In 1958, a propaganda work was published under the title “Peace is created by man alone”. It contained material for schools, factories, Pioneer and FDJ groups for ideological rearmament during the Christmas season.
Advent calendars were not allowed to be called such until the early 1970s. Instead, the term “pre-Christmas calendars” appeared on invoices and orders. Christian motifs were not allowed to be printed on them at all until 1973. Then, for the first time, a publishing house in Lusatia was given permission to depict the Christ Child and the Magi. But there were also socialist variants, such as an Advent calendar featuring young pioneers with scarves and caps. Other common motifs were Christmas markets or winter scenes with children. But they did not catch on; the most popular motif was a late Baroque church from the Erzgebirge.

Father Frost” was adopted from the Soviet Union and was to become a socialist rival to Father Christmas. But people accepted him only as an addition to Father Christmas.

They tried again and again, but it was no use. In 1982, SED Politburo member Kurt Hager, talking to West German DKP comrades loyal to the line, declared: “We lost Christmas long ago.”
There was also strong internal opposition to this. According to the BND, in 1979 a Stasi defector reported to the secret service people that the Stasi itself had exerted “moderating influence” on the GDR leadership. They had looked the people in the mouth and feared negative reactions.

For the socialist planned economists, however, there were practical problems as well as ideological ones.
The Dresden Christstollen was also a bestseller in the workers’ and peasants’ state. But some ingredients were simply not available domestically. Almonds, currants and candied orange peel had to be imported from capitalist countries for scarce Western dollars.

For the GDR economic functionary Alexander Schalck-Golodkovski, this was an untenable situation. He seriously recommended to his colleagues in the Politburo a so-called “Stollenschenkverbot”. The simple logic: if there are no tunnels, we don’t need to spend foreign currency on materials.
But his colleagues found this too tricky, so the hare-brained idea, like many others, was shelved.

After 45, the former Reichsbahn bunker in Friedrichstraße first served as a textile warehouse, and from 1957 it was the GDR’s central storage facility for dried and tropical fruit from Cuba. Run by the “Volkseigener Betrieb Obst Gemüse Speisekartoffeln” (People’s Own Fruit, Vegetable and Potato Company), the building quickly became known as the “banana bunker”. During the Christmas season, the Western imports so detested by Schalck-Golodkovski also landed there. So it became the “Christmas bunker” during this season.

Nevertheless, the basic materials were scarce. Especially for those who wanted to bake their own Stollen at home. At the beginning of autumn, many families began to collect ingredients for the Stollen. But certain ingredients were simply not available in the shops. Even many large bakeries were faced with problems that could hardly be solved. Albrecht Großmann, then production manager at the Döbeln bakery goods combine, remembers: “Sultanas were scarce, almonds were scarce, candied lemon peel and candied orange peel were not available at all, so we made do with the raw materials that were available.” For example, green tomatoes were candied as a citronate substitute and carrots as an imitation of candied orange peel.

Those who were lucky could count on loving relatives in the West. November/December saw an enormous increase in the number of parcels with the inscription “Gift! No merchandise!” increased enormously. Apart from coffee, cigarettes and ladies’ stockings, it was mainly ingredients for Stollen that filled the parcels. It often contained a Stollen or Christmas carving or wood-turning art from the Erzgebirge.
For the economic planners of the GDR, the West packages were a fixed item in the supply plan… And for the citizens, a welcome addition to the gift table.

Since it was impossible to beat the Christ Child and Father Christmas, people began to bring in their own aspects. No one could object to peace. But the pacifism of the GDR superiors always had a side taste. The NVA was presented as an indispensable part of the state, even at Christmas time. And even though war toys did not officially exist, many a Christmas tree contained a cable-operated battle tank, accompanied by toy soldiers.

“Guten Abend, schön Abend, es weihnachtet schon …” was one of the most popular Christmas carols widely sung in the GDR. The married couple Hans and Ilse Naumilkat wrote the lyrics in the 1950s and it was spread that the melody came from a funny folk song from the Eifel.
In fact, however, the melody came from a song from Austria, a song with a distinctly Christian content. Hail Mary, virgin of grace, you are full of grace, the Lord is with you.

