Manne threw his school bag into a corner and ran out into the street to meet Jorg and Robert for a game of soccer: to him it was like every other afternoon. But it soon wouldn’t be. He was ten and had known no other world but this one: Berlin was a vast desert of rubble. Same thing in the neighborhoods around Stettiner train station, in Berlin N4. He had grown up on Borsigstrasse. It ran from Elsasstrasse to Ivalidenstrasse and it had 34 buildings. Of these, numbers 6, 11a to 21 and 31b to 34 had been destroyed in the war. Not so bad. His grandfather’s favorite joke was: “Berlin is like a big warehouse: Where’s your house? Where’s my house?” Manne and his friends thought there was no better playground than a complete ruin. Unless you wanted to play soccer. For instance VfR Mannheim against Borussia Dortmund or Unisa Oberschöneweide against BSV 92. Manne had gotten a brand new football from Igelit for his birthday. He always carried it with him.
But where were Jorg and Robert? They had probably run over to the freight depot to see if there were any coal pellets that might have fallen between the tracks. Or they would jump up onto the freight cars and kick some over. Bringing coal home made their parents happier than a report card with a top grade in calculus.
That was mean. Why hadn’t his friends waited for him? Manne walked down the street looking for them. Too bad there weren’t any more rail dumpsters to carry away the rubble. They were perfect for playing D train. His mother had worked as a ruin lady for a long time. Anybody with any strength had been put to work clearing up the mountains of debris. First the streets had been cleared so that the garbage trucks and the streetcars could run. Then all the ruins that still stood and could cave in at any moment had to be torn down. That was always very exciting. He loved it when the demolition crews laid a thick cable around some chimney stack that was still standing and pulled it down chanting: “Heave-ho! Heave-ho!” There was such a tremendous dust cloud, when it finally came crashing to the ground!
Beneath the ruins there were still many live explosives and even though it was strictly forbidden to go there, they would climb among the rubble in search of scrap metal: they did it even though they knew that one of these things could blow up any second.
Manne divided the ruins into three basic categories: first, the houses that had been blown to smithereens by mines and aerial bombing: bull’s eye, and there was nothing left but a big pile of rubble. Then there were the buildings that had been struck by firebombing. Inside, there was nothing left, everything, from the basement to the roof, had burned away but the front of the house was intact even if blackened by soot. The third category were the partial wrecks where a house had been half destroyed, cut in two and one half was still lived in. The girders still stuck out and you could see the wallpaper on the walls of what had once been a living room, and now were on the outside.
Where the bomb craters had been filled and fallen houses cleared away, there were now empty spaces. Often a small circus set up its tent there or an amusement park. Maybe this year there would even be a Christmas market.
Still no trace of Jorg and Robert. Manne felt a little unsure. “Don’t go with anybody!” He could hear his mothers’ voice ringing in his ear. What happened to children who went with strangers, nobody among his friends really knew but they believed that they were slaughtered like rabbits and their flesh sold as meat. What if Jorg and Robert…? But no, there they were, standing in front of the church of the Golgotha. Thank God. “Where were you?” he asked. Jorg had been at the center for disinfection. “I had lice.” Robert had been to the doctor’s. “Immunization shot. I missed out at the school immunization. And then, I still had to go home and carry some coal up from the cellar – just like Hennecke, you know.” Adolf Hennecke had surpassed the daily quota for miners by 387 percent and had been named ‘Father of all Workers’ in the GDR.
“What shall we play?” Manne wanted to play soccer, Robert wanted to play Who’s Afraid of the Black Man? Jorg pointed to his head: “Come on, were not enough people for that.” He was for car racing or playing throw a coin against the wall but he didn’t have a majority. In the end they all agreed to play soccer. Jorg against Robert, which meant Union Oberschöneweide (East Berlin) against BSV 92 (West Berlin). The reason for the two teams was that Robert’s father was a ‘border crosser’: he lived in the East and worked in the West. Manne was goal keeper and as such, he had to be absolutely impartial.
They didn’t feel like going all the way to the park, so they stayed on their home turf, Borsigstrasse. Anyway, cars came through once in a lifetime here. The goal posts were the walled up entrance to a ruin of the second category, the firebombed buildings where the façade was intact; it was number 4, Borsigstrasse.
Manne took up his position and kicked the ball into play. It had to go high up and come down as closely as possible in the middle between Jorg and Robert. He yelled: “Start!” The two boys jumped up in the air but missed the ball. It hit the ground behind them, rebounded on the tram rails and rolled into the gutter. Jorg darted off first and had taken possession of the ball, but Robert was ready and they began to jostle and kick furiously. Finally, Jorg saw an opening and made a shot. Manne threw his arms up, driving the ball to the left of the goal posts beyond the door frame. A boy screamed. The precious ball had flown into a window that hadn’t been walled up, on the second floor, landing inside the ruin.
Manne was furious, he shouted at Jorg: “You go get it, you’re the one who kicked it into there!”
Jorg protested: “That’s not true: you’re the one who sent it over in that direction.”
Even Robert was against Manne. “It’s your ball, after all.”
Manne realized that the other boys had won. “Well, at least help me up and stay at the window… in case I get buried in there.”
The two boys promised and they held their hands tightly together to make a step up for Manne. He flew up in the air like a bug, kicked his left foot up, grabbed the window sill with both hands and swung himself up as high as he could; he managed to get his right knee, his lower leg and part of his thigh onto the brickwork. With a few more movements like a swimmer in a swimming belt, he managed to sit on the window sill and looked down into the burned out apartment. Where was his ball?
“Can you see it?” Jorg asked.
“No…” It was getting dark and without a flashlight… Manne bent down lower to look into the depths of the room to see if his ball wasn’t perhaps right under him, in the “blind spot” in a sense.
Then he screamed such a terrible scream that it resonated down Borsigstrasse and he jumped down so suddenly that his friends weren’t able to catch him. He fell on the pavement.
“What happened?”
Inside the ruin, there were the gruesome pieces of a body which had been dismembered. Later, it was discovered that there were two calves, a left thigh and a left arm.