Dr Berlin Read Online Free PDF Page A

lackey, ex-leader writer on a national daily, briefly ex-Moscow correspondent for the same newspaper, sits alone in front of the editing machine and watches his reincarnation on the monitor. His former lives have mercifully been jettisoned into a past that, with each day that passes, slips ever further into a memory that can be harmlessly suppressed. On the screen he sees a reinvented and revitalised version of himself, and he congratulates himself on his good fortune. He experiences a pleasing glow of satisfaction.
    ‘Behind me,’ his screen image is saying, ‘is the famous Brandenburg Gate that separates East from West in the divided city of Berlin. On one side is the Kurfürstendamm, a street of well-stocked shops, cafés full of people, cars, bicycles, a street teeming with life as we in the West know it. Plenty to buy, plenty to eat, plenty to do. Over there is the Unter den Linden, its buildings mostly empty, many still carrying the unrepaired scars of a war that ended more than fifteen years ago. Its streets have few shops or cafés, and fewer people. It presents a desolate spectacle. This is where East meets West, and it is not a happy encounter.’
    The camera, travelling secretly in a car along the eastern sector of the city, records the empty streets, the uncared-for buildings blackened with age, fleetingly picks up huge and brightly painted posters with incongruous images of healthy young men and women striding towards the ‘radiant future’ ofsocialism, their example exhorting the local population to a life of ever greater dedication and sacrifice. It is a forlorn message playing to an empty house.
    ‘Is this the socialist paradise that the posters proclaim? Is this the promised communist Utopia? Well, the citizens of the German Democratic Republic don’t think so. They give their verdict each day by crossing the border to the West in their thousands, never to return. We are witnessing a massive migration. On this evidence alone, capitalism and democracy are an irresistible combination.’
    Pountney is walking down the Kurfürstendamm now, and the camera retreats in front of him. ‘Who are these people who are voting with their feet? They are drawn from the entire spectrum of East German society: scientists, teachers, doctors, labourers, engineers, economists, accountants, students, the very people on whom a modern economy depends. These men and women are the human resources East Germany can ill afford to lose. Between 1949 and today, nearly two million people have migrated west from the GDR. Nearly two hundred thousand have left in the last year alone. That is why the streets are empty, and why the national economy underperforms. The consequences of this stunning rejection of communism for the future of East Germany are grim.’
    The camera sweeps past a line at the Marienfeld Camp in West Berlin, showing people of all ages, complete families in some cases, staring steadfastly into the lens, their patient expressions betraying none of their fears. They are in transit between one world and another. Their futures are blank sheets waiting to be filled with the hopes and dreams that drove them to gamble with their lives escaping from the GDR and which, for the present, they dare not allow themselves to revive. While they have no official identity, their lives are suspended. They are powerless to do anything but wait, the fate of refugees everywhere.
    ‘These people are typical of those who have fled. Youngand old alike, disillusioned by the communist experiment, unable to see a clear future for themselves or their families, all now seek a better life in the West.’
    He is standing in front of the crowd, talking to the camera once more. ‘Imagine the agony of taking the decision to leave your roots and your possessions, in some cases elderly members of your family whom you may never see again, a decision based on the hope that what awaits you can surely be no worse than what you have left behind and will