I called Commerce�s Bureau of East-West Trade in Washington, which was handling arrangements. I was told the East Germans had sent out the passport with visas by Express Mail as soon as they had received it. Days later I found a slip of paper under my door, left by the letter carrier, because he understood that I had to receive the Express Mail personally. The slip directed me to go to the Bay Ridge PO in my neighborhood. I did this and waited in a long line at the only open window among many. When I finally got to the clerk, he fished around and curtly informed me that since they could not deliver it to me in person, they returned it to the main PO downtown where I had to go get it.

    The time for my departure from Kennedy Airport drew nearer and nearer. I took the subway from my home to downtown Brooklyn and stood in line at the appropriate window. When I finally faced the clerk, I told him I had been sent there from the Bay Ridge PO, and that it had been floating around the system at least seven days and the Bay Ridge PO had sent me downtown to receive my Express Mail from Washington. Puzzled, I observed, �Seems awfully slow for Express Mail."

    The Post Office clerk snarled, �I don�t give a shit. I�m retiring in a month anyway.� He searched a random pile, found something and handed me the Express Mail packet. I opened it and there was the passport and the necessary visa, including a formal embossed card insert with compliments from the Embassy of the German Democratic Republic.

    I shook my head, tucked the eight-day (Washington-to-New York) Express Mail envelope under my arm. I am used to this sort of beneath-disgusting treatment. I lived in New York for 37 years. That's the way it is. I walked out, descended the subway steps, climbed aboard a 4th Avenue Local, and rode home to Bay Ridge. Home

Tuesday, August 30 - Late in the afternoon, clutching two suitcases, I grabbed a cab at the stand at 86th Street and Fourth Avenue in Brooklyn, rode to the JFK Airport Pan American Airways terminal, checked my bags and boarded the red-eye Pan Am 72 from JFK to Frankfurt-Main, West Germany, which departed about 6:30 p.m. Eastern Daylight Time.

    During the flight I felt wetness on my right temple. It was blood from a small keratosis lesion. I didn't need this. I asked the cabin attendant for a bandage and she applied it. Sleep ensued. When I awoke it was just after dawn and the 747 was on the ground. I changed planes at Frankfurt-Main and stumbled aboard Pan Am Flight 680, the shuttle to Flughafen Tegel in West Berlin.

    I could not fly directly to Berlin because it was 110 miles inside East Germany. In those days the Cold War between the Soviet Union and the West splitting Germany into four parts- the West (The German Federal Republic) which was the domain of the U.S., Britain and France and the East, (The German Democratic Republic) held by the Soviet Union. The Soviets allowed only three closely-patrolled airlanes from the West into Berlin: one for Pan Am from the U.S. from JFK via Frankfurt-Main, another for Air France from Paris via D�sseldorf and a third for British Airways from the Hamburg area. I deplaned at Tegel about 9:00 a.m. Berlin time. Home

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"CHECKPOINT CHARLIE" CROSSING, WEST TO EAST BERLIN

    Returning to the East, I went through the same process as described above (Augenbrille, Ausweiss and all), and on to Interhotel Unter den Linden where we lunched at the restaurant � (Valutamark 12� 75' - U.S. $5.54) on some Ukrainian Suppe which may have been popular in the Ukrainian SSR at that time, but its only appeal to me was that it was warm and wet.

    Oh, yeah - another thing about the bathroom: I had been warned by various U.S. government personnel several times before my trip to pack my own toilet paper. I did, and thank God! I examined the East German toilet paper and it seemed to be manufactured out of old glued-together newspapers, recycled bags, little green things and God knows what else. And use of it would literally tear you a new one.

     In The People's Own Hotel guests were forbidden to have visitors in their rooms. A beady-eyed shadowy concierge sat at a desk at the end of the hallway of every floor, writing something in a ledger each time I (or anyone) exited or entered a room and exited or entered the elevator. Hotel patrons were allowed visitors only in the street-level lobby, which provided butt-sprung furniture and which reeked heavily of armpit and foot sweat odors mingled with stale hair oil and rank thick blue makhorka cigarette smoke. (Many years later, I was pleased to learn that the Peoples' Own Flophouse had been demolished). Home

    In some restaurants, unless you ask to remain alone, a stranger will be seated with you. As I ate lunch, Brigadier General Mohamed Ali Ahmed Bahreiba, Military Attache to the Sudanese Moscow Embassy, was seated at my table by the waiter who told me the General spoke English. I thanked the waiter for his thoughtfulness.

