They "Tried" to Divide the Sky: Listening to Cold War Berlin

Author(s): FLORENCE FEIEREISEN

Source: Colloquia Germanica , 2013, Vol. 46, No. 4, Themenheft: Sound Studies in
German Contexts (2013), pp. 410-432
Published by: Narr Francke Attempto Verlag GmbH Co. KG

Stable URL: https://www.jstor.org/stable/44110835

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 They Tried to Divide the Sky: Listening to
Cold War Berlin
FLORENCE FEIEREISEN

Middlebury College

«At least they can't divide the sky,» Manfred states in Christa Wolf's novel
They Divided the Sky , when his lover Rita chooses socialist ideals and life i
the German Democratic Republic over westbound Manfred. «The sky?
Rita thinks in response, «this enormous vault of hope and yearning, love, a
sorrow?» «Yes they can,» she says, «the sky is what divides first of all» (191
Originally in German, Wolf's Der geteilte Himmel was written in 196
during the aftermath of the construction of the Berlin Wall, a time of high c
war tension. The story is the tragic one of two young lovers who find thei
lives separated by the Wall.
I am interested in the concept of a «divided sky» and seek to examine how
the airspace situated along the border between East and West was exper
enced sonically in divided Berlin. Blesser and Salter define an acoustic arena
a «region where listeners [share] an ability to hear a sonic event» (22). In wh
follows, I leave Wolf's novel behind and present three acoustic arenas th
showcase how the people of East and West Berlin lived in and visually
experienced separate spaces, while sharing the sonic airspaces of the Co
War: first, the highly politically charged sound war that took place in the ear
1960s at the command of those in charge on both sides of barbed wire and
Wall; second, traveling sound waves at a concert given by Western artis
(including David Bowie and Genesis) on the west side of the Wall but
intended for East Berliners to hear in 1987; and third, traveling ambien
sounds in the border area of the train station Berlin-Friedrich Straße, a transf
station for West transit into Eastern territory. These sounds include en
gineered and accidental sounds, sounds amplified through loudspeakers, and
sounds that were completely unprocessed. There is no doubt that sound
played a significant role in the everyday lives of East Berliners - acoust
control and surveillance through the Ministerium für Staatsicherheit (Stasi)
and socialist mass songs are just two examples - but I argue that the Cold W
as it was fought acoustically within earshot of the Berlin Wall was, above all,
loud war. Studying the sounds along the Wall sheds light on the manipulati
and control of the sonic public in divided Berlin. Visually speaking, the Wa
was a monumental reminder of German division; understanding the aur

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 They Tried to Divide the Sky 411
meaning of the traveling sound waves in the Wall's shared, ««divided airspace
adds a layer to our understanding of the Cold War. The descriptions of
historical eyewitnesses, or of earwitnesses , will help us reconstruct Berlin's
past as a means to understanding this visual marker of division in sonic terms.
Sound is ethereal; it enters a space without appropriate papers, and i
doesn't ask for permission from the authorities to bathe the ears of listeners in
its waves. All sound waves are, by definition, travelers: they are pressur
waves of air molecules in motion through a medium. Physically speaking, a
wave is a propagating disturbance of an equilibrium state. Like ocean waves,
sound waves need a medium through which to travel, and anything made of
molecules can play this role; in our context, we will look at sound waves
traveling through air. These molecules carry the sound waves by bumpin
into each other, just as colliding billiard balls pass on their kinetic energy.
They finish their journey at our eardrums (tympanic membranes), setting up
vibrations inside resonance cavities within the inner ear. I examine historical
situations in which sound could travel when people could not: while the Wall
prevented (most) East Berliners from crossing the border, nothing was - or
still is - in place to prevent sound waves from traveling over walls.
In Spaces Speak, Are You Listening? Barry Blesser und Linda-Ruth Salte
observe: «History provides an almost limitless portfolio of visual sketches of
spaces, but no corresponding portfolio of aural records» (70). These days, it
seems that one can find any data needed online - yet in comparison to visual
data, not much sonic data pertaining to the past is readily available because
the recordings disappeared, became unreadable, or simply never existed. For
one, recording technology is very young: in 1857, a dozen years befor
Edison would introduce his Phonograph , Parisian inventor Edouard-Léon
Scott de Martinville (1817 - 1879) received French patent #17,897/31,470 for
his Phonautograph . A printer by trade and very interested in the field of
acoustics, Scott de Martinville sought to create a device that could transcribe
vocal sounds. The recording process of this, the earliest known device of its
sort, started with Scott himself speaking (or singing) into a funnel-like horn
his voice set a membrane at the end of the horn in vibration, forcing a pig
bristle connected to the membrane to trace lines onto smoke-blackened glass
or paper.1
His recording invention worked, but playback options did not exist at the
time. According to Jonathan Sterne und Mitchell Akiyama, Phonautograph s
«were never supposed to be heard»; in fact «the idea of audio playback had
not been conceived.» They were, rather, «intended to be seen» (545; my
emphasis). Therefore Scott de Martinville's goal was not to reconstruct the
sonic past; rather, his scientific endeavor was to succeed in turning acoustic

