A Mighty Fortress was the Berlin Wall:
Stories of Culture, the Cold War and the Kreuzberg Kiez
By: Eloise Schindler
Going Home
On a crisp cool afternoon in early October 1981, Martin and I sat nervously on the edge of an overstuffed sofa in a West Berlin living room and waited as our host placed a tray with tea and cookies on the coffee table before us. Pastor Burg, superintendent of West Berlin's Evangelical Protestant Church, Kreuzberg district, had been correct but cool when we arrived for Martin's interview a few minutes earlier. "My wife is at a meeting," he said, inferring that he usually didn't handle tea preparation.
He raised the butterfly-topped teapot lid to sniff the brew and removed the dripping metal tea egg to a saucer. Carefully replacing the lid, he inclined his wide scholarly forehead toward us and poured the steaming liquid into fragile Dresden teacups. He offered us sugar and then sat back and nodded at Martin. "Proceed," he said.
Pastor Burg paid close attention as Martin described his campus ministry at Stanford University in California, his yearning for his homeland after twenty years in the United States and Latin America, his interest in the opening at West Berlin's least desirable parish. The Thomas Church, a seven-story nineteenth-century brick edifice, backed up against the Berlin Wall in a weedy corner of the Kreuzberg Kiez, a ghetto-like district where blue-collar families coexisted with Turks, squatters, and welfare recipients. Martin, remembering his own difficult years after the collapse of Germany in 1945, thought the Kiez alternatives would be a perfect fit for someone like him with a hard-won, down-to-earth faith.
Pastor Burg leaned forward in his chair. His eyes narrowed. All pretense of correctness had disappeared. "Now, really," he said in a
sarcastic tone that implied he was nobody's fool. "Why would any sane person leave sunny California for chaotic Kreuzberg?"
What are you running away from, he meant. His suspicion of our motives was understandable, I suppose, but angry words came to my lips: What part of homesick don't you understand, sir? Why are we insane for wanting to live with Turks and squatters?
Fortunately, we both kept silent. We had an advantage over Pastor Burg; we knew how desperate he was to fill the Thomas Church's second pastoral position which had been vacant for over a year. Prospective candidates came and went, refusing to move their families into a district where the majority of schoolchildren were Turkish and mohawked punks harrassed pedestrians for change.
We had no such qualms. Our two children were of college age, and Martin was a seasoned veteran of the stresses and strains that inflict any religious community. Even more important, eight years on campus had inured him to the glib religious indifference that so often permeated a secular intellectual environment. He was ready for the radical Kiez.
Finally the superintendent had looked down at his teacup, sighed, and nodded assent. "Na, gut," he said wearily. "I'll give it consideration." With no other candidate in sight, he had no choice.
* * * * * * * * *
We had learned of the Thomas Church opening quite by accident. One evening in Palo Alto Martin was browsing through a German theological journal and came upon an ad for the vacancy. This was unusual. German synods didn't advertise positions because they didn't have to; they were overrun with young seminarians looking for a parish.
But Martin's answering letter had led to an invitation to come for an interview. We had been able to secure a few days of vacation, he from his pastoral duties and I from my job at the Stanford Music Library.
The flight from San Francisco to Berlin took eighteen hours. Add to that a nine-hour time difference, and you can imagine our bleary-
A Mighty Fortress was the Berlin Wall
eyed appearance as we staggered out of Tegel Airport the next day under lowering skies.
The remaining pastor of the two-pastor congregation, Renate Schnurr, was waiting for us with her driver, a seminarian named Olga.
"Olga is president of our Gemeindekirchenrat (congregational council)," Pastor Schnurr announced as we settled into the back seat of the tiny Opel. She was a hefty woman with a resonant alto voice, a square jaw, and a manly physicality that fit every lesbian cliche. Not that it mattered. One good thing about the Germans, Martin liked to remind me, was that unlike Americans his countrymen did not waste time judging people's morality unless it affected public life—if, for example, a pastor drank himself under the table and missed a funeral as had happened to a vicar he knew in the Palatinate. The vicar had merely been sent to another parish.
Olga navigated her way through the wide avenues of the city and drove around a traffic circle at the Oranienplatz. We entered a narrow two-way street constricted on both sides by double-parked vans and construction wagons. Our driver slowed, stopped, and darted around the obstructions as space opened in oncoming traffic.
