AFTER THE PARTY

The geography of Berlin has changed overnight.

of Europe may be redrawn soon

Berlin ONCE upon a time, and a very bad time it was, there was a famous platform in West Berlin where distinguished visitors would be taken to stare at the Wall. The Queen, Mrs Thatcher, American presidents from Kennedy to Reagan, stood on that plat- form looking out over the no-man's land between two concrete walls. They were told that this, the Potsdarner Platz, had once been Berlin's busiest square, its Pic- cadilly Circus. Their hosts pointed out a grassy mound in the middle of no-man's land: the remains of Hit- ler's bunker. Armed guards watched impas- sively from the other side. It was the image of the Cold War.

Last Sunday morning I walked across that no- man's land with a crowd of East Berliners. Bewil- dered border-guards waved us through the new crossing-point. (As recently as February their colleagues shot dead a man trying to escape.) On the far side, vertical segments of the • Wall stood at ease wherever the crane had dumped them, their multicoloured graffiti facing east for the first time. A crowd of West Berliners applauded as we came through, and a man handed out free city plans. Then I turned round and walked back again, past more bewildered border guards and customs officers. Ahead of me I noticed a tall man in an unfamiliar green uniform. He was one General Haddock, the US comman- dant in Berlin. The US commandant, strolling across the death strip.

By nightfall, West Berlin workers had dismantled the famous platform, like an unneeded stage-prop. Europe's Mousetrap has ended its 28-year run. Clear the stage for another show.

EVERYONE has seen the pictures of joyful celebration in West Berlin, the vast crowds stopping the traffic on the Kurfuer- stendamm, Sekt corks popping, perfect strangers tearfully embracing — the greatest street-party in the history of the world. Yes, it was like that. But it was not only like that, nor was that, for me, the most moving part. Most of the estimated two million East Germans who flooded into West Berlin over the weekend just walked the streets in quiet family groups, often with toddlers in pushchairs. They queued up at a bank to collect their DM100 (about £34) 'greeting money' and then they went, very cautiously, shopping. Generally they bought one or two small items, perhaps some fresh fruit, a Western news- paper and toys for the children. Then, clasping their carrier bags, they walked quietly back through the wall, through the grey, deserted streets of East Berlin, home.

It is very difficult to describe the quality of this experience because what they actually did was so stunningly ordinary. In effect, they just took a bus from Hackney or Dagenham to Piccadilly Circus, and went shopping in the West End. Berliners walked the streets of Berlin. What could be more normal? And yet, what could be more fantastic — '28 years and 91 days,' says one man in his late thirties walking back up Friedrichstrasse: 28 years and 91 days since the building of the Wall. On that day, in August 1961, his parents had wanted to go to a late-night Western in a West Berlin cinema. But their 11-year old son had been too tired. In the early hours they woke to the sound of tanks. He had never been to West Berlin from that day to this. A taxi-driver asks me, with a sly smile: 'How much is the ferry to England?' The day before yesterday the question would have been un- thinkable.

ORDINARY people doing very ordinary things (shopping!), the Berliners nonethe- less immediately grasped the historical dimensions of this event. 'Of course the real villain was Hitler,' said one. And the man who counted the 28 years and 91 days told me he had been most moved by an improvised poster saying 'Only today is the war really over.'

Bild newspaper — West Germany's Sun — carried, on its front page, an effusive thank-you letter from the editors to Mikhail Gorbachev. The East Germans also feel grateful to Gorbachev. But more important, they feel they have won this opening for themselves. For it was only the pressure of their massive, peaceful demon- strations that compelled the Party lead- ership to take this step. 'You see, it shows Lenin was wrong,' observed one worker. `Lenin said a revolution could only succeed with violence. But this was a peaceful revolution.' And even the Communist Party's Central Committee acknowledges at the beginning of its hastily drafted Action Programme that 'a revolutionary people's movement has set in motion a process of profound upheavals'.

If the Party leaders thought that by opening the frontiers they could reduce the pressure from below, they may soon have to think again. For the sentiment of every- one I talked to was: 'This is only the beginning.' Having cast aside their gags and crutches they have no intention of taking them up again. In Leipzig the by now traditional Monday evening demo was reportedly slightly smaller after the open- ing of the frontiers. But the demands were clearer and louder than ever: free elections and an end to the leading role of the Socialist Unity Party.

`GOOD story,' remarked the American television reporter standing in the queue at West Berlin airport. `Kinds trailed away yesterday and today,' said his colleague. `Yeah, audience interest way down.' This tells us something about America, but nothing about the story, which has only just begun. It is, in fact, three concentric stories: those of Berlin, Germany and Europe.