Other changes in the hymnody met with approval in the West. In Hoffmann von Fallersleben’s song “Morgen kommt der Weihnachtsmann” (Father Christmas is coming tomorrow), the original reads: “Drum, whistle and rifle, flag and sabre and even more, yes, I’d like to have a whole army of war!” Hans Sandig, director of the Leipzig Radio Children’s Choir, rewrote this text into a more contemporary, peaceful, version: “Cradle, doll, ei der Daus, sugar stuff and crunchy house, yes a whole doll’s house I’d like to have!”

A classic in the memory of the GDR is the “winged end-of-year figure” that was supposedly an official term in the GDR for angels. In the West, this term was (and still is) always good for a laugh.

The only catch is that no one can prove with certainty where it comes from. There is no evidence of state use of the atheistic term, which does seem very convulsive.

The term is often attributed to the only official satirical magazine in the GDR, “Eulenspiegel”. But the Eulenspiegel author Ernst Röhl wrote that he had actually seen the term on a sales stand. It can be found in his 1986 book “Wörtliche Betäubung” (literal anaesthesia), in which he took aim at bureaucratic excesses of GDR language.

The historian Bodo Mrozek included it in his “Lexikon der bedrohten Wörter” (Dictionary of Endangered Words), but in the article he writes that the exact origin cannot be proven to this day.

While the Christstollen was hardly available in sufficient quantities, there was, as in many GDR areas, a lively barter trade with even rarer Christmas “Bückware”. (Bückwaren were articles that were not on the shelves, they were kept under the counter for special customers).

In winter, Seiffen incense smokers were one of many parallel currencies. Whether Trabi tyres or fruit, the products of the small businesses were highly sought after in the barter trade.

Nutcrackers and incense smokers were scarce because they were excellent foreign exchange earners. Most of the small businesses’ production went to capitalist foreign countries.

But even well-grown Christmas trees were in short supply. There were almost only pine trees. The good firs ended up in the West.

Many trees from the Erzgebirge were small and ugly. But since a running metre only cost two marks, two trees were often bought at once. The good branches of one tree were artfully sawn off and glued into small holes in the trunk of the other with the help of the GDR glue “Duosan Rapid”.
The beautifully made tree was decorated with colourful baubles that had been collected over the years and with tinsel. But even the tin tinsel was in short supply. So it was usually carefully removed from the tree after the festive season and stored away.

But Western families also did this to save money. In my Tempelhof family, this preliminary form of recycling was completely normal.

It may seem strange, but the East Berlin Christmas markets had a special charm for West Berlin visitors in the 70s. But for a family of several, a visit there in the 80s was a luxury. The 1980 increase in the compulsory exchange fee of 25 marks per adult visitor and 7.50 marks for six- to fifteen-year-old children was a high entrance fee for the otherwise admission-free Christmas market.

But roast wild boar, mulled wine, Alt-Berliner Bierbowle and Romanian Slibowitz were very cheap at the market on the Alex. Many a West Berliner reached the border crossing on the return trip heavily intoxicated and many a person missed the exit time. Carpooling was similarly cheap. It is understandable that for the GDR citizens the many wealthy citizens from the West on the market were not pure joy. For there were scarce goods at the market, which were then often bought away by the Westerners.

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Few cities with over a million inhabitants have such a well-developed local transport network as Berlin. Almost every tourist destination can be reached quickly by train or bus. Of course, visitors should avoid rush hour.

The S-Bahn line 3 goes from Spandau in the west to Erkner in the east. It passes the city’s main tourist highlights, and since it is an overground line in the city centre, it offers a great view of the city. The Berlin WelcomeCard, which offers free use of public transport as well as discounts at many museums and sights, is almost a musthave for tourist users of the S 7.

