Peter Schneider (1) (1940–2026)

This short book calls itself a story, but it reads more like an extended essay. Schneider playfully explores the way ordinary people were dealing with the phenomenon of the Berlin Wall at a point in the 1980s where it had been in existence for a good twenty years and wasn't showing any sign of ever going away again. He talks about his own experience as a West Berlin resident occasionally visiting the East, and about his friends on both sides — his girlfriend, who has moved from East to show more West leaving her family behind; a neighbour who moves from West to East; East German writers and their friends, and so on.

He also gives us various case-studies of individualists who challenged the existence of the border in odd ways: the eponymous "wall-jumper," who repeatedly vaulted the wall from West to East on the apparent grounds that he couldn't be bothered to walk round to the official crossing point (the West Berlin authorities couldn't prosecute him since they didn't recognise the border; those in the East didn't know what to do with him other than sticking him in mental institutions to cool his heels before sending him home); the three East Berlin lads who discovered a weak point in the wall and used it to spend their Saturday afternoons in a West Berlin cinema (no-one noticed until a West German journalist got hold of the story); a man who drove the intelligence services on both sides crazy by repeatedly crossing over to offer his services as a double- triple- or quadruple-agent; another who spent his time raiding the border fortifications to steal East German military hardware; and so on.

The point seems to be that in the real world, people are able to accommodate themselves to almost any weird situation, even a city arbitrarily split in two, and just find ways to get on with normal life. But also, it's a reminder to West Germans not to make too many easy assumptions about the intrinsic superiority of their system. The DDR had a lot of things wrong with it, but there was always another side to the argument, and — up to a point — it continued to function because there were enough people who still believed in the ideals of socialism and were not bursting to move away but cherished the hope that the country's deficiencies could be repaired. show less

A precious insight into a world being quickly forgotten, Schneider’s novel elucidates the banal insanity of the Berlin Wall, and the complexity of the human responses to it. The wall jumper, who constantly leaps across the border from West to East (to the confusion of all) “because it’s there”, is one extroverted symptom of a wider, creeping malady. The inhabitants of each society voice their views about the world in the terminology of their home republic, and become by that means show more mouthpieces for their respective governments. This contrast between states that share a language and a history is exhibited endlessly, from conversations in bars to news coverage of terrorists/freedom fighters in Mozambique (according to taste). The Wall Jumper is a startling book that has an enormous amount to contribute to our understanding of our selves, as well as an invaluable history lesson for students of German politics who want to understand why, in many ways, the Wall still stands. show less

This book has no pictures, and needs them. The descriptions are good, but not really any substitute for images.

In the 30 years since the fall of the Wall, Berlin has been going through change after change. Interleaved chapters cover some of the history and some of the outcomes of these changes. Berlin is admitted to have little beautiful architecture, but a great night life, difficult citizens, and a lively arts scene, violent youth and determined anti-fascists. One of the only capitals in show more the world with plenty of unused land, all development seem to be the subject of major contention. I was pretty worn out 2/3 of the way through, but then it picked up again 3 of the penultimate chapters deal with the Holocaust & Jews in the past and current Berlin. Altogether it presents a picture of a city of many segments and those segments compounded with layers of past and present, German and non German, Berliner and non-Berliner, easterner vs westerner with the divisions made in history echoing against different walls. show less

In this interesting book, published in 1984 five years before the Berlin Wall came down, Schneider explores the social, political and intellectual differences and similarities between the inhabitants of East and West Berlin. While some differences are apparent, little is black and white, and Schneider remarks that he is surprised at how quickly and how deeply attitudes have changed following the division of the two states: time, propaganda, repression, inculcation, education, psychology have show more all had their influences and effects and often inhibit dialogue and understanding:

“At first Pommerer was curious about the responses my foreign gaze on his surrounding would elicit. Since then, his curiosity has increasingly given way to the need to protect his routine from the impudence, even the stupidity of my first impressions. I am shocked by certain restrictions on his life which he has long since accepted. My shock inescapably reminds him of his initial feelings, which he has rejected as pointless. More and more often, he counters my reactions by referring to parallel phenomena in the West.”

Schneider and another of his friends argue because they interpret exactly the same news item or broadcast or picture in a paper or incident through entirely different lenses: “…I take what I see at face value; Robert has been trained to read between the lines. Where I perceive merely an event, maybe an accident, Robert perceives a plan that he has to decipher.”

The ambiguity of the situation of an East and West Germany is summed up nicely:

“I turned forty last year. The two states which bear the word “German” in their initials have just celebrated their thirtieth birthday. So I am ten years older than the state that has grown up around me and in me. On the basis of age alone, I can’t call it my fatherland. What’s more, this state represents only a part of the country that would be my fatherland. If my fatherland exists, it isn’t a state, and the state of which I am a citizen is not a fatherland. If I respond to queries about my nationality by saying without hesitation that I’m German, I am clearly opting not for a state, but for a people that no longer has a state identity. At the same time, however, I assert that my national identity does not depend on either of the German states.”

A book of interesting and insightful considerations, echoes of which are probably still apparent after the physical re-unification of the two Germanies. show less