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412 Florence Feiereisen

waves into visual documents. But why were

contemporaries not interested in hearing the
Sterne and Akiyama offer an explanation: «[Th
was to better know it» (546). Scott de Martinv
successfully completed.2
Another, more significant, reason why we ca
the past is that nobody recorded them. Record
still is not, readily available for everyone; mo
unless they contain music or human voices in
speeches or reciting poetry - do not seem to th
documentation. In our context, many recordin
officials, social-realist music, and even the sou
celebrating the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1
YouTube. In contrast, there is only a small
available: the sounds of train stations, of stree
is these sounds that allow us a more robust con
the full complexity and texture of the expe
environment of a society,» suggests R. Murray
and pioneer of Anglophone sound studies, «
social conditions which produce it and may tel
evolution of that society» (7). Advocating t
nity's soundscape as a marker of identity, Ken
terminology helps to express the idea that the
(its keynotes, sound signals and soundmarks
customs and dress - express a community'
settlements can be recognised and character
But how are scholars of sound to conduct res
exist? Even when sound recordings are not
information and reconstruct the sonic past by
of visualizing) it. Blesser and Salter define the
a prospective spatial design into its acoustic
therefore, works as a converse to Scott de Mar
point is to learn to «listen» to visual data of a
photographs, written eyewitness accounts
documents, etc. In auralizing, the goal is n
note of the musical composition of the wor
properties of sound that lie beyond mere wave
relationship of sounds and their environments
«describe the meaning contemporaries attac
why they listened to actual and represented so

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 They Tried to Divide the Sky 413
how listening shaped their understanding of themselves and their societies»
(Smith, «Echoes» 318).
Hearing is an integral part of our perception of the world, and it
contributes to our daily acquisition of knowledge. This notion can - and
should - be applied to academic research; indeed, several disciplines have
been experiencing a «sonic turn.» In Hearing History , sensory historian
Mark M. Smith writes of the increasing focus on the aural in historical
research: «This intensification holds out the prospect of helping to redirect in
some profoundly important ways what is often the visually oriented
discipline of history, a discipline replete with emphases on the search fo
<perspective> and <focus> through the <lens> of evidence, one heavily, if often
unthinkingly, indebted to the visualism of <Enlightenment> thinking an
ways of understanding the word» (ix). In his introduction, «Onwards t
Audible Pasts,» he pleads:
My hope is that questions of sound, noise and aurality will not just infiltrate
historical narratives but also change the very conceptualization of historical
thinking and problems. Should that occur, history will regain its full texture
invite new questions, and take us beyond an unwitting commitment to seeing the
past. Ideally, we will begin to contextualize the past within the larger rubric of al
senses and thus free mainstream historical writing from the powerful but blinding
focus of vision alone (xxi).

This article focuses on the aural aspects of narrating Germany's past, which
holds one seat at the table of what Smith terms «Sensory History»: not a field
within the traditional discipline of history, but rather, a certain «habit» in
«thinking about the past» {Sensing 5). «What are usually considere
historical <fields> of inquiry - diplomatic, gender, race, regional, borderlands,
cultural, political, military, and so on,» argues Smith, «could all be written
and researched through the habit of sensory history» ( Sensing 5). In other
words, the senses function not only as an avenue to philosophically
experience our own world, but also as a <lens> through which society,
both past and present, can be investigated.
Applying this <lense> to understanding Berlin's past reveals soundscapes as
a site of power struggle. Defective relationships frequently reveal themselve
through sound. A lack of mutual tolerance and deficient willingness to
communicate are often reinforced by loud rhetoric. This is exactly how the
media along the Wall dealt with one another in divided Berlin. The war o
sound waves happened in the shared airspace. For our auralization, let us
backtrack a little.
The construction of the Berlin Wall appeared as its own distinct sounds
cape: shortly before 2 a.m. on 13 August 1961, the lights around th

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414 Florence Feiereisen

Brandenburg Gate were switched off, and

sounds of trucks approaching from the street U
of tanks, vehicle doors clicking open, footfalls
doors slamming shut. Soon thereafter, Berline
on either side of the border rustled in their bed
sounds of jackhammers drilling a swath of dest
grating ring as barbed wire was rolled out and
East and West Berlin became physically clo
Before concrete fortified the border and obs
each side could communicate both visually
kerchiefs) and acoustically («Kannste mal n
werfen?» or «Du, der Else geht's gar nicht g
nication was allowed, information could be exc
guards were not looking. But by the crack of
wire had been replaced by bricks and, later
manifestation of the Iron Curtain would rema
eight years. Consider its dimensions. Length o
West Berlin and East Berlin (inner ring): 26.8 m
line between West Berlin and GDR (outer ri
96.3 miles; parts of house fronts and bo
observation towers; 259 installations with d
to-kill order for border guards was put in eff
11.8 feet, the Wall's concrete blocks had vis
According to Heinz Gerull, West German rad
Studio am Stacheldraht , the GDR installed
demarcation line. When West German chanc
West Berlin nine days after the construction o
popular hit blasting from the speakers at the
sprach der alte Häuptling der Indianer, wild is
Beruf.» Insulted by this music, Adenauer im
walked back West (Pragal and Stratenschult
Although helpless in the face of the Wall's
Berlin refused to accept this loudspeaker pr
deaths at the Wall, Senator of the Interior of
decided to launch a sonic counterattack. Tog
American Sector), he arranged for a mobile lo
Studio am Stacheldraht , to broadcast informa
East using a Volkswagen van (Volkswagen
loudspeakers at 150 watts each. Soon there

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 They Tried to Divide the Sky 415
commenced operations for acoustic guard duty day and night. Within a few
days of the erection of the Wall, the acoustic arms race was in full swing.4

Figure 1 : Photograph from the Landesarchiv Berlin showing the Studio am Stacheldrah
vans in action.