The part of the line of interest to tourists begins in the east at Warschauer Straße station. It is only a few minutes away from the Oberbaum Bridge. From the bridge you have a wonderful view eastwards, past the former Osthafen, to Treptow-Köpenick.

The world-famous East Side Gallery, a part of the Berlin Wall that was painted by international artists after the fall of the Wall, begins at the Oberbaumbrücke. On the corner of the Oberbaumbrücke is the Mühlenspeicher, which houses The Wall Museum. A multimedia exhibition shows the history of Berlin between 1945 and 1990. Of course, the Berlin WelcomeCard is accepted at the museum. The East Side Gallery stretches all the way to Ostbahnhof, the next station on the S 3, and you have the choice of walking along Mühlenstraße and looking at the artworks or walking along the banks of the Spree. On Sundays there is a flea market on the north side of Ostbahnhof. (It’s only small in 2020 because of construction work).

The next station is called Jannowitzbrücke, where there is a harbour for sightseeing boats and on the other side of the Spree is the Märkisches Museum.
If you stay on the S3, the next station is Alexanderplatz. The television tower is its landmark, which cannot be overlooked. The sunlight creates a cross on the sphere, and the GDR authorities tried everything possible to prevent this. But the “Christian symbol” remained visible above the city.

The GDR had given the area a “socialist” veneer, and the World Time Clock from 1969 remains from this period. It is still a popular meeting place for Berliners and visitors.

The S3 continues to Hackescher Markt station. This is the station for the Museum Island. Besides the Pergamon Museum, the German Historical Museum is also near the station. The latter is at the beginning of the street Unter den Linden. A stroll to the Brandenburg Gate is one of the options. But you can also follow the railway line from Hackescher Markt. The arches house numerous restaurants and shops. The nearest train station is Friedrichstraße. In GDR times, the station was the main entrance for West Berliners to East Berlin. The U6 underground line only stopped here in East Berlin at the time. The checkpoint building became known as the Palace of Tears. Today it houses a small exhibition.

The S3 continues to Hauptbahnhof, Berlin’s main long-distance railway station. The S-Bahn journey offers an excellent view of the Reichstag and the government quarter, which are located on the other side of the river. It continues to Bellevue station, at the palace park of the same name. Bellevue Palace has been the official residence of the Federal President since 1994. The standard with the federal eagle also flies on the roof when the Federal President is not there. It is only hoisted during visits abroad or when he is in Bonn’s Villa Hammerschmidt.

The Tiergarten S-Bahn station is on the Straße des 17. To the east, on the Großer Stern, stands the Victory Column. It was completed in 1873 and commemorates the wars of 1864, 1866 and 1871. It used to stand in front of the Reichstag and was moved in 1939 as part of the gigantomanic Nazi urban planning.
On Saturdays and Sundays there is a large flea market directly opposite the S-Bahn station.

The next station is Bahnhof Zoo. You can also follow the railway line through the Tiergarten on foot and visit the Gaslaternen-Freilichtmuseum Berlin on the way. The path leads across a bridge over the Landwehr Canal at the Unterschleuse, also known as the Tiergartenschleuse. The Berlin Zoo is on the left, at Hardenbergplatz is its main entrance. The Zoo station is also located there. If you stay on the train, you have a beautiful view of the zoo as you pass. With over 1,300 animal species, it is the world’s most diverse zoo. With its adjoining aquarium, Berlin Zoo is one of the most visited sights in Berlin, with over 3 million people visiting it every year. The sensation in 2020 is the two pandas Meng Yuan and Meng Xiang. The babies caused visitor numbers to skyrocket even more. Other crowd pullers are the polar bears. Even after the tragic death of the media phenomenon Knut in 2011, Berlin’s polar bears have fans all over the world.