     General Bahreiba looked to be in his mid-to-late thirties. He presented his card, I presented mine and we sailed into a discussion of current events as they pertained to the Sudan, Communism, and Soviet attempts to increase influence in Africa. He asked what U.S. President Jimmy Carter's intentions were regarding Soviet intervention in the affairs of African nations. I said I had no idea, but that in my opinion, Marxism and Islam were at odds, and the Soviets seemed to have little or no chance of exerting influence there except to perhaps offer weapons for sale.

    The General agreed. Further on, he told me that members of embassy staffs of most of the nations who were stationed in Moscow came to East Berlin on holiday whenever they could, because everything was so much better and much less oppressive. I had to say that in coming from the U.S. to East Berlin, I found everything here was far more oppressive than anything in the America. We both smiled - he because he felt less oppressed and I because I felt more oppressed, I guess.

    I had a chance that afternoon to wander out along the Unter den Linden and toward the Brandenburg Gate. To the left was the Adlon, said to be the best hotel in Berlin before WW II, but part of which was still in ruins 22 years later. Soviet soldiers on leave were photographing one another before the gate. The Wall was on the other side and barricades abounded on the DDR side. Ambling back toward the hotel I noted to my right the Soviet Embassy, which was the largest building I saw in East Berlin.

    I walked East on the boulevard toward Alexanderplatz, past a goose-stepping East German sentry as he paced stiff-legged back and forth before a memorial to DDR soldiers, looked briefly at the large collection of museum buildings on the Spreeinsel, an island in the River Spree, wished I could go look in the museums, had no time, turned and walked briskly back to the hotel.

    At dinner I shared a table with a middle-aged farmer from T�ringen (Thuringia), one of the DDR provinces. He spoke no English but kindly helped me with my German. For instance he taught me the German word for horseradish (Meerrettich). During our pleasant conversation he told me that he had to obtain papers to visit a bureau in Berlin for business reasons and had to wait three years for proper permission to travel there after assembling all necessary documents. And when I paid via American Express card he was awestruck at this transaction, wishing such a convenience were available in his country. Home

    I climbed into a well-worn van at the Embassy. The back was stuffed with materials to be delivered to the American Business Development Office at the fair. I was introduced to the driver Willi, who spoke virtually no English, yet we managed to communicate quite well. We traveled along streets through the K�penick District of Southwest Berlin. I was reminded of the history of Der Hauptmann von K�penick whose dilemma was that when he applied for a job, he was asked for identification and had none. He was told he could not get a job without ID. So he went to the appropriate office to get ID papers and found that the clerk there could not give him papers because he had no job. (Kein' Arbeit ohne Ausweiss und kein' Ausweiss ohne Arbeit).

     We commented on the motor vehicles we saw as we rode toward Leipzig, They were typically elderly two-door Trabant two-cylinder coupes and four-door Wartburgs, many pre-WW II. They looked shabby and Willi observed that they broke down all the time and used large amounts of fuel even though both types had very small engines and were underpowered. The Germans had installed Autobahns nationwide during Hitler�s regime and they were quite good for the time. One quirk I noticed was that while the highway was well-maintained, the on-and-off-ramps seemed perilously short and were constructed of cobblestones.

     As we drove from Berlin to Leipzig I became very much aware of the swarming Soviet presence in the DDR because there was an almost endless stream of convoys of open-body trucks pulling field artillery, canvas-covered-body trucks carrying troops and large flatbed tractor-trailers loaded with T-34 tanks.

The U.S. Chemical Business Development Office was located in Halle 6. Diagonally to the right is Halle 12, the Soviet pavilion, featuring a steeple with a glowing red star at its peak, shown below.

