West Berlin Journal: Stories of Culture, the Cold War, and the Kreuzberg Kiez

By Eloise Schindler

Beer-swigging punks in the church balcony, rock-throwing demonstators, evicted squatters, gun-toting Communist border guards -- the author saw it all from 1982 to 1986 when she and her German-born pastor husband lived at the Berlin Wall in the bohemian district of West Berlin called the Kreuzberg Kiez.The author describes the no-man's-land she sees from her third-floor balcony; the Kiez alternative scene; a punk squatter tent city on church property; car trouble on the transit autobahn and inside East Germany. She tells of her husband's need for Heimat -- Home with a capital H -- that nearly destroys their marriage.A return to the newly unified country in 1991, and a visit to the Kreuzberg Kiez in 2011 described by her husband in an Epilogue, convinces the author that by discarding old cultural attitudes about identity and character, Germany is on the way to becoming the true leader among nations she aspires to be.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 1463737246
• ISBN13: 9781463737245
• Release Date: August 2011
• Publisher: Createspace Independent Publishing Platform
• Length: 362 Pages
• Weight: 1.07 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.8" x 6.0" x 9.0"