For many, Bahnhof Zoo is the gateway to City West. It is close to Breitenbachplatz, where the ruined tower of the Kaiser Wilhelm Memorial Church stands as a memorial against the war. The new church next to it, designed by architect Egon Eiermann, is bathed in a special blue light inside thanks to 20,000 glass blocks and is therefore visited by up to 10,000 tourists a day. During the Christmas season, a large Christmas market is set up there; in 2016, there was an attack there in which 12 people were killed and over 50 injured. A memorial and strong security measures commemorate the event.

Kurfürstendamm, Ku’damm to Berliners, is the heart of West City. It merges with Tauentzienstraße to the east. The KaDeWe department store on Wittenbergplatz is a magnet for tourists and Berliners alike. It is undeniably Germany’s best-known department stores’, and the large food department has a legendary reputation. It is the second largest food department of any department stores’ in the world.

Hundreds of shops are located on Tauentzienstrasse, Kurfürstendamm and in the side streets. The changes after the fall of the Wall in 1989 did not stop at Ku’damm. Since the beginning of the 21st century, after the closure of cinemas and old-established cafés, the boulevard has developed more and more from a nightlife and entertainment mile into a shopping street. Some things disappeared, others were greatly changed. On the corner of Joachimsthaler Straße was Café Kranzler, a Berlin institution. Udo Lindenberg sang: “In 15 minutes the Russians will be on Kurfürstendamm. They’ll leave their tanks in the car park and want to see the cream cakes at Café Kranzler.” The famous rotunda is still there, but the rest has changed completely. The Café Kranzler is now run as a branch of the Berlin coffee roasting company The Barn, and because of the view it is a tourist magnet and a city landmark.

On 1 April, you should be careful when making appointments on Ku`damm, because the house numbers 1 – 10 are missing, as are the house numbers 77-89 and 221-223.
The nearest S3 station is at Savignyplatz. Around the square and the adjoining streets there are a variety of restaurants, bars, cafés, jazz clubs, cinemas, antique and book shops.

Continue west to Charlottenburg station. The pedestrian zone Wilmersdorfer Straße is located there. It was the first motor vehicle-free zone established in a Berlin street, and the department stores and shops tend to serve the everyday needs of Berliners, not the upscale needs like the luxury shops on Ku’damm. The Rogacki fish delicatessen attracts many Berlin gourmets.

The next station, Westkreuz, is the western junction to the Ringbahn. It is located at the north-east corner of the exhibition grounds, but the station is mainly used for changing trains; the exhibition grounds are better reached via the next station, Messe Süd, formerly Eichkamp.
The trade fair grounds also include the Funkturm, the older brother of the TV tower.

The Heerstraße and Olympiastadion stations are hardly tourist magnets. South of Heerstraße is Teufelsberg, heaped up from rubble after 1945, it served the US secret services as a base for radar and radio surveillance of the GDR areas around West Berlin. Today you have a great view over Berlin from there, the mountain is the second highest elevation in the city. The Olympic Stadium is Berlin’s most famous sports venue. It will always be associated with the 1936 Nazi Olympic Games.

The Pichelsberg S-Bahn station is at the south-western end of the Olympic grounds. The Waldbühne, the equestrian stadium, the Murellenschlucht nature reserve and the 62-metre-high Murellenberg are nearby.

The Stresow S-Bahn station is already in Spandau. You can walk to the old town of Spandau via Stresowstraße, but the more interesting route leads north from Spandau station, past the town hall. Spandau is considered older than Berlin, and even today the residents of Spandau see themselves as something special.

From Stresow, the S3 leads across the Havel to Spandau station, the terminus of the S3. Spandau’s old town is the largest pedestrian zone in Berlin with many shopping opportunities. St. Nikolai’s Church is the historic centre; a cannonball is walled into the north façade; local legend links it to the siege of Spandau Citadel in 1813, but it was not fortified there until decades later.

The citadel adjoins the old town to the northeast. Built as a fortress in 1559-1594, it has been largely preserved. Since 1992, the former armoury has housed the Spandau Museum of City History. Not all visitors come to see the fortifications.

