Voices Of East Berlin

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Indeed there is much that is childlike about the East Berliners and the way they express themselves. "In the East the heart is most important," a young nurse told me. "Not money. Everybody can live here regardless of whether he has money or not." One lady riding on the train said of West Berlin as we crossed over the Wall and rode into the darkness, "Too much light." For emphasis, she shielded her eyes.

A few minutes earlier, on the Kurfurstendamm in West Berlin, I had encountered one of the few East Berliners who spoke enthusiastically to me of a single, reunified German state. He was a young man in his 20s, strolling with friends whose plastic shopping bags (embossed with Michael Jackson's picture) were filled with purchases. He wanted to move to the West (nearly 1,800 people a day are still moving) as soon as possible, he said. Why? He gestured to the store windows and the bright lights and said, "My eyes have been opened."

There is a shabby, Old World familiarity about East Berlin that those who have lived there all their lives cling to -- at least for the moment. "We have a culture -- theater, opera, community -- the other side doesn't have," says the woman on the train, the bright lights of West Berlin now behind her. "Our stores are not empty." She is 34, a technician for the state television network. Until November, she was last in the West when she was six. This night she has returned to West Berlin to go to a concert with a friend, her fourth visit since the Wall opened. Would she live in West Berlin or wish to see her city absorbed into some greater German nation? "Oh no, I love my country so much. Here we have certain social and human rights, especially for a woman."

Such surprising references to "human" rights are frequent in the East, and it takes a while to realize that East Berliners are speaking of the economic inducements of a socialist economy -- day care for children, full employment, artificially supported prices.

/ "If we go to the West or are absorbed by it, there are economic problems for us," she continues. "We have no money." Her doubts tumble out. "The culture in the West -- it's nice, but the buildings don't go together. New buildings and old buildings. Jarring. West Berlin is too new . . ." And, of course, there are those lights.

Just before midnight, she gets off the train, is processed perfunctorily by the border guards at Friedrichstrasse Station, and joins 40 others waiting for a bus in the cold night air. The faces in the line are tired. For many it has been only their first or second visit to the West. They seem subdued. For days, TV and the papers have been filled with reports about the thievery of the former communist leaders. "People feel betrayed," says a young factory worker. "Desolate."

"The East must be changed," says a restaurant worker. "But there should be two Germanys, I think. I work with a lot of young people, and most want to stay here. Most don't want one Germany. Maybe sometime in the next century. Maybe then."

"Two Germanys," says a university student, Barbara, firmly. "One isn't correct. To be correct we need two different systems. So we can have the best of both."

"Germany is different from Hungary and Poland," says Astrid, 26, a nurse. "We were fighting for something special. We want real socialism, like the socialism we learned in school."