Behind the Iron Curtain
Malcolm Bell writes about a project of reconciliation in Dresden
Friends are probably unaware of a remarkable reconciliation project in the early sixties in Dresden that was initiated by Coventry Cathedral and associated with their ‘Cross of Nails’ forgiveness symbol. The initiative, which was stimulated by the German Sühnezeichen project to atone for their action in world war two, has been commemorated in two books by academic Merrilyn Thomas: Communing with the Enemy: Covert Operations, Christianity and Cold War Politics in Britain and the GDR and Stepping off the Map: Memories of a Cold War Adventure. Both recognise the central role of a Quaker, Paul Oestreicher, who is also an ordained canon in the Church of England.
The project, conceived by Coventry’s provost Bill Williams in the early 1960s, was to send a group of fifty student-age people to Dresden to help rebuild a major hospital that was badly wrecked in the bombing. The hospital was, and remains, created and operated by Lutheran nuns. There were many obstacles, from money and visas to planning and presentation, most of which required the approval of the British and East German governments. At the time Dresden was in Communist East Germany, the ‘Berlin Wall’ had just been built in 1961, and the ‘cold war’ was at its height. The Cuban missile crisis was in 1962.
Outreach
For the Cathedral and the students planning to go, it was simple outreach in the Christian tradition. It was, however, not that simple. Was 1961 a good time to send naive, high-spirited students into the German Democratic Republic? Of course not, but it happened, and was a huge success – but how? Today not all the facts are fully known and all the pieces do not yet fit together perfectly.
It is now clear, however, as a result of Merrilyn Thomas’s intense research in the old Stasi files and long interviews with new friends, that something much bigger was happening. The leader of the East German government, Walter Ulbricht, was directly involved in sanctioning full visas without regional restriction to all the participants. This was a unique privilege, without precedent or repetition. Leaders of the Stasi, the fearsome secret police, were committed to making the project a success. Senior members of the British government and MI6 were more than simply spectators.
It is now apparent that canon Paul Oestreicher was perhaps the critical link at the centre. He had contact at the very top of the Stasi. He had contacts with MI6. He knew the authorities in Coventry and in the East German church. The strong, quiet, hand of the Quaker was at work, determined to try to defuse the cold war in any way he could. Did it work? Was it worth the dreadful risk? Who knows? It is impossible to tell, but there are indications that even today the ripples of that simple, wide-eyed and very jolly work camp and its sequel caused a significant tremor. Even after the Wall and the USSR fell it still has influence today.
Spirituality of the experience
Beyond the small bars and smart restaurants in Berlin and London, where powerful men quietly engaged the gears to connect everything up, the enthusiastic young team on the front line were convinced they were only, as most of them saw it, doing the work of Christ. They were reaching out their hands both in friendship and to work picks and shovels with young Germans, sweating together, moving hundreds of tons of rubble, and cleaning tens of thousands of bricks from the bombed hospital building. A large proportion of the group were atheists. They felt exactly as the Christians in terms of the need for reconciliation and all, together, were surprised by and relished the spirituality of the experience.
For everyone involved with this hard physical work it was a life changing experience. Many who went were far from sure how they wanted to use their lives, far from sure that what they were doing was the right course for them, and far from sure about their relationship with the world and its politics. Approximately half the group were, as many admit, in the beginning very uncertain girls, but when they returned they were real women with distinct personalities ready to play a leading role. They matched the men in everything, from enduring the hardest labour to building strong relationships.
Communing with the enemy
Most of the nuns had lived through the bombing and its aftermath and treated thousands of injured people. Apparently unscarred, they were smiling, energetic and deeply welcoming of the English and German students who came to help rebuild their hospital. It was still half in ruins twenty years after the bombing. The nuns made a deep and lasting impression on the young people and lifelong connections were made with them. The project in Dresden was described as ‘life changing’, ‘a rite of passage’ and ‘pivotal’. Unlike many clichés, in this case they were true. Many of those who went changed careers and rose to great heights later in their lives.
How do I know any of this? My wife was in one of the teams and I have been back, as an outsider, with her to Dresden several times since the Wall came down. I have been able to enter into the world of those now very adult young people.
Merrilyn Thomas, who was one of the first team, eventually wrote a doctoral thesis about the machinery and reasons for this impossible dream becoming reality. She published it, to the shock of many of the teams, explaining the politics behind the project in Communing with the Enemy: Covert Operations, Christianity and Cold War Politics in Britain and the GDR. It was published in 2005 and explains the involvement of high and low politics in making the project happen.
Merrilyn Thomas followed the book with the publication in 2015 of Stepping off the Map: Memories of a Cold War Adventure, an anthology of memories of some of the young teams and their lives before, during and since their visits to Dresden. These are stories of the joyful discovery of better values in life and of better ways to shape the future. There is fear and pain, physical and emotional, but ultimately deep gratitude for the life lessons learned in those long weeks shovelling piles of earth created by the madness of war, working side by side with those who were on the receiving end of the bombs.
A surprising affection
Reading the individual chapters of Stepping off the Map reveals a surprising affection for the old East Germany, its simplicity and the secure certainties its population had. Of course, the anxiety about the Stasi and the risk of sudden disappearance was very real, and the food was dull but adequate in a uniformly grey world. However, a return to the West, which was felt to be shockingly brash, unsympathetic and loud, was not what everyone wanted. Not everything about the GDR, the book reveals, was bad.
Stepping off the Map was launched in November 2015. Paul Oestreicher, who was detained by illness, wrote a letter outlining his role in persuading senior, named, Stasi officers, meeting senior British officials and working with both the British and German churches. Their objective was to defuse social stress in the GDR, stabilise the population and reduce the risk of revolution and the possible outbreak of war.
In the West this complex project of the Church of England, German Lutherans and Quakers, allied with the Communists and Western Democratic Liberals, teaches us a lesson. Reading both books and trying to understand what happened then and what is still happening might help us understand what that lesson is. As someone from the project said: ‘it is surprising how much power doing something simple can have.’ It is a very big story and should be more widely known.
Stepping off the Map: Memories of a Cold War Adventure by Merrilyn Thomas. Medlar Tree Publishing. ISBN: 9780957649118. £7.99.
Communing with the Enemy: Covert Operations, Christianity and Cold War Politics in Britain and the GDR by Merrilyn Thomas. Verlag Peter Lang. ISBN: 9783039101924. £48.