Concerts and festivals are held regularly in the citadel, and the annual medieval festival is a highlight.40 studios there provide space for artists. The registry office offers wedding ceremonies in the Fürstenzimmer of the Kommandantenhaus. The Gothic Hall, rooms in the Italian Courts and the Old Barracks can be rented as venues.

Whether you want to go to the East Side Gallery and The Wall Museum in the east or to Spandau in the west, the S3 is a great way to explore Berlin.

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The songBerlin Air is considered the unofficial anthem of Berlin, 40 years ago it was far more popular in East and West than it is today. But back then, in the days of the GDR, what fizzled out in the Berlin air was anything but a pleasant scent. And there was certainly no question of it being rare.

In theory, environmental protection was a state goal in the GDR. Article 15 paragraph 2 of the GDR constitution of 1974 stipulated: “In the interest of the well-being of the citizens, the state and society shall ensure the protection of nature. The maintenance of the purity of the waters and the air as well as the flora and fauna and the scenic beauty of the homeland are to be ensured by the competent organs and are also the responsibility of every citizen.” But the reality was far from that.

Compared to the 1970s and 1980s, Berlin today is almost an air health resort. Until 1989, pollution levels in the GDR were a secret matter. Smog did not officially exist; it was only in the last months of the GDR that work was done on a smog ordinance. The GDR authorities called the yellowish clouds of dirt billowing through the cities “industrial fog”. In the record winter of 1985, torches were placed along the roadsides in some cities in the GDR so that passers-by could find their way. During the day! The combustion residue from the torches made the situation even worse. In the Ruhr area, industrial plants were temporarily shut down that winter. According to today’s measurements, the concentration of pollutants in the Central German coalfield was about five times as high as in the Ruhr area – but in the East the smog alarm did not go off.

This was also the case in the eastern part of Berlin, where the highest hourly value for sulphur dioxide was 1000 microgrammes on 21 January 1985. Two weeks earlier, on 7 January, it had even reached the 1500 microgram mark for sulphur dioxide per cubic metre of air. The pollution load naturally also blew into the western districts of the Wall City, where smog warnings were repeatedly issued in those years. In Leipzig, the meter’s display was stuck at the upper limit for an hour and a half on 20 January, reaching only 4999 micrograms.

The year before, all GDR media published a report admitting that the forests were endangered by “smoke damage”. But nothing was learned about the extent of the forest dieback. Instead, the state party SED tried to do damage control of a completely different kind: in a “Manual for Agitators on Questions of Environmental Protection” they attributed the increasing environmental discussion to “ideological attacks” by the “class enemy”, who was only interested in distracting attention from their own problems and “discrediting the economic and social policy of the GDR leadership” with the “talk of ‘acid rain'” or the “assertion that lignite has a particularly high sulphur content”.

The GDR’s state-planned economy relied on lignite for its energy supply, because it could be mined in the territory of the GDR and did not have to be imported. This saved scarce foreign currency.

By 1990, lignite production was to be increased to as much as 335 million tonnes. Measured by its sulphur emission density, the GDR, with 46.2 tonnes per square kilometre per year (Federal Republic of Germany fourteen tonnes), had long been far at the top of all European countries. Of the sixty million tonnes of sulphur dioxide blown into the air in Europe every year, 5.1 million came from the GDR and 3.8 million from West German chimneys.
The pollution was also high in summer. Along Mühlenstraße, which runs past The Wall Museum, thousands of two-stroke engines blew their filth unfiltered into the air every day. The Hinterland wall, today’s Eastside Gallery, obstructed the exchange of air. But even so, enough dirt was drawn across the Spree to Kreuzberg. The two-stroke engine of the Trabant 601 emitted about 30 times as many hydrocarbons as a comparable four-stroke engine.

Besides industry and traffic, domestic heating was the main cause of the enormous pollution of the air breathed in the GDR. A large proportion of East Berlin’s flats were heated with brown coal.

Environmental protection played no role for the SED. There was no lack of data; in the 1980s, there was area-wide monitoring of air quality in the GDR and the data was analysed in real time.

