West Berlin 1977
Lane Frisch
If you follow our blog you will know that we absolutely love going on classic train journeys. We have been lucky enough to experience incredible train trips all over the world but none of them match up historically or emotionally to one we took a few years ago in Cold War divided Germany.
At the end of the Second World War Berlin had been divided into 4 zones, under the control of the four victorious allied nations (France, UK, Soviet Union, and USA) and by 1960 the three western zones had amalgamated into one. So Berlin was split in half with West Berlin effectively being an island in the middle of the Soviet controlled East Germany.
As part of the post-war occupation an agreement was made to guarantee transit links from West Germany into West Berlin. Several road and rail links (as shown in the above map) were set up.
As we joined the train at Helmstedt we had our papers checked by military staff, double-checked in fact, before boarding. Within minutes the train left as we found our pre-booked seats before it then stopped right on the actual border. This was before the times of automatically locking doors so every door was then locked from the outside by armed Soviet staff and a succession of photos taken from the outside of as many passengers as possible before we headed off. Quite intimidating. We had been briefed before leaving not to look at the camera-yielding Soviets or to communicate in any way at all.
Immediately we noticed the difference between the lush fairly prosperous West and the Communist-run East. Buildings were more run-down, rail-side signs in bad states of repair, and most obviously the cars at level crossings seemed to be from another age. Twenty and thirty year old Trabants lined the streets in terrible condition and driven by what looked like poorly-dressed, poorly-fed locals but these were the rich families, wealthy enough to own and run a car.
Back in our standard seats we found the whole journey absolutely fascinating as the train passed through Magdeburg, Brandenburg and Potsdam. To see at first hand the obvious differences between how people in the East lived and what their world looked like was both interesting and deeply upsetting.
I was stationed in Berlin 1975 to 1977 I did numerous train guard duties and it was one of the best duties of the tour. Far better than guarding Rudolph Hess in Spandau prison. Went back there last year how the place has changed such a beautiful city now
I traveled on the civilian service back in 1983. My lasting memory was of boarder guards in dugouts along the track and passing a number of tank parks full of Soviet battle tanks, everyone of them with their guns pointing West in a defiant act of propaganda.
I was with the US Army FSB in then West Berlin from 1981 to 1984 This article on the British train is really accurate, Been on the train several times. Also on the French train to Strasburg, France, and the USA trains to Frankfurt and Bremerhaven. Only other way to leave Berlin back then was by car along the autobahn or by air from Tegel Airport.
The map of the Berliner talks about seeing the ruins of the Potsdam Palace where the 1945 Potsdam Conference took place. But surely that Conference took place in the Cecilienhof Palace which when I last visited (2007) was very much intact.
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