The Shape of Nothingness

Monday, Oct. 17, 1949

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GERMANY The Shape of Nothingness

Is the U.S. going out of business in Berlin? TIME Berlin Bureau Chief Enno Hobbing revisited the city last week after a four-month absence. His report:

In the Western sector of Berlin on a summer morning of 1948, General Lucius Clay cast the die: "We will stay in this city." Clay's fighting faith mounted into the thunder of the airlift. And with their will, Berlin's people tipped the scales of decision; the Russians lifted the blockade when they realized that Berliners would not be intimated.

"Balance Your Budget." Today the memories of the struggle dissolve into melancholy. In the fifth month of the post-blockade "peace," Berlin is a city deserted by power, prosperity and purpose. At Tempelhof airport, where 15 big airlift transports landed every hour night & day, a few senile C-47s snooze in the autumn sunlight. On the grass between the runways, once jammed with quartermaster trucks and mobile canteens for hungry flyers, there sit stacks of hay.

"I can understand," said a Berlin journalist, "that America won't waste planes as long as trains run into Berlin. But aren't you going to do anything with Berlin now that you've won it?"

The Allies apparently plan to do little. They have left small staffs behind to run Western Berlin as though it were simply 2,000,000 people. U.S. High Commissioner John McCloy makes only short visits to his OMGUS office. The halls of the building that was Clay's command post echo" now to the irrelevant footsteps of janitors, shuffling past nameless doors.

U.S. generosity has departed with U.S. power and personnel. To the West Berlin city government the Allies barked, "Balance your budget!" A second blow was an order ending U.S. direct subsidies. Henceforth Berlin must get its help from the new West German government at Bonn.

Jobs for Tag Stickers. Over Berlin's ruins the ivy still grows, but long stretches of the city's streets have been cleared. Street-corner lawns that had been stomped into shabbiness flourish again. Under the grey frown of gutted facades on the Kurfűrstendamm are rows of fancy-front, one-story shops.

But the city's lifted face is a deception. Ask any Westberliner. He'll tell you that the grass was seeded and the rubble cleared by men made jobless by the blockade, and that the sparkling shops are near bankruptcy.

There is a growing army of futile door-to-door peddlers. Every day in apartment houses, Sfeuerbeamten (tax officials) stick tags on pianos, couches, chairs, attaching them for unpaid taxes. A third of the tenants are behind on rent.

One in every four of West Berlin's workers is jobless: a total of 250,000. At the beginning of the blockade the total was 50,000; at the end, 150,000. In five months of "peace,"' 100,000 more have lost their jobs. Why is this?

Half of Berlin always lived from the city's service functions as the capital of the Reich; the other half from its concentrated industry. The capital disappeared in the defeat; 85% of the factories were grabbed by Russia in 1945.