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      Then we moved through the fairgrounds to Halle 6, where the U.S. BDO was under construction. I met office manager Richard C. Bell, of the Department of Commerce Bureau of East-West Trade. We immediately hit it off. As workmen assembled the office he combined a mixture of whistles, motions, yells and other noises which were well-understood and construction proceeded without a hitch. He told me that the workers were members of the East German army who were traditionally pressed into service (at no pay) for the Spring and Fall fairs in Leipzig.

      He understood little German, explaining that when he joined the federal agency he was trained to work in Central and South America and became fluent in Spanish � so they sent him to Moscow and other Iron Curtain countries to participate in trade fairs for BEWT, not knowing a word of the language of any of the places to which he went. He was going to move on to a fair at Plovdiv, Bulgaria later.

      I was introduced to Susanna, who had come from the U.S. Consulate in Hamburg and Eva, a secretary who had come down from the Berlin Embassy, to help at the U.S. office. Then it was time to check in at my assigned hotel, the Interhotel International on the Tr�ndlinring, a sweeping curved main thoroughfare not far from the Leipzig railway station, arguably the largest train terminal in Europe at the time. You may remember from my request above that I asked for accommodations in the Stadt Leipzig, a modern hotel. The Interhotel International was something else.

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COURTYARD VIEWS OF THE HOTEL INTERNATIONAL IN LEIPZIG IN 1977

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      I was assigned Zimmer Nr. 224 on the third floor (Some hotels like to confuse people by calling the first floor the ground floor, the second floor the first floor, etc.) to which I ascended in a lift operated by Fritz, a Liftboy (the literal German word for elevator operator) in his fifties or sixties. I liked him. He spoke no English but I was able to cope with his German. He let me off on the third floor and I found my room soon enough. I unlocked the door and found a satisfactory bed, table, chair, radio, and sink with mirror. No bathroom.

     Disheartened I left my room, searched, and found it down the hall around a corner. It was replete with 19th-century pull-chain toilet and sink and shared by whoever got there first. I thought about this. Apparently the hotel was designed for an era when people were willing to line up, if necessary, to use the bathroom. (I instantly modernized the situation by urinating in the sink in my room. Don't tell anyone. I imagine the ladies figured out what to do as well. This also indicated that the hotel was so old that at one time there were thunder-mugs under the beds).

      Bathing facilities were further down the hall in a separate large room, in the midst of which was a massive bathtub with soap, hot and cold running water, a wooden chair and towels. The hotel, probably late 19th century, was built as a hollow square, with floors surrounding an inner courtyard.

     The International had a bed-and-breakfast dining room and the Falstaff Restaurant by the sidewalk. I sat at table in the evening and ordered up a mistake: �Seezunge" - the German word for sole. I was expecting filet of sole but instead was served a whole small fish from the Baltic Sea which, since it was unboned, felt like I was eating an overloaded pincushion. The flesh was tasty enough, but who wants to eat needles? Home

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DOWNTOWN LEIPZIG, SEPTEMBER, 1977

A 1977 photo panorama of downtown Leipzig, DDR, location of several main fair buildings, taken from the top of the main building of Karl Marx University, previously (and after reunification) Leipzig University.The university main building,from which the photo was taken, also in 1977, is shown below, right.

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Saturday September 3 - In the early morning I descended from my room and partook of a buffet breakfast. Among ample supplies of attractive morning comestibles were little packets labeled �Bienenhonig" on the buffet table. Bee honey? Is there another kind? Baffling. I went outside to fetch a cab to the Fair and was accosted by a policeman. It frightened me for a moment because he really ran at me. He yelled, �Ihr' Kn�pfen! Ihr' Kn�pfen!", waving and pointing at my chest. I looked down. He had been shouting, "Your buttons, your buttons!" Indeed. My suit coat had the top button in the middle buttonhole. Relieved, realizing I had not committed some sort of capital crime, I giggled nervously, thanked him too much, rebuttoned and hailed a taxi.