Western newspaper were hard to come by in the East, and in the first years
after the construction of the Wall, West German radio could not be received
everywhere. Lipschitz sought to fill this information vacuum in East Berlin
with the mobile loudspeaker units (Stratenschulte). The broadcasts always
started with the famous military tune «Taps» (known to Germans as the
trumpet solo from the 1953 Hollywood movie «From Here to Eternity»)
followed by the slogan «Hier spricht das Studio am Stacheldraht.» Before
Gerull read the news, he appealed to the members of the Volkspolizei
(German People's Police of the GDR) and the Nationale Volksarmee
(National People's Army) not to shoot at people who tried to escape:
«Wer einen Menschen erschießt, der von Deutschland nach Deutschland
gehen will, begeht einen Mord. Niemand soll glauben, er könne sich eines
Tages, wenn er zur Rechenschaft gezogen wird, auf höheren Befehl berufen.
Mord bleibt Mord - auch wenn er befohlen worden ist.» The reporter's voice
addressed the officers who could see him and asked why they had been
standing there since 13 August («Warum eigentlich? Fragt euch einmal,
warum ihr hier stehen müsst.»), then immediately offered his own explana-
tion: Walter Ulbricht and other officials wanted to persuade them that the
construction of the Wall was to protect the citizens of the GDR. But the
reporter pleaded: «Ihr seid klug genug, um diese Lüge zu erkennen.»
Ulbricht, he said, wants to force them to commit crimes of violence. «Fragt
euch selbst, fragt eure Kameraden, wie lange dieser unglückliche Zustand
noch andauern soll. Sie hörten das Studio am Stacheldraht.» After fifteen

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416 Florence Feiereisen

minutes, the trumpet solo was played again and

location.5
Although Studio am Stacheldraht tried to rea
Berliners, it specifically targeted border guard
demarcation line and on watchtowers. Since th
leave their position, they were a captive audie
sounds because, unlike eyes, ears do not ha
command. Moreover, had the guards worn
been unable to do their jobs. Reactions to th
earwitnesses of the time, some guards heard t
without saying a word; it is said that other
from West Berlin and even kept small radio rec
listen to RIAS. But other times the scene was
tear gas, fog bombs, rocks, bricks, and trash th
Earwitness Rainer Steinführ remembers the b
his childhood:

Die Fahrzeuge zogen natürlich den Unmut der <Organe> auf sich. Tränengas,
Nebelbomben, Steine, Abfall wurden gern von der anderen Mauerseite zu den
Wagen geworfen. Ich habe auch gezogene und in Anschlag gebrachte Waffen
gesehen. Wie dem auch sei, zumeist dauerte es nicht lange, dann tauchte auf
Ostberliner Seite ebenfalls ein Lautsprecherwagen auf, der Gegenparolen oder
sowjetische Marschmusik verbreitete (Steinführ).

Arriving literally from above, the acoustic responses to the Studio am

Stacheldraht were initially folk tunes played loudly from the East's 190
loudspeakers to drown out the Studio's questions. Later, the East Berlin
authorities set up their own mobile units; over the next few months, up to
fifteen vans with loudspeakers from the VEB Roter Zinnober mounted onto
the roofs came to stand guard. The West Berlin police called these vans that
dispersed political slogans Rote Hugos . West Berlin won the volume battle:
the fifteen Red Hugos (95 to 105 Phon) were outperformed by the Studio's
four vans (120 Phon).6 1 am not aware of any study that discusses hearing loss
as a result of the sound war along the barbed wire, but it is clear that,
regardless of whether they were actively involved, people up to 2.5 miles
from the border dealt with ear-splittingly loud soundscapes.
Border guards, of course, were not the only citizens addressed: on 16
October, workers of an East Berlin factory stood by their building's (open)
windows to listen to the messages of the Studio from the other side of the
Wall. The factory's authorities immediately arranged for its loudspeakers to
blast Soviet marches, which only caused the staff to move closer to the
windows. In this case, music as a weapon did not work against the power of

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 They Tried to Divide the Sky 417
words. The Volkspolizisten who were called to the site then threw tear ga
grenades over the border and threatened the Studio's van with machine guns
The vans reacted again as they loudly invited the East German workers t
look out of the window and memorize the faces of those Volkspolizisten who
wanted to shoot at people who, as the Studio said, simply wanted to rea
messages aloud.
In private homes, this exposure to sound waves continued in both the East
and the West. In a Zeit article titled «Propaganda-Posaunen,» a West Berliner
who wrote under the acronym G.R. complained in 1963 about the West'
acoustic war:

Noch in zwei Kilometern Entfernung ist keine Verringerung der Tonstärke zu

bemerken. Im Umkreis von 1 00 m zerspringen Fensterscheiben, wenn sie angepeilt
werden. Letzte Woche wurden diese Lautsprecher zum ersten Mal auf eine Kaserne
der Volksarmee in Groß Glienicke eingesetzt. Die Antwort ließ nicht auf sich
warten. Die Vopo fuhr am nächsten Tag Lautsprecher auf, die zwar nicht die
Fensterscheiben zerklirren ließen, aber doch die in der Nähe der Zonengrenze
wohnenden Westberliner zwang, die Fenster zu schließen, um das eigene Wort
verstehen zu können (24).

