Day would wreck the prestige they wanted to gain by issuing passes.
Kill and smile
One newspaper had the banner headline, ‘Ulbricht’s Christmas message – kill and smile.’ The official East German newspaper, Neues Deutschland, said it was the duty of border guards to shoot. It blamed the incident on agitators in the West who seduced the youth into fleeing.
Over 170,000 passes were issued before the wall was closed on 5 January 1964.
