DDR

Though Communism hasn't been a focus of the trip since we are here to study Bach, it is a strong part of the history and has been fascinating to learn about. We had a guide show us around Leipzig on Monday. Leipzig, incidentally, is a city that was destroyed, then made ugly by Communist rule, and has in the last 20 years worked very hard to revitalize. It is not your stroll-through-the-streets quaint city, but instead is an impressive product of people fighting against the odds to have a productive, vibrant city. Eva, our tour guide (yes Erik, she really spelled it with an E), was a Leipzig native, born here in 1937. On her tour, she didn't necessarily convey a lot of history about the city through her stories, yet her tour fascinated me because she included details that only a woman who has lived in a deprived city for a long time would include. For instance, she showed us the metal markings on the ground that guide visitors on a walking tour. She tapped it proudly and exclaimed, "what good material, ya?" Later, she brought us to a walkway into the heart of the city and stopped to happily point out how advanced the street was because it had a small path with contours so that those sight-impaired could follow the sidewalk using a walking stick. She told us how many Euros the main square cost, and that one portion of the mall was lined with the most expensive ceramic tile you could find. These details were not impressive in themselves, but instead showed a city proud of its recovery after such a lack. When pressed, we got Eva to tell us a bit about her life. She still jumps when she hears loud noises because she was 6 when Leipzig was bombed in 1943 (the city was bombed 68 times during WWII). Her father fought in the war but luckily returned. Under Communism she was kicked out of university because her two sisters managed to cross the border (her one sister was blind and got out on a luggage car of a train). She said her husband at one point was taken for 6 months and then let go, but she didn't know where he was that whole time! (the Stasi museum discussed how people would be arrested because of some loose claim, but that they were not given fair trials and were kept for little reason) One woman in our group asked her what was good about Communism. She basically said nothing, but then said that people had more time together. However, she qualified it by saying that she would line up to buy bread at 1 pm waiting for the bakery to open at 2pm, and by 2:20 pm the bakery would be out of bread. Unreal. After hearing Eva's story, and visitng the Stasi museum, and seeing a prison in Erfurt (called the longest road or something because if you tried to leave Erfurt and cross the border but got caught, you would go to the jail there for 5 years), I was convinced that Communism was awful for these people. Last night at the concert, I spoke to another older woman from Leipzig who had taught music and English for years, and she said that the trouble began in 1990! She said that times were different before, but that she hates the commercialism and now feels like a 2nd class citizen and believes that the time before 1990 was better. I hope to continue learning more about local sentiments.