As we inched our way forward, Pastor Schnurr turned to Martin. "We are on the famous Oranienstrasse in the heart of Kreuzberg 36, called the Kiez," she stated. "Have you heard that word before? No? Then let me enlighten you. A Kiez is a multicultural neighborhood where lifestyle differences are not considered negative but positive. They forge a common bond. Our Kiez may resemble a ghetto, but it is one of choice. By the way, call me Renate." Without warning she had switched from the formal Sie to Du.
Martin didn't miss the cue. "Of course, Renate. Call me Martin." He winked at me. We were getting somewhere.
High scaffoldings stretched along both sides of the street. Behind the wood framework, lit storefronts displayed sparkly purple shawls and amethyst jewelry. Gaunt, dark-eyed men smoked absently in doorways; kerchiefed women, bright-eyed children tug
ging at their skirts, examined eggplant and broccoli next to blondes in tight jeans and Nordic sweaters.
"This isn't your father's Germany," I whispered to Martin. A mohawked youth in black leather and heavy boots had just sauntered in front of Olga's car. She stopped and waited while he took a long swig from a beer bottle and then, point made, moved on.
We turned into the Mariannenstrasse. In the distance I saw a pair of tall bell towers, and Martin tensed beside me. "The square you see is the Mariannenplatz," Renate said. "And the church at the far end is the Thomaskirche (Thomas Church). We call it the cathedral at the Wall."
The street dead-ended at a gray concrete barrier. As we reached the church I saw behind the bell towers a dome with a long thin spire. The roof resembled a Prussian officer's helmet. Was it intentional? I dug for a handkerchief to suppress the bubble of laughter welling up in my throat. Exhaustion was setting in.We passed a large white sign that read in German, English and Turkish: "Attention! You are leaving the American sector!" When it seemed we could go no farther, Olga swung the Opel to the right and drove through a low gate. She pulled into a small paved courtyard. We dislodged ourselves stiffly from the back seat and unloaded our luggage.
A group of small children pressed their noses against the fence of a playground across the sidewalk. Olga's face lit up. "This is our parish day care center," she declared proudly. "Half the children are Turkish and the other half are German. My Inge and Saskia came here until they started kindergarten."
"Do you have Turkish teachers?" asked Martin.
"No. That would certainly help with communication, but church headquarters lets us hire only Christian teachers."
We waved at the children and walked to a low red building. Renate unlocked the outer door and we stepped up into a dimly lit hallway with a polished granite floor. She buzzed for the elevator and we rode to the fourth floor. "This is where I live," she said, unlocking the inner door.
A Mighty Fortress was the Berlin Wall 
The Thomas Church at the Mariannenplatz
Her apartment was spacious and bright. To the right of the foyer lay a study with large windows, high bookshelves and a desk piled with papers. A hallway led into a wide living room furnished with large plants, deep armchairs and a grand piano.
The view from the living-room windows was obscured by a curtain of climbing ivy. Martin walked back to the study and indicated the unobstructed windows. "May we—?" he asked. Renate smiled and nodded. "Of course," she said.
We stared through the glass panes toward the east. On the far side of the whitewashed eastern wall, gray houses angled away like rows of square dominoes. A wide swath of grassy dirt and broken pavement ran between the eastern barrier and the western wall a few feet from our window. We were looking straight into the death strip where people trying to escape to the west would be shot.
A guard tower stood in the middle of the corridor a hundred yards away. In the distance the Alexanderplatz television tower punctured the leaden sky like a bulbous needle. The clouds parted, and a gleaming white cross appeared on the tower's red and white globe. I gasped, and Renate chuckled. "You see it, don't you?" she said. "West Berliners call that cross `Jottes Rache' (God's revenge). It is always there when the sun comes out."
Beyond a narrow kitchen and small dining room was the rear wing. It had three bedrooms, full bath, laundry room and balcony. "The second pastoral apartment on the floor below is even larger," Renate observed. "That would be yours. But it is not furnished, so you will stay with me."
A thin young man emerged from a bedroom as she spoke. He introduced himself as Bernd, a physics student at the Free University who rented a spare room from Renate. Bernd showed us where we would sleep and I sank exhausted on the bed. But Martin made a beeline for the balcony door. "Martin, be careful," I called anxiously. .
