The Bear of Berlin

Newly arrived in Berlin, TIME'S Bureau Chief Emmet Hughes last week cabled a first impression of the struggle for Germany:

In this strangest of world capitals, perhaps the strangest of all meetings takes place each week in a neat, white stucco building on the Parochialstrasse. Here the 130 duly elected representatives of the people of Berlin--the "Stadtparlament" or City Assembly--convene in a third-floor room. Its straight rows of wooden benches suggest a classroom more than a parliament. But to the front, below grey curtains emblazoned with a huge emblem of the bear of Berlin, two large, raised benches rather suggest a courtroom.

On the lower of these benches sit the assembly's presiding officers, behind and above them are the representatives of the four occupying powers. Perhaps the suggestion of both classroom and courtroom is apt. For here, Berlin's people are expected to learn the ways of democracy, and here the Big Four of World War II are supposed to sit in solemn judgment on their efforts. But, this week, it was difficult to tell who was judge, who the accused.

The Strangled City. The two immaculately uniformed Russian officers stared down expressionlessly from their high official bench at the small woman in navy blue who spoke to the assembly. She was Berlin's Mayoress, grey-haired, matronly, bespectacled Louise Schroeder; and her hands gripped the rostrum firmly. She attacked the restrictions on transportation within Berlin and on the shipment of packages to the Western zones. Prosaic issues? Yes--but they involved orders of the Russian occupying army.

Her crisp, strong voice did not betray her 61 years as she declared: "We"must have all communications flowing freely. We must keep Berlin unified, within a united Germany." This was little less than Berlin's German Mayor calling on the Russians to stop strangling the capital. The two Russian officers showed their unconcern--one by strolling out, the other by reading a newspaper. The assembly (all but the score of S.E.D. Communists) applauded.

It is a strange assembly that the eight representatives of the great powers (two from each nation) look down upon. The women match the men in the shabbiness of their dress; there isn't a firm trouser crease or an even hemline. There is only a hushed attentiveness, as their eyes move studyingly from the speaker to the faces of their conquerors of three years ago. Occasionally, there sounds the discreet rustle of wax paper as a representative of the people unwraps his brown bread sandwich, neatly folds the paper and tucks it back in his pocket for future use. The linoleum floor beneath their feet is spick & span because this group has nothing with which to litter it.

Every Child Knows. At last, the Russian representative lays aside his paper with respectful attention: curly-headed Communist Bruno Baum takes the floor. He is the only one of the gathering who looks well-fed; his jowls are heavy and his stomach folds over his belt. Briskly, he assails the Western powers for "looting" Berlin and denounces--with no supporting proof--removal of its factories to the Western zones. All but the Communists guffaw. But Bruno perorates bravely: "We must defend the workers of Berlin whose factories and jobs are being stolen from them." In the bored silence that follows, the frantic handclapping of a single S.E.D. delegate echoes hollowly. It is nearly tea time and the British observers leave their bench. The Russian's attention wanders and he files his nails with an air of unbearable boredom.

A Diplomatic Echo. It takes Annedore Leber, a nervy, auburn-haired woman of 44, to jar the Soviet delegate from his posturing. She is a Social Democrat, an editor of the newspaper Telegraf; her husband gave his life in the underground conspiracy against the Nazis. Her blue eyes are hot with anger, and she is impatient with all this petty squabbling over package shipments and machine removals when all the world knows what is at stake: "I want to raise this debate to the level commensurate with the gravity of the crisis we face." She does so bluntly: "The people of Berlin are unwilling to surrender to the S.E.D. and the Communist claim for power . . . Our mind and will are firmly set on the goal of Germany as a free and constitutional state . . . We know the seriousness of this hour." (The Russian officer has laid aside his nailfile, and listens intently.) With a bold kind of irrelevance that is a measure of her anxiety, Frau Leber--she is a Catholic and a Socialist--calls upon every international authority she can think of to witness Berlin's plight: the International Court, world Socialism, and the Catholic Church. (The Russian officer joins in raucous S.E.D. laughter at mention of the Pope.)

Frau Leber's voice trembles with emotion as she concludes: "We were democrats in 1933 . . . Our spirit has stood a test which not every free citizen would have found easy to meet . . . We know that dictatorship can be beaten only by meeting it before it begins. That is why we are willing to risk everything today .. . But we solemnly warn every democratic citizen of the free world of the urgency of this moment when he must make a good and a clear decision. Otherwise, Berlin will be lost, with only a diplomatic protest as an after-echo." (At the end, the Russian officer is angrily rocking the empty chair beside him back & forth--as if with difficulty repressing an impulse to throw it.)

The Only Lesson. Men & women like Annedore Leber may expect (at best) to be under arrest within 48 hours of any Western evacuation of Berlin. Until that day comes--if it does--they can continue battling to show the Russians that their Nervenkrieg has been far from an unqualified success--and to remind the Western powers that they are defending in Berlin something more than just 150,000 acres of this debris-laden Brandenburg plain. Is there anything else they can do?

This seemed to be about the only lesson and judgment to come out of the strange stucco building on Parochialstrasse this week.

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