Berlin, West Germany, Spring 1982

The Wall is a crummy, sad sight if ever there was one.  Of course it’s not defended on the western side:  it’s just a concrete wall about eight feet in height, and covered with graffiti, most of it British.  All so terribly ugly, so bleak.  We walked along the Wall, past building still pock-marked with shell- and bullet-holes from the Second World War, to Checkpoint Charlie, which is a drab little tollgate in the drabbest part of Berlin I have seen so far. 

What is so frightening is it’s so very real – and that is what makes it unreal, paradoxically enough.  Concrete and brick, ugly buildings, ordinary people going about their business in ordinary streets – and that is the Wall.  We went to the standing exhibition all about the Wall and those who have managed to escape from the east.  Typical of West German capitalism:  you have to pay to get in, to be reminded of how lucky you are to be in capitalist west Berlin.  Amazing photos, recording amazing escape attempts.  (Margaret said that some 58 million people died in the second world war – that is equivalent to the population of Great Britain.  21 million Russians, 12 percent of the population.)  This situation cannot last.  The Wall cannot stand like that forever.

Journal, 7th May 1982

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