A Mighty Fortress was the Berlin Wall:

About the Book

At the height of the Cold War in 1982 Martin and I left northern California to live in West Berlin's Kreuzberg Kiez, a bohemian district of squatters, left-wing radicals, Turkish guest workers, and others on low incomes.  Underneath this multicultural overlay the core of resentful burghers who had remained behind after the Wall went up tried to preserve the stodgy stablity of the old working-class district.  Waiting for the bus at the Heinrichplatz or descending from the elevated platform at the Kottbusser Tor, they muttered epithets at the chain-bedecked "No future/no hope" punks accosting them for beer money.  

The Kreuzberg Kiez was chaotic and unpredictable, ready to explode at a moment's notice.  Why did we leave our settled life at Stanford University to live in a rundown ghetto that was a disgrace to the German culture?  Because after a two-decade career as a pastor and professor in North and South America, Martin had become profoundly homesick for his native Germany.  He particularly missed the wry wit and scrappy culture of Berlin, a city that held wonderful childhood memories for him.  He had lived there until he was eleven, when his father died and the family  moved back to his mother’s home town of Dresden.

But that was many years ago.  Now Berlin was divided and encircled, its western zones a struggling oasis inside a Communist desert called the German Democratic Republic.  Hardly a place to feel at home, I thought with mixed emotions.  I didn't want to leave, but if he had to go ....

The move might not be permanent.  Martin had a sabbatical call for nine months to a parish which could not fill its second-pastor vacancy because no candidate would live there.  The Thomas Church, a nineteenth-century brick monolith facing a grassy square called the Mariannenplatz, backed up against the Berlin Wall in a weedy corner of the Kiez.  Candidates had looked out of the third-floor parsonage windows into the Wall death strip, stared at the mohawked punks roaming the neighborhood with unleashed dogs, and beat a hasty retreat to boring but safe Westphalia.  Although Martin after twenty years of absence was no longer part of the German church roster, he was willing to take the call and an exception had been made for him.  What would happen after the sabbatical was not clear.

Because of his personal history, my husband had a sympathetic reaction to the Kreuzberg Kiez.  He had been a refugee -- his family had fled the burning streets of Dresden in February 1945 and lost everything -- so he knew what it was to be on the fringe of society, devoid of all normal security.  He preferred to call that place the cutting edge.  Nor did he fear the voices of protest.  He hated his country’s division and understood the frustration of those who searched in radical new directions.  

The alternatives had arrived after the Wall went up in 1961.  Many Berliners had fled to West Germany, convinced the Russians were coming.  With blocks of apartment buildings standing virtually empty, housing was abundant and cheap.  The Turkish guest workers recruited to replace the lost East Berlin work force settled their extended families in Kreuzberg for the same reason.  Martin looked forward to working in the colorful district where, as he told me, he could also keep an eye on the Cold War.

But one thing was puzzling.  I understood that because of some long-buried need my husband now had to reclaim his roots; but I did not understand why he suddenly embraced Heimat, a nostalgic idea best translated as Home with a capital H.  The word was full of warm fuzzies for most people who grew up in Nazi Germany, especially those from the lost eastern provinces which were now part of Poland, but Martin had always  felt the term was loaded with hypocrisy.

On the night of February 13

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