Time had long lost its dimension. It was only much later that I realized that everything happened end of September 1989. All what mattered for us were thousands of people who had left behind everything in East Germany and sought refuge in the German Embassy in Prague. Hoping to get the permit to leave the Embassy for the Federal Republic of Germany, they had entrusted their well-being to us from the Embassy. In the course of many weeks and months, diplomats had turned into social workers for 36,000 people from all walks of life, families and children in need of food, care and medical assistance, lending their ears to their hopes and worries, joining their prayers. My office was converted into a refuge for three families. Meanwhile, my wife, leaving our three children to her mother, took care of the numerous infants and pregnant women, teaching them how to use the western diapers they didn't know, secretly smuggling out one woman to a local hospital where she gave birth to a girl and later rescuing mother and baby from the Stasi who were after them. Thinking back, everything seems to run like a video clip.

CUT

Three of us standing around the field kitchen in our park, which had been converted into a camp with dozens of white Red Cross tents. Exhausted, smoking too much just like anybody in “Camp Genscher.” We had unloaded two trucks which had brought supplies from German military depots. Slurping hot soup, we watched the refugees climbing over the fence in cascades – dozens of people all with the same address on their IDs, whole shifts from power stations, factories and bus companies. Once in safety, they nailed their house keys to the venerable oak trees in our park, together with the railway ticket: Rostock – Prague, one way. Back? No way!

One of us started a conversation I will not forget for the rest of my life:

“ If it goes on like this, there ain't enough people left in East Germany to keep things running.”
“What'll happen then?”
“Dunno. Maybe everything will break down.”
“ So what”
“ If so, what then?”

And then, one of us came out with a word which none of us had dared using so far: “REUNIFICATION!” We stood there, frozen with our mouths open. REUNIFICATION! If this is going to happen, let them all in. Stumped out our cigarette butts, walked to the majestic baroque gate of the Embassy building, leaving it wide open and waited for another supply truck to arrive.

CUT

Can't remember the date. My head blurring dizzy from the heavy medication our doctor had given me against my migraine. “Continuous stress syndrome, my dear,” our veteran doctor said. Why this, today of all days, as Minister Genscher had arrived? Together with the rest of the staff I squeezed myself up to the first floor through hundreds and hundreds of people who, like ourselves, suspected that something very special was going to happen. I found myself again on the narrow balcony, together with Genscher, his staff and my colleagues from the Embassy, the park crowded with thousands, when the Minister, trying to control his emotions, came out with what everybody had hoped for:

“Dear compatriots ...”
“ YEAAAAHHH”
“ I am happy that I can inform you that your PERMIT TO LEAVE ...”
(see video clip in Quicktime)
(Don't have Quicktime? Click here)

The rest went under in long minutes of collective jubilation. For the first time since my father's death, I started crying. Of joy, this time, and loosening emotions.

CUT

The day after. Embassy and park empty, eerie, resembling a field encampment in Grimmelshausen's Thirty Years' War. History had taken one step farther, leaving us behind to sort out the rest. I took my wife by her arm. She had given her best not just for refugees, but for human beings who she felt needed her. Silently we walked through the empty rooms, stumbled over sleeping bags, clothing and other things scattered all over the floor. In one far corner, on a bed, somebody was sitting, left behind: a white teddy bear. Must have belonged to a child who loved him so dearly that she or he had packed him up for its journey to incertainty. Now, after the collective stampede to liberty, he was all alone. My wife took him home caringly, groomed him and gave him a safe, warm place in the family. He was our new foster child, reminding us of one of the greatest moments in our national history. Born behind barbed-wire fences, he accompanied us to Asia, to Rome and eventually to San Francisco. Now, that the child he had belonged to must be a young adult and have a family of his own some time, we would like to return the teddy bear. He has a new date of birth: 3rd of October, 1990. Day of German Unity.

Christian Seebode

German Consulate General San Francisco
German Embassy Prague 1986 - 1990
Photos © Christian Seebode