"Come and look," he called back. "From inside," I said. He came in and we looked out the window, studying the two border guards with rifles slung on their backs standing at the far wall behind white concrete X's. They trained their binoculars at our window. I shuddered and moved closer to Martin.
A Mighty Fortress was the Berlin Wall
Here and there rabbits nibbled at clumps of grass protruding from patches of broken concrete paving. "I wonder if mines ever kill them," I said. Martin shook his head. "Probably aren't any mines in there." I looked at him doubtfully and then down at the narrow sidewalk separating our building from the western wall. "Looks like it's only about ten feet to the edge," I observed. Martin grunted. "Not too far to spit across." His somber eyes belied the light tone in his voice.
Bernd called us for dinner. Olga had gone home; we were joined by Mitzi, a dark-eyed butterball who was the church sexton and lived on the premises, and Gisela the red-headed church secretary. Mitzi had prepared a meal of rice ragout and fruit salad for the occasion.
As we sat down, Renate shooed four cats from the tabletop. The nervous animals prowled everywhere—between our legs, across our laps, over the backs of our chairs, on the window sills. Apologizing, she shut them into her bedroom but they immediatly returned; they had opened the lever-type door handle by jumping on it. Martin, not a cat lover, was visibly relieved when we moved to the living room for coffee.
I chose a comfortable armchair and Martin joined Renate on the sofa. After the coffee she brought out bottles of Schnapps, Champagne, whiskey and red wine. I kept nodding off—we had been underway for thirty-two hours—but Martin had gotten his second wind. "Tell us about the church," he said.
Renate happily obliged. The Thomas Church was one of many large worship edifices called "Grosskirchen" built by the Kaiser in the middle of the nineteenth century for provincial workers arriving to run Berlin's new factories. Every taxpayer, whether Protestant or Roman Catholic, was automatically assigned to a parish. Since a lot of blue-collar housing was constructed in the Kreuzberg district, by 1880 the Thomas Church served 120,000 souls and the harried lone pastor conducted mass weddings and baptisms.
Eventually the congregation was subdivided, but the huge brick building with seating for a thousand worshipers remained. It survived the two world wars without major damage except for a bomb that gutted the sanctuary in 1943. In 1959 the interior was renovated: The altar was moved from the back wall to a large square marble slab in
stalled at the crux of the aisles. The walls and pillars were painted soft shades of rose, blue and gray. Teakwood chairs replaced the old pews, and a Beckenrath pipe organ was commissioned. Finally, the bells were remounted in the two towers.
The Thomas Church seemed destined for a bright future. But history intervened. In August 1961 the Berlin Wall was erected, and a third of the congregation was cut off on the other side. Within months many of the local residents had fled to West Germany, convinced that the Russians were coming. Eventually Turks recruited as guest workers moved into the vacant houses, to the church's disadvantage; the Turks were Moslems.
Because of these and other factors, by 1981 the Thomas Church lost eighty percent of its prewar membership. Only 4,200 souls were left, of whom no more than two hundred entered the building in any one year. But Germany's centralized church tax collection system allowed the synods to spread the wealth by subsidizing poorer parishes. The Thomas Church still maintained twenty-four staff positions, including the day care teachers and workers at the church-owned cemetery near the Tempelhof airport.
Renate administered all personnel, financial and property matters. The second pastor held confirmation classes and shared other duties such as preaching, weddings, baptisms, funerals, and counseling. Both pastors were ex officio notaries and served anyone who needed that service. For the past year Renate had worked alone, and she was at the end of her rope.
As she talked, she and the others consumed glass after glass of bubbly, wine and whiskey. By ten o'clock all the bottles were empty, with considerable help from Martin whose speech had deteriorated to a mumble. Renate began to crawl over my husband in a drunken, pathetic attempt to convince him to come and help her. The ad she had placed in a Lutheran journal which attracted Martin's attention had produced only one other reply, from a Roman Catholic priest in Latin America.
I excused myself and went to bed. I tossed and turned for an hour in spite of my exhaustion, unable to stop the doubts. Renate
A Mighty Fortress was the Berlin Wall
was probably an alcoholic . . . Martin is used to running his own show . . . their strong personalities will surely clash . . . How can we find out in four days?