The surest part is the smallest: the reunification of Berlin. It will probably be some time before the Potsdamer Platz becomes a Piccadilly Circus again, although there is already a fantastic plan to build a huge department store — a Kaufhaus des Ostens — with entrances from both sides. But the mental geography of both half-cities has changed overnight. What was the edge has become the centre. And practical convergence proceeds apace. Bus services will now run through the Wall. Where previously a West Berlin underground line ran through ghostly, sealed stations in East Berlin, the doors now open and East Berliners leap aboard. East and West Berlin police co-operated at one point actually arm-in-arm — to restrain the crowds at the new crossings.

There will be problems enough here. The warmth and generosity of the West Berliners' welcome was spectacular. 'I was really received like a brother,' one youth told me — and whether he was tipsy with Sekt or sheer excitement I could not tell. Probably both. The old, pathos-laden phrase about 'our brothers and sisters in the East' acquired a new reality. But for how long? Already by the end of the weekend there were complaints about the East Berliners causing traffic jams and the stink from the two-stroke engines of their little Trabant cars. What if they keep coming? And what if you get thousands of East Berliners coming over to do legal or illegal part-time jobs, taking work away from West Berliners? And then look at it from the other side. What on earth will an open border do to the East German economy? Won't the strong currency drive out the weak?

HERE the Berlin story flows into the German story. These developments have thrown all the West German parties into turmoil. The Ostpolitik, says its father Willy Brandt, is over. It began with the building of the Wall; it has ended with the opening of the Wall. But for the next few weeks, at least, the crucial action will be in East Germany. Shattered by people's pow- er, the Communist Party has embarked on a Flucht nach vorn, a flight forward. Previously subservient puppet parties, the rubber-stamp parliament, the media, all have suddenly come to life, like so many Pinocchios touched by the blue fairy of revolution. Hans Modrow, the new Prime Minister, should have announced his new coalition government by the time you read this. There is to be a special Party congress in the middle of next month. But can they begin to satisfy the hundreds of thousands of people on the streets demanding free elections and an end to Party power?

Beside the political crisis there is the economic crisis, which Monday's stormy session of the parliament revealed to be deeper even than many Western analysts had thought. The opening of the frontiers will immediately expose it to new press- ures, with the East Germany mark, offi- cially at parity with the deutschmark, now standing unofficially at one tenth of that. in terms of structural economic reform the country has much further to go than, say, Hungary. In any attempted marketisation, people are likely to get worse off initially. Worsening economic conditions would in- crease political discontent, and also the temptation to sell out — individually or collectively — to West Germany.

At the moment there is one thing on which the opposition and the Party agree: they don't want to sell out. On Sunday evening I took part in a discussion about reunification in an East Berlin church.

`Friends of the Earth unite, you have nothing to lose but your food chains.' Some 20 people spoke from the floor. Not one was for reunification. The new opposi- tion groups — New Forum, Democracy Now, Democratic Awakening — want to make a different East Germany, a Third Way. But even if there is theoretically a third way and their programmes are desperately vague — it is by no means clear that this is what the majority in East Germany will actually want, once they start to think about it. After all, they have seen West Germany — and it works. Despite the explicit wishes of all the politically articulate forces in East Ger- many at this moment, and the explicit or implicit desires of many in West Germany, the logic of events may therefore begin to pull both halves together at remarkable speed.

Here, at the latest, the German story becomes a European story, with fun- damental implications for Britain. An East German foreign trade minister has already said that an application to join the EC could not be ruled out. Even intermediate steps of association pose major problems — as European leaders will be discussing at the emergency summit in Paris this weekend. Britain remains an occupying power in Berlin. Our representatives, along with those of France and the United States, had direct contacts with the Rus- sians over the weekend. (They speak on the telephone, in German!) The West German and West Berlin governments recognise that this four-power framework is still a useful one for managing the reunification of Berlin, and reassuring the Russians. But it will be increasingly diffi- cult to explain to German voters. Already the arch-strategist of social democratic Ostpolitik, Egon Bahr, is saying: 'all this rubbish with these old occupation rights must now be finished.'

And then there is the biggest question of all: the alliances. If you were Mr Gor- bachev, and you saw East Germany falling into the West German embrace, what would you do? Would you cling for dear life to your military presence, with the residual control possibilities that offers? Or would you go for a bigger prize — Nato! A crude offer like that Stalin made in March 1952 — neutralisation in return for reuni- fication — would almost certainly still be rejected by West Germany. But a more subtle package, under the sign of 'co- operative security,' suggesting the removal of all nuclear weapons and Soviet and American troops from an area called 'Cen- tral Europe': this, I believe, could rapidly win powerful support in West Germany, and might well be accepted by • the main opposition party, the Social Democrats. And next December there is a general election.

As the demolition of that famous plat- form on Potsdamer Platz followed swiftly on the opening of the Wall, so larger Western landmarks may soon follow East- ern ones, into history.