It was the citizens of West Berlin, added the earwitness, who were saddled
with the burden of authorities fighting this deafening war: «Wer bezahlt das?
Wahrscheinlich doch die Steuerzahler, die doppelt geschädigt werden,
finanziell und gesundheitlich» (24).
The East's authorities went on to install permanent speakers next to one
another on the horizontal bar of former overhead masts of the tram. The
speakers were directed at West Berliners as earwitness Peter Ulrich from
Lichterfelde (West Berlin) recalls:
So gab es Tage, an denen wir acht oder zehn Stunden hindurch - pausenlos -
beschallt wurden - und an anderen Tagen war überraschend wieder völlig Ruhe;
eine unberechenbare Taktik war das, die uns zermürben sollte. Doch nicht bloß
Nachrichten oder Kommentare gab es, sondern auch einfach nur Tanzmusik, mit
der man glaubte uns unterhalten zu müssen; mal lauter, mal leiser, wie es eben
gerade kam. Und nicht nur tagsüber ging das so; es kam vor, dass es spät abends um
22 Uhr immer noch hinter der Mauer quäkte, jaulte und brabbelte [...]. Diese
Praxis wurde fast drei Jahre lang fortgeführt; erst im Laufe des Jahres 1964 hat man
uns allmählich wieder Ruhe gegönnt. (Ulrich)

But before the sound war finally quieted down, it became very loud one more
time. On 7 October 1965, more than four years after the acoustic war had
begun, the Nationale Volksarmee celebrated the GDR's sixteenth anniver-
sary on the military grounds just across the border from Berlin-Gatow. The
Studio drove up to the Wall and disturbed the GDR's festivities with its

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418 Florence Feiereisen

characteristic trumpet solo. Instead of the van

new fleet of trucks with hydraulic cranes tha
feet into the air and rotated them to aim as
loudspeakers could sound more than three
(Epping-Jäger 1 7)7
Announcing that yet another East Germa
comrades because he wanted to go «from
German reporter Gerull's voice continued
werden; dass er aber auch trifft, kann kein B
After a gong, news from Moscow and Los An
and the by now familiar trumpet solo broug
Studio am Stacheldraht to an end. After
authorities ceased with their acoustic onslaug
vans were no longer deployed.
Other than the only partially effective stra
even louder ones, the East's authorities had n
traveling sound waves from crossing the bor
supposedly «divided sky.» Whereas people
inescapable sounds ordered and executed fr
Wall, my next soundscape, the «Concert for
to the Wall on Western territory in June 1 98
sounds around which people congregated v
soundscape, there was still no technology ava
divide the shared airspace sonically.

Figure 2: Ticket for the «Concert for Berlin»

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 They Tried to Divide the Sky 419
When the three-day concert began at 4 p. m. on 6 June 1987, a stage 250 fee
wide had been erected, 50,000 tickets had been sold, and technicians from
RIAS2 (the youth radio in the American sector) stood ready in West Berlin t
record the festival «Concert for Berlin,» which would celebrate the city
750th anniversary. World stars had been hired to entertain the masses on th
Platz der Republik directly in front of West Berlin's Reichstag : David Bowie
New Model Army, the Eurythmies, Bruce Hornsby, Paul Young, an
Genesis. The stage was physically in West Berlin, but it sat well withi
earshot of East Berlin - a mere 700 feet as the crow flies. The Wall ran around
the back of the building and then formed a small arc around the west side o
the Brandenburg Gate, that sad icon of divided Berlin and Germany. Already
on the first night, East German authorities were stunned to see 6,000 youth
convene around the Brandenburg Gate as the wind carried the music to the
East. The hard, stone-clad facade of the Soviet Embassy at Unter den Linden
63-65 reflected the sound into the large courtyard. Standing in front of the
iron doors made for a breathtaking acoustic experience.
In the 1980s, young East Berliners craved popular music, and music from
the West was in particularly high demand. Those in power deemed popula
music as potentially subversive, so the mainstream music scene was mon
itored, controlled, and limited to those musicians willing to conform to stat
restrictions. GDR bands such as Renft, Puhdys, and Karat reached cult status
and were promoted by the East German authorities as long as they adhered t
the party line. Renft was banned in 1975; the Puhdys, on the other hand
adhered more strictly to the rules and were permitted to sing in English and
even to tour in the Federal Republic of Germany! But East German yout
craved English-speaking rock and pop music and felt more and more
excluded from the world. Every day, they would listen to West radio
and watch West TV, yet they found themselves just onlookers of Wester
popular culture. But popular music was not just a means through which t
live vicariously as musicologist Peter Wicke suggested in a review on roc
music in the very same year of the «Concert for Berlin»: «Rockmusik ist in
der DDR - und das macht den wesentlichen Unterschied zu ihren anglo
amerikanischen Ursprüngen aus -Bestandteil des politischen Diskurses
innerhalb der Gesellschaft [. . .], eine Diskussion freilich, die sich eher in
sprachlicher und kultureller Symbolik denn in argumentativer Unmittel
barkeit vollzieht» (35).
The East German authorities were very aware of popular music's sig-
nificance in society, and in order to placate their citizens, they allowed a
increasing number of recordings by West German, British, and America
artists to become available in the GDR. Whereas in the first two decades of

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420 Florence Feiereisen

the GDR, the SED had viewed popular mus

cultural weapon designed to corrupt its you
from socialist ideals, the state label AMIGA
started in the mid-1960s to release albums b
Dylan and the Beatles, and later, Phil Collin
foreign-licensed records were pressed in s
usually sold out within minutes. Music love
music (often from stations in the West) onto
Günter Mayer observes,
[i]n 97.8 percent of all households there is a radio
The technical equipment has high-fidelity standa
people between ages 1 5 and 23 have their own po
taping- technique). The number of «walkmen» is i
radio is evident: more than 70 percent of the people
to the radio on workdays between four and eight o
popular music. It is a fact - determined by socio
else - people between the ages of 14 and 25 listen
hours a day, and often more. (n. pag.)