We met some of the others on the church staff. Herr Palinski was the somber organist and music director. Dressed in black from his turtleneck to his shoes, he received a full salary and benefits for three duties although he performed only two of them: He accompanied one Sunday service, and he played the harmonium at the cemetery chapel for two or three funerals a week. His third official duty, that of choir director, religiously fell by the wayside every fall. According to others on the staff, Herr Palinski humiliated his volunteer singers so badly that they quit after a couple of rehearsals. But this stern perfectionist had two invaluable qualities that made up for the lack of a choir: He played Bach beautifully, and he never got sick.
That evening Martin preached a trial sermon at a vesper service. Twenty worshippers sat in the front rows. After a hymn and a short liturgy, he went to the pulpit beside the marble altar table and began to preach. Although he was just a few feet from us, Renate had told him to use the microphone and I understood why; every syllable echoed in the cavernous space, falling away and repeating a few seconds later.
After the sermon, a beaming Renate joined him at the altar for the final prayers and benediction. Seeing them there together, tears filled my eyes and I took a deep breath. All right, I said silently, it's going to be, but please, dear Lord, let him find healing so we can go home soon.
On the long flight back to California we compared our impressions and worries. Renate would need careful handling. She not only had a drinking problem but she was agoraphobic. She admitted that for months she had not gone out alone because of panic attacks. Every night we had heard her pacing up and down the hall, moaning in fear.
According to the office staff, she appeared late and hung over for worship services. Only one person—her friend Nina, an occasional roommate and a member of the congregational council—seemed to have any influence on her. Nina had recently moved out after a quar
rel. If there was an on-again, off-again relationship between the two, Martin foresaw a conflict of interest in church affairs.
"Who knows what other skeletons lurk in that closet?" he mused as the plane cruised above the Atlantic. "I don't relish covering for her drinking binges. I wonder how much the synod knows . . ."
"I think they'll ask you to come."
He gave me a tired smile. The trip was finally taking its toll on him. "Whatever will be, will be," he said.
The official letter arrived a few weeks later. The West Berlin Synod invited Martin to serve the Thomas Church as its second pastor for a sabbatical period of nine months, from January to September 1982. They would contribute to his American pension plan and provide health coverage. After consulting with his Palo Alto church council, my husband accepted and the search began for a nine-month substitute. It seemed to be the perfect solution.
I could not accompany Martin to Berlin in January because my job at the university provided a tuition rebate for our daughter Sara. I would work until June, but take a short vacation over Easter and a summer leave of absence. I hardly dared think about what might happen after that.
During the weeks of late fall, Martin received frequent midnight telephone calls from an obviously drunk Renate. "Can't you come right away?" she pleaded. "Please—I can't wait until January."
"I have obligations here," he said. "I'll be there on New Year's Day, I promise. Don't worry."
"What have I gotten myself into," he muttered one morning after a particularly unpleasant late-night call. Only two weeks remained before Christmas, and it was hard to concentrate. Then just before Christmas Eve, a frantic Gisela called: "Renate had a nervous breakdown this morning. They took her to the Bonhoeffer Psychiatric Clinic. She didn't plan any holiday services. I don't know what to do."
"Call Pastor Burg," he said, thinking quickly. "It's his job to help you in emergencies. If no one else is available, he'll hold your services himself. I'll be with you in a few days."
A Mighty Fortress was the Berlin Wall
Martin slammed down the receiver with a loud German curse and came into the family room where I was reading. "I guess I'll be winging it for the first few weeks," he said. "All the mail, all the paperwork—who's going to fill me in? I wasn't supposed to do the administration part."
I got up and hugged him. "Maybe it's good Renate will be gone for a while," I reassured him. "You won't have to cover for her."
"Big consolation," he grunted.
A cloud hung over the Christmas of 1981. It should have been a joyful time; Martin was going home. But as so often happens in life, the gift had strings attached. We had accepted the terms. Like Pastor Burg after our interview, we had no choice.
As Martin's plane rose in the air I waved goodby from a window inside the San Francisco Airport, tears streaming down my cheeks. I was so afraid. Martin longed for Heimat, an ideal concept of Home that I only vaguely understood. What was Martin aching for that I couldn't give him? I didn't know, and I didn't think Martin really knew, either.
Was Heimat a place where real candles burned on the Christmas tree, where families sang folk songs and played string quartets every evening, where holiday fare was roast goose with red cabbage? Was Heimat just a spot on the globe where children prattled in a familiar dialect, where everyone knew you and there were no surprises?
Could a person be Heimat? That is what I had to find out.
