From the S&S archives: They live on The Wall

EDITOR'S NOTE: The infamous Berlin Wall is 5 years old today. To one seeing it for the first time, it is difficult to believe. For others, it has become part of their daily life. Such is the case with this typical Berlin family.

"BERLIN ONCE seen — forever loved," boast Berliners with deep feeling. They are a proud and emotional people.

And their cross is the Wall: "Once seen — forever loathed."

The Horst Meyers see it and suffer its profane presence every day. They live on the Wall.

In the suffocating shadow of this monstrous effrontery, the Meyers make their way to work; their children play their games. Open the door, look out the window — it's always there.

The Meyers live for the day when they can escape this blasphemous barrier.

They can't afford rents in more desirable areas. But there is a chance they might be able to work out an exchange and still pay about the same rate. In the rebuilding that is going on in Berlin, old buildings are being torn down and families moved into new suburban structures. Some older couples, however, prefer to forego their new housing in order to stay in the city quarters to which they are so attached. If such a couple could be found, the Meyers would gladly trade their old place for a new one.

"We want to leave the Wall, but it's very hard to find people who want to live on the Wall."

It's hard to stretch sentiment that far.

The rent for the three-room, second-story apartment is the equivalent of $36.50, up $8.75 from when the Meyers moved in eight years ago. Then the row of five-story apartment buildings faced onto a gracious green park, with stately, chestnut trees surrounding the serene waters of a small lake.

"For about two years," recalled Mrs. Meyer, who like her husband is Berlin born and bred, "the Communists left the trees standing in front of our house and kept water in the little lake.

"Then, in 1963 (the Wall went up in 1961) they cut down the trees, filled the lake, tore down houses and put up powerful street lights along the Wall.

"By day, we no longer hive those beautiful trees and the lake to look at, and at night our rooms are never really dark."

Except for one apartment building ("we wave to each other," she said of its tenants) with a peeling facade, and a distant factory with unsightly smokestacks, the view over the cruel barbed wire and cinder blocks is one of dust and desolation. A garish red and-yellow billboard advertises "Freedom and Security Through Annexation and Understanding."

"It keeps blowing down," laughed Mrs. Meyer.

Baby-faced border guards shuffle indolently through the wasteland, kicking at stones and tin cans. Sub-machineguns hang menacingly from slumping shoulders.

"THEY look and act like young men anywhere," said Mrs. Meyer, a statuesque, brown-haired woman of 38. "They even play soccer with the children living in that apartment building. But what upsets me is that their favorite pastime seems to be staring into our windows with their binoculars, and trying to catch sight of West Berlin women. I feel like one of the fish in our aquarium."

The aquarium is one of many bright touches in the apartment which the Meyers have spent much time redecorating, including Walt Disney cartoon decals for 8-year-old daughter Angela's bedroom. Two-year-old Claudia's crib shifts between the living-dining room and her parents' bedroom. Heat comes from an ornate tile stove.

Husband Horst works just off the elegant Kurfuerstendamm in a furniture store. He has no car and rides the underground to work, about 40 minutes from the middle-class Kreuzberg district where they live. Vacations to the West are rare — "We feel rather small; we'd like to go to many places."

A tall, handsome man with hair now graying, Meyer met his wife-to-be, linguist Ilsegard, after the war when she was working as a secretary for the American Army. (She's now a court stenographer.) Ilsegard came from the East Zone; Horst has always been in the West. She can see one of her former apartment buildings over the Wall, toward where an aunt and uncle still reside.

"We were not bombed out or shot out," explained Mrs. Meyer. "We were thrown out by the Russians — told to pack up and get out. A week later, we saw one of our old neighbors who told us the Russians had burned out our whole block.

"We were lucky. Not many of our close relatives were caught in the East, but it made me physically sick anyway."

MEYER said that life along their section of the Wall had always been comparatively peaceful. Angela navigates her scooter and skips at hop-scotch on the sidewalk that runs along the Wall. American jeeps on Wall patrol use this path. The soldiers give Angela candy at Christmas. She regrets being unable to express her thanks in a more adequate manner.

"I try," she said, "but I don't think they understand me."

Mrs. Meyer is reminded of her own childhood as she gazes from her windows and sees "along the skyline many of the places that for me were a treasure — the city hall, the cathedral, the museums."

She shrugs, strokes the family cat, and wonders — will it ever be the same?