Well aware of their youth's enthusiasm for m

authorities became apprehensive when the
«Concert for Berlin» in June 1987. They a
another villainous attempt by the capitalist
class battle and to spoil their youth (Kloth).
could not stop the sound waves from traveling
remove the GDR citizens from the sound wave
that congregated in front of the Soviet Embas
hear the festival presented a serious securit
result in an attack on the « Anti-Fascist Protec
Volkspolizei broke up the group, chasing peop
truncheons in hand. The masses reacted by me
GDR citizens proclaimed: «Die Mauer muss w
then-mayor of West Berlin Willy Brandt's
Schöneberg city hall. Just a few months befor
song «Berlin, Berlin (... dein Herz kennt k
German band John F. und die Gropiuslerch
«Die Mauer muss weg»; it was therefore fresh
the mood changed: West Germans recount hear
cries from the other side of the Wall; by 10 p.
thrown over the Wall (Kloth). Soon therea

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 They Tried to Divide the Sky 421
barriers and began to make arrests. All of this occurred on the first day of th
three-day long festival.
Overnight, both East and West German media reported on the police's
prohibition of youth from convening in front of the Soviet Embassy to
participate (if only auditorily) in the music festival. On day two, thousands
upon thousands flocked to the border area to find a good listening spot. Yet
the East's authorities had prepared for the event thoroughly: barrier chains
had been installed far ahead of the Brandenburg Gate, and water cannon
stood at the ready. Earwitnesses from the East report that it was impossible to
determine whether people at this point had come to hear Phil Collins's
Genesis (who were slated to perform on that day), or whether they were
simply onlookers to the upheaval. At sunset, the situation escalated again
and once more, West German festival goers reported hearing the masses chant
«Die Mauer muss weg!» on the other side of the Wall (Kloth).
It is important to note that all of this commotion did not come as a surprise
to West Berlin - indeed, to unite both parts of Berlin through the means of
music had been the explicit intention of West German festival organize
Concert Conzept Veranstaltungs-GmbH. In 1984, the same concert orga-
nizers had hired André Heller to put on a gigantic firework display that was
seen by many in the East, so they knew exactly what would happen (Wagner
Heller's Feuertheater , essentially a large-scale provocative piece of art, had
illuminated the «divided sky» - its light show, accompanied by the sounds of
detonating fireworks, had attracted many East Berliners to the border area. In
this sense, Heller's spectacle had been the dress rehearsal for the 1987
festival's audacie in celebration of Berlin's 750th birthday.
The artists themselves also knew that their audience would comprise both
West and East Berliners. RIAS project manager Christoph Lanz, emcee at the
festival, stated: «Nachdem [Phil Collins] erfahren hat, welche Hörerschaf
RI AS2 in Ostberlin und in der DDR hat, dann hat er gesagt: Das machen wir!
Damit in der DDR das gehört werden kann» (Wagner). The concert's main
act, David Bowie, went several steps further: he asked for the speakers to be
turned not to face the West German concert goers, but to face the Wall. For
technical reasons, it was only possible to turn a quarter of the speakers. After
he sang the song «Time Will Crawl,» Bowie introduced his band and then
addressed his audience in the GDR in German: «Wir schicken unsere besten
Wünsche an all unsere Freunde, die auf der anderen Seite der Mauer sind.
Bowie had lived in West Berlin in the shadow of the Wall from 1976 to 1979,
sharing an apartment in Schöneberg with Iggy Pop for parts of his Berli
stay.8

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422 Florence Feiereisen

Bowie's stay in the divided city ten years ea

choice as well, as he went on to sing «Heroes,
two lovers who meet under the «divided s
I, I can remember / standing, by the Wall
and the guns shot above our heads / and we kis
and the shame was on the other side / ah, we
then we could be Heroes just for one day.

The atmosphere was electrifying; less than

Berlin, with the monumental Brandenbur
Reagan told Mikhail Gorbachev to «Tear d
The music made the Wall tremble on con
phorically. More than twenty-five years
allowed East and West Germans to listen to sound waves sent into their
shared airspace by world-class music artists and participants on both sides of
the Wall, through conversations, sing along, catcalls, and the sounds of
thrown rocks and empty cans. It also reminded all involved quite plainly that
the Wall was still up, a sonic reminder that to live in its shadow meant to live a
life interfered with. Meanwhile, the GDR regime downplayed the situation,
noting that everything had gone according to protocol and there was no cause
for worry.
When East Berlin authorities learned that West Berlin planned to host
another concert series of West German and international artists including
Pink Floyd, Michael Jackson, Nina Hägen, and Udo Lindenberg in the Wall's
shadow in 1988, they realized that immediate action was necessary. They
complained to the West Berlin senate that «the concerts were too close to a
nearby hospital [Charité] and that the noise and vibration could cause the
deaths of seriously ill patients there» («Fearing»). But music promoter Peter
Schwenkow had already sold 30,000 tickets, so it was too late to cancel the
concert outright. Instead, he asked the bands to lower their volume; in
response, Pink Floyd redirected the loudspeakers to blast their song «The
Wall» eastward (Kloth). The Minsterium für Staatsicherheit also removed
potential troublemakers from the Wall ahead of time. But the principal
precaution taken was to schedule a competing concert with international
stars at exactly the same time in a different location. In order both to avoid a
protest along the Wall similar to the one a year before and to win back the
support of East German youth, the Künstleragentur der DDR had begun to
organize concerts with famous artists from the West, resulting in what
became known as the «Music Summer of 1988»: Depeche Mode followed the
invitation to play in celebration of the Free German Youth9 s 42nd birthday;
The Wailers, Marillion, and Bryan Adams performed during a three-day