Since the pollution stank to high heaven, in the truest sense of the word, the cover-ups were pointless. Under the protection of the Protestant church, an environmental movement developed that would later help to overthrow the system. One example was the Environmental Library, which was founded in 1986 in rooms of the Zion Church in East Berlin. In November 1987, the MfS raided the Environmental Library and arrested several people. They were quickly released again because they feared negative reports on West television.

Occasionally data leaked out, but in 1982 an investigation in the GDR Central Journal for Pharmacology entitled “The Cadmium Content of Food in the GDR” caused alarm. In it, it was recommended “for safety reasons” to blend grain produced in the Freiberg district with grain from other growing areas “in order to keep the Cd contamination for humans as low as possible”.

Shortly afterwards, the booklet was confiscated by the GDR authorities and reissued – this time without the cadmium article. The Ministry for State Security had thus solved the problem for the GDR leadership.

While in West Berlin, as in the Federal Republic, the catalytic converter was introduced for new cars with petrol engines in 1984, there were no such plans in East Berlin. There was no lack of voices calling the introduction in West Berlin therefore pointless. However, the five-year transition period happened to coincide with the fall of the Wall. And so almost all new cars with petrol engines in reunified Germany had catalytic converters.

Die Berliner Luft nach dem Mauerfall

80 per cent of the GDR power plants were shut down after the fall of the Wall and the rest were modernised so that air pollution fell to a similarly low level as in the West. Modern flue gas desulphurisation plants have pushed the pollution with sulphur dioxide and dust sharply downwards. On an annual average, sulphur dioxide concentrations are now below five micrograms per cubic metre of air throughout Germany; the permissible hourly average of 350 micrograms has never been exceeded since it was established.

From the world’s highest measured pollution with sulphur dioxide in the 1980s, eastern Germany has come down to good values at record speed. Today, the sulphur dioxide level is not even 1 % of the average GDR value. In the meantime, Germany no longer exceeds the European-wide limit values for sulphur dioxide, carbon monoxide, benzene and lead. Since 1990, for example, lead emissions in Germany have fallen by over 90 per cent. Due to leaded petrol, the level was also high in the old Federal Republic until then.

The nitrogen dioxide values in Berlin are still above the current European limit values, but these are far below those of the time before 1989. For fine dust (PM2.5), the guideline limit value of 20 µg/m³ as an annual average, valid since 2020, is currently being complied with. For (PM10), the value is occasionally exceeded. Since the air emitted by modern diesel engines is cleaner than the air sucked in, traffic will play an increasingly minor role in particulate matter. In 2019, according to the Berlin Senate, only 1/3 of the particulate matter measured in Berlin came from the city. And only 26% comes from traffic.

Nationwide, there are still 36,000 Trabbis on the road, and the number is even increasing as interest in Ostalgie grows, even though production ceased in 1990. Restored cars are in high demand. In 2018/19, the number of “racing caps” registered for road use increased by hundreds of vehicles. But today there are catalytic converters for the Trabbi that reduce environmental pollution.

1.21 million passenger cars were registered in Berlin in 2019. The number rose because the population also increased. Compared to other major cities, however, Berlin still has a remarkably low level of motorisation, with around 340 cars per 1000 inhabitants.

But there is still work to be done. Leisure captains, passenger ships and cargo ships are still allowed to chug across the Spree, no matter how much the exhaust smokes. Nevertheless, the Mercedes Benz harbour at the Eastside Gallery is a good place for tourists to go in summer, and the riverside path is a nice alternative on the way to The Wall Museum. The wind over the Spree makes for pleasantly fresh and clean air.

And what about the current topic of CO2? In 2020, Berliners produce significantly fewer emissions per capita than the average person in Germany. Changes in domestic heating in particular have reduced the emission of CO2 from fossil fuels. After the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989, Berlin’s CO2 emissions fell sharply until 2010. Due to the increasing population and economic development, Berlin’s CO2 emissions have stagnated since 2011.

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