When I was in the Army in Berlin, the phrase that I heard again and again was “Berlin is unique.” That was the explanation of why things were different in Berlin than they were any place else. I never heard a truer statement in my life. Berlin is unique.
In his famous “Tear Down this Wall” speech in Berlin in 1987, President Ronald Reagan used a line from a popular German song from the 1950s with music by Ralph Maria Siegel and lyrics by Aldo von Pinelli. My personal favorite rendition of this song is the one by Marlene Dietrich.
The line Reagan used is “Ich hab’ noch einen Koffer in Berlin” (I still have a suitcase in Berlin). To someone who has heard the whole song, this one line suggests the rest of the refrain, which explains why the singer keeps going back to Berlin. The refrain says it’s because that suitcase in Berlin is where the singer keeps all the happiness of times past, so when she feels wistful, she knows that it will be worth the trip back to go look in that suitcase in Berlin again.
“Ich hab’ noch einen Koffer in Berlin” is to Berlin what Tony Bennett’s signature song “I Left My Heart in San Francisco” is to San Francisco.
Wladimir Kaminer, a Russian who immigrated to Berlin in the 1990s and is now a popular German author, put it another way in his book Ich bin kein Berliner (I’m not a Berliner), when he explained why he stayed in Berlin. “Once you land here, you almost never get away. Berlin forms ties that bind.”
I was in the Army in Berlin from 1974 to 1977, and I do still have a suitcase in Berlin. It’s got a lot of happy memories packed away in it. Some of those memories got repackaged into Voices Under Berlin, but the book wasn’t big enough for all of them, so they spilled over into The Day Before the Wall and Reunification.
The Day Before the Wall is a spy thriller. It is still in revision. Reunification is an exploration of the reunification of East and West Berlin from the perspective of an American GI who comes back to Berlin after the Fall of the Wall. It is still formulating itself. I need a trip to Berlin so I can look in my suitcase there to help it come together.
The suitcase that I have in Berlin is part of the reason that I got involved in the Field Station Berlin Veterans Group campaign to Save Teufelsberg! Teufelsberg is the name of the hill in Berlin where the Field Station was located. The Field Station Berlin Veterans Group, together with a number of local German groups in Berlin, wants to have the former Field Station buildings atop Teufelsberg designated the “Major Arthur D. Nicholson” Cold War Memorial, in memory of the last Cold War casualty, the U.S. Military Liaison Mission tour officer who was shot and killed by a Russian sentry near Ludwigslust on March 24, 1985; and in recognition of the countless men and women of the Allied Armed Forces who resolutely stood shoulder-to-shoulder with the West Berliners during the Cold War, ensuring that the island of freedom known as “West Berlin” remained free. Because the facility stands on one of the highest points in Berlin, it can be seen for miles in every direction. Brightly lit at night, it would be a constant visible reminder of Allied resolve to defend Berlin during the Cold War, and of Allied friendship with the newly reunited Germany.
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