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 They Tried to Divide the Sky 423
festival in June; West German artist Rio Reiser played on two consecutiv
nights in October.
Although the dueling concerts might appear at first to be parallel to the
acoustic arms race along the barbed wire a quarter century before, the GDR's
music festivals did not take place near the Wall, but on the cycling track in
Berlin- Weißensee, deep in East Berlin and therefore at a safe distance from
the Wall and the class enemy. Despite the GDR's efforts to draw music fans
eastward and away from the concerts on the West side of the Wall, thousands
of youth congregated behind the Brandenburg Gate to eavesdrop, agai
chanting «Die Mauer muss weg!» Even before the concert started, people
were bullied away, and one hundred individuals were arrested.
One month later, Bruce Springsteen played before the biggest audience of
his life: 160,000 tickets had been sold, but many more entered the cyclin
track in Weißensee without one. Although censored, millions of East
Germans saw the concert on TV.9 During the concert, Springsteen told
the crowd in German: «Es ist schön, in Ostberlin zu sein. Ich bin nicht für
oder gegen eine Regierung. Ich bin gekommen um Rock and Roll zu spielen
für Ostberliner, in der Hoffnung, dass eines Tages alle Barrieren abgerissen
werden.» Note that Springsteen chose «barriers» instead of «walls» - he di
not want to risk being shut down by the authorities right away. His message
achieved its goal independent of its exact wording.
Music obviously is not just about passively listening to pleasant sounds
Indeed, by the 1980s, music directed at and even in the GDR itself had
become an important platform for promoting reform and resistance: it
actively advocated for political change. Not even the mighty Wall could stop
this. United in the sonic airspace of the «divided sky,» both East and Wes
Germans, in concert with West German and international pop stars
participated in a politicized acoustic arena together and planted the seed
for more change to come.
The first two examples of the Cold War's acoustic arenas revealed the sonic
characteristics of the common airspace along the border between East an
West Berlin. Example one was chosen from the earliest history of the Berlin
Wall, while example two presented the soundscapes of June 1987, roughl
two and a half years before its fall. My third example presents th
soundscapes of yet anothershared (air)space, this time not above, but rather
below the divided city. While the Wall epitomized the German division,
standing tall for twenty-eight years for everyone to see, there were many
other, invisible «walls» that divided the city into two parts. In fact, even
before the Wall was built, Berlin had been a divided city: its phone network,
drinking water system, light cables, and gas lines had already been separated

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424 Florence Feiereisen

(Pragal and Stratenschulte 51). 13 August 196

public transportation network divided and a
to the West cut off.
Some train lines serving West Berlin ran th
them proved to be financially unfeasible.
(West) first offered 2.8 million Deutschm
million, for the right to use East German ra
agreed to the deal. After 1961, the subway
Berlin) to Tempelhof (after 1966, all the
Berlin), passing through a short stretch of E

Figure 3: Map of the BVG (West Berlin) subway

The five underground train stations betw

Kochstraße became ghost stations, allowing p
and S-Bahn to physically travel through E
therefore without legally entering the G
resulted from the position of the East Ber
protruded into West Berlin; Mitte bordered W
and South, thus forcing the lines U6 and U8 (a
S2) to pass through this territory on their
Berlin. Before entering East Berlin territo
(recorded voice) warnings were given to the
to leave West Berlin.
Earwitness Annette Scharnberg commuted with public transportation
from her West Berlin apartment through East Berlin to her workplace in West
Berlin. She remembers that the train passed slowly through the guarded ghost
stations. What Scharnberg recalls as «slow» must have been fifteen miles per

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 They Tried to Divide the Sky 425
hour according to my own estimates. Scharnberg describes her memory in
sonic terms:

On my way to [Berlin-]Wedding, I went through the East and I remember that

everything there sounded a bit different. The underground itself sounded different,
too. [. . .] There was a specific sound to this slowness, somehow hollow, maybe
because [the stations] were emptier. This hollow clack, clack, clack. A different
resonance cavity. I think it is like in some films [. . .] steps approaching you across a
big dark room: clack, clack, clack. This hollow sound - I think that stands for
something threatening. A hollow sound in the emptiness (Dietrich 103).

It is quite telling that this earwitness does not remember any other humans or
human sounds - only the eerie sounds connected to the vast empty space. In
most underground stations, there are waiting passengers, signs, benches, and
often concession stands. Many West Berlin train stations featured musicians
who entertained the masses hoping for a few Deutschmark. Yet since the
Cold War's ghost stations were underground stations void of any signs of
human life with the exception of the border guards, there were no soft objects
(hair, clothing, strollers, filled trash bins, newspaper kiosks, etc.) to absorb
sound waves or dampen them; the hard surfaces of the stone or concrete
floors, walls, and columns simply reflected the sounds of the train, causing
the space to sound like an enormous hollow chamber with eerie reverbera-
tions. There were some ghost stations aboveground, but most ghost stations
were underground, meaning that the train passengers passing through would
not see East Berlin scenery, only the interior of abandoned train stations
dimly lit by humming neon lights, just enough for train conductors and GDR
guards to see. Earwitnesses also recall that once the trains passed into the
ghost stations, conversations on the train would cease.
The train ride was, for the passengers, a highly aural experience; this was
true for the East Berliners aboveground as well. But in addition to hearing,
they also smelled, and even felt, the West Berlin U6 traffic through ventilation
grids and air shafts. Around the train station Friedrichstraße, not more than
twelve feet separated passers-by on foot in East Berlin from those on the train
heading back to West Berlin.
The only train station along the U6 that did not become a ghost station was
the train station Friedrichstraße, at which passengers from West Berlin could
switch onto other West Berlin trains. The S3 that started in Wannsee actually
ended at Friedrichstraße. This last example for the «divided sky» in Berlin
remained a busy station even after the construction of the Wall. It was a unique
situation in which a physical wall existed within the train station, separating
East and West traffic: East and West Berlin in one building, on East German
territory! This made Friedrichstraße the site of numerous attempts, a few

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426 Florence Feiereisen

successful, many more unsuccessful, by citizen

West. The train station was also a major bor
West Berlin: with the appropriate papers, afte
in 1963 and even more so after signing the Fo
Friedrichstraße was an official entry point for
Western countries into East Berlin and a transit
through Friedrichstraße to a destination in
with hard-to-obtain exit permits were also allo
train and ride it into West Berlin and/or the
chleuse, a transfer for agents - unofficially
In «Bahnhof Friedrichstraße. Ein Museum
Sparschuh calls Friedrichstraße the «absurdest
explains: «Unterm Strich also, kurz und knapp
Friedrichstraße ist ein Umsteigebahnhof, ko
doppeltem Kopf- beziehungsweise Sack-Bah
Bahnhofs» (238). To decipher this quotation
station as a border, long-distance, connecting, t
train station, the reader has to think of it as
three platforms and on two levels.
GDR citizens used platform C as a connecting
board trains to other stations in East Berlin or
was a long-distance station for internationa
ziige , i. e., trains running nonstop from Berlin
In a «Geheime Verschlusssache,» Minister of
Maron, had ordered on 12 August 1961: «Z
verkehr in Richtung Westen und zwischen We
beginnen und enden auf dem Bahnsteig A d
(Mugay 98). At this platform, the transit statio
commuting between the FRG and Berlin, a
distance trains to international destinations su
holm and the Paris-Moscow express.
Platform B, finally, was the final destination
Wannsee and Staaken. Passengers from West B
level, to subways or city trains located on the l
Platform B was also a shopping destination
Intershops , a government-run chain of retail s
cosmetics, and other goods marketed to a Wes
cost in order to generate a stream of outside c
situated on East German territory, all operatio
GDR jurisdiction: all employees of Intershop

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 They Tried to Divide the Sky 42 7
from the East; only the train conductors on West Berlin subways or city trains
and long distance trains from the FRG were from the West and traveled from
West to East and then back to the West without leaving the platform.
The platforms aboveground were separated by walls. Soon after traffic
commenced again following 13 August, a wall almost three meters high
constructed of opaque security glass with wire mesh was installed. East and
West Berliners would pass each other unseen, but again, the sonic airspace
above the glass wall was a shared resource. West Berliner earwitnesses recall
hearing speaker announcements such as «Schönefeld zurückbleiben,» and
the passengers waiting for their connecting train on the «Ost-Bahnsteig»
(platform C) also heard announcements from the adjacent (West) platforms.
An East Berliner recalls hearing the juxtaposition of directions from both
sides: first instructions to step back while the long distance train to Munich
passes through, and then an invitation to board that train. Delays to
Hamburg were also announced (Dietrich 103). To the many participants
in this soundscape who were never allowed to travel to those destinations,
this was a cruel sonic teaser. In the 1980s, the glass was replaced by a higher
metal wall that reached to the roof and prevented sounds from crossing over.
Still, the sounds traveled around the walls: the East authorities did not build
soundproof tunnels around West trains, so the trains entering the station -
before they reached the platform - could be both seen and heard by people on
adjacent platforms. The same held true for announcements, which needed to
be sufficiently amplified to reach and be understood by all passengers on the
platform. Had platform A or B been enclosed spaces, the passengers on
platform C would not have been able to participate in the soundscape. Where
the trains arrived and left revealed shared airspace capacious enough for
sound to travel and, due to its volume, still be heard on the platforms.
Underground, Bahnhof Friedrichstraße was an even more complicated
maze. When the train station was restructured according to the above
mentioned «Geheime Verschlusssache,» old corridors were closed, and
others were built - with two-way mirrors, surveillance cameras, and
interrogation rooms. There were even more walls separating East and
West traffic, but with brick or concrete walls from floor to ceiling and a
lack of the necessary volume described above, the airspace underground was
now indeed divided.
Lastly, the train station served as an official border crossing for westbound
travel. Here, people were actually allowed to cross into the other world,
provided they had the appropriate papers. Our last auralization, therefore,
will reconstruct the soundscape of exiting the GDR while still on East Berlin
territory. Western visitors to the East, GDR retirees, and others who had

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428 Florence Feiereisen

special permission were allowed to travel fro

Bahnhof Friedrichstraße. Before they could lea
the Tränenpalast (palace of tears), a glass pavili
for customs, security, and foreign exchange ch
many others, being interviewed, and receivi
buzzer and could now enter the train station's
order to auralize this, we must also consider th
traveling from the East to the West at this tr
GDR aged sixty or older (termed «veterans o
advanced average age among the passengers a
tions were young or middle-aged uniformed of
and their luggage line up along a white stripe on
searched the train; not until it was officially an
were the travelers allowed to pick up their
Needless to say, although many travelers were
help them with their luggage. Hence, we have
heartbeats, their panting from being out of b
luggage, their fearful answers to the officials,
police dogs (or the scratching of their claws on
emphasize how hostile this environment wa
between 1961 and 1989, in the context of bo
Friedrichstraße, at least 227 people died of nat
cause of death was a heart attack due to str
As soon as the train was in motion, the sou
train would roll through train station Fried
twice (upon entering and leaving West Berlin)
see: walls, fences, the death strip, dogs on cable
hear was the rattling of the train, their own b
relieving built-up tension - the journey had
Though this last example does not represen
Wall itself, it is an important puzzle piece
significance of the border area's soundsc
auditory community for those who are not on
of sounds - by hearing what happens in the com
this community have unknowingly already sig
Not even the Berlin Wall could stop the inhabi
systems who lived in the border area from bei
community. I have presented three such aco
waves traveled from one side to the other. T
along the barbed wire in the early 1960s was a

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 They Tried to Divide the Sky 429
on orders from above: as a result, West German reporters and East German
border guards manipulated and controlled the sonic public. Each side tried to
«win» by drowning out each other's sounds or to simply win the contest in
volume. Though officially declared as a news medium, the sounds the Studio
am Stacheldraht dispersed were part of a politically charged sound wa
directed at those who could not escape: the border guards on the East side an
thousands of civilians on both sides of the wall whose daily lives were affected
by the loud soundscapes. When East authorities installed permanent loud
speakers, citizens in the border area had to close their windows day and nigh
in order to sleep or even to have a conversation without shouting.
The second acoustic arena in the form of rock concerts also featured sound
signals processed and broadcast through loudspeakers, though the sound
production was less unpredictable in comparison with the 1961-65 sounds
cape. Also, these sound waves did not intrude upon everyday life, but came
from performances advertised well in advance. Concerts by Western artists
for East and West Berliners on West Berlin grounds were not about winning
the volume war (though they were most certainly loud!), but they showe
that musical performances could be just as political as standard propaganda.
These concerts were officially sanctioned and executed by a commerci
company equipped with all the technological means to bring a provocativ
audicie to the Brandenburg Gate border area. Western artists demonstrated
their solidarity and sonically included East German youth. Not sent through
loudspeakers, but still an important part of the soundscape, were the sounds
that evolved on the East side of the Wall (ranging from the sounds of
enjoyment to subsequent sounds of danger and violence).
The third acoustic arena represented a sonic wall experience a mile away
from the Berlin Wall. While the first two examples had featured intentionally
engineered sounds that were meant to be sent over the wall, the travelin
ambient sounds at train station Berlin-Friedrichstraße - some of them
amplified, others unprocessed - were produced with no intent yet were
heard all the same. In fact, the authorities in the East went to great lengths to
keep these sounds divided. In the end, despite their efforts to route people
through an over- and underground maze by erecting walls separating
platforms, these authorities did not succeed completely in preventing sound
waves from traveling from one side to the other. Berlin was divided, but
unlike the American translation of Christa Wolf's novel suggests, they could
not divide the sky above it. All three examples show that a soundscape can be
the site of power struggle for all of its participants, be they intentional
producers or accidental recipients of sound. It can be a site of any
combination of annoyance, fear, hope, or pleasure - whatever the mix, a

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430 Florence Feiereisen

soundscape is a field of interaction, an arena

each other. «Knowing the world through so
fundamentally different from knowing the w
«Tuning» 129), and so it is only appropriate to
effort to make sense of our world and lend

Notes

1 The earliest known recording of intelligible human speech is Edouard-Léon Scott de

Martinville singing the French song «Au Clair de la Lune»: http://www.firstsounds.
org/sounds/1860-Scott-Au-Clair-de-la-Lune-05-09.mp3.
2 Even for twentieth-century sources playback technology remains a challenge. Some
sound recordings exist, yet the format is so old that the data is not easy to extract.
3 See «Der Polizeipräsident von Berlin.» Chronik der Mauer. http://www.chronik-der-
mauer.de/index.php/de/Start/Detail/id/593791/page/O.
4 Epping-Jäger points out that the construction of the Studio am Stacheldraht reminds
her of the NSDAP's Reichs- Auto-Züge. The Third Reich's speech trucks had featured
hydraulic stages to reach the audience via sight and sound (38).
5 For a RIAS recording of the Studio am Stacheldraht broadcast onl6 October 1961 go
to: http://www.chronik-der-mauer.de/chronik/#anchornidl 73492.
6 For the sake of comparison: the standard range for orchestral music is about 40 to 100
Phon; 120 Phon can be compared to an airplane engine only 4 meters away («Schall und
Rauch» 37f.); the threshold of physical pain is at 130 Phon.
7 For a recording of the Studio's last broadcast go to: http://www.berliner-mauer.tv/
interview-gerull-heinz/die-letzte-sendung-studio-am-stacheldraht.html?showall=&-
limitstart=.
8 For a video recording of David Bowie's 1987 West Berlin rendition of «Time Will
Crawl» go to: http://www.youtube.com/watch ?v=uZiKOH9NXKc.
9 For a video recording of Bruce Springsteen's «Chimes of Freedom» in East Berlin 1988
go to: https://www.youtube.com/watch ?v=WBIcfPBVxxQ.
10 Had the train stopped there, the stairways would have been metal-grilled or closed
with masonry. There were entry doors for GDR border guards who would have guided
West Berliners out in case of an emergency.

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