     At the Fair I met Susanna, who spoke excellent English, and she accompanied me downtown for various visa rituals. First we had to go to the main police station to get my passport stamped with a visa which would permit me to be in the city. I never saw so many police in my life. Regiments of green-and-white-clad Polizei were changing shift as we crossed the park toward the station. Once inside, following signs, we climbed a wide staircase to the second (or first, if you prefer) floor.

    The entire interior of the building was painted bile green. We entered a room to our left and there behind a counter, was a fat bald middle-aged cigar-smoking clerk with steel-rimmed glasses, Herr Klamm directly from Franz Kafka's Das Schlo�. He took my passport, examined it inordinately and, lip curled, exclaimed to Susanna in German, "I can't find anything wrong with it!" Reaching into an old cigar box full of visa stamps, he chose one, moistened it on a red ink pad, then with excessive force vigorously stamped the visa section of my passport into what looked like measles.

    Then it was on to the Ausl�ndertreffpunkt (foreigners' meeting point) building where I handed over my passport again to a clerk who immediately disappeared into another room. I sat on a pew and waited (and waited and waited) until I received the proper pass to the fair. Susanna and I headed to the nearest taxi stand. A small cab sat about 50 yards away where two people were in conversation with the cabbie. This went on for some time. Finally I turned to Susanna and said, �Ein Pfennig f�r mein VEB* Taxi, zwei Pfennig f�r mein VEB Taxi, drei Pfennig f�r mein VEB Taxi." My interpretation of the transaction made her laugh. Cab fare a Pfennig at a time. Finally he rolled up, we hopped in and rode back to the fairgrounds.

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*In the Marxist classless society of the DDR there were at least three classes of business: the VEB, (�Volkseigenebetrieb") - the people's own business(or service,or work); the VVB (�Vereinigung Volkseigener Betriebe") -The confederation of the people's own businesses and, in this Fair, the AHB (�Aussenhandelsbetrieb") - the foreign trade business, each a class above the previous. There were other classes of activities too numerous to count. Some citizens muttered privately that the German Democratic Republic had managed to combine all the worst elements of Marxism and Prussianism.

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    Back at the Fair at Lunch time, with the weather warm and pleasant, we went to the place where Willi and I had lunched the previous day. More Wurst und Br�tchen and Margonwasser mineral water. As we ate, a young woman came and sat across from us with a tray of food. We nodded to her, she nodded back, and when she had eaten her lunch she said, �Auf Wiedersehen" (till we meet again) in such a sinister tone that I had to bite my lip. As she vanished I sneered at Susanna, �Auf Wiedersehen!" threateningly and she laughed, responding, �Ade!" (Farewell! - a far more dismissive and final good-bye).

     We returned to the U.S. Fairstand and Dick Bell in Halle 6, where workers applied finishing touches. Company and government literature was stacked in shelf bins. A cleaning woman wept briefly about her Staubsauger (vacuum cleaner - literally dust-sucker) because she couldn't find a nearby electrical outlet, but finally found it and vacuumed the floor. At some time during this hoo-hah Frank Geweidnitzer, a student at Karl Marx University, joined us as translator. During my meetings with various visitors at the BDO during the Fair he translated very well for me when my rusty German squeaked to a halt. During our days together at the Fair, Frank, who was proficient in English, told me he was at the university training for the East German diplomatic service in Cairo, and that actually Arabic was his second language. I was impressed.

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THE U.S. BUSINESS DEVELOPMENT OFFICE, SEPTEMBER 3. 1977

Left - Ambassador and Mrs. Bolen visit the U.S. Chemical Business Development office at the Leipzig Fall Fair. With them is Embassy Commercial Secretary Alan Parker. Right - Eva of the U.S. Embassy and Susanna of the consular office in Hamburg, who were very helpful during the Fair.

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    After a long day Dick Bell and I left the Fair and went to the Am Ring Restaurant for dinner. The restaurant was well-appointed, having a ring of linen-covered tables on a raised platform curving around the main floor. We sat at table on the raised section and immediately beneath us was a string ensemble. Dick leaned over, handed the maestro a gratuity and requested a selection from the operetta Gr�fin Maritza. The men played so excellently that I suspected they were members of the renowned Leipzig Gewandhaus-Orchester in season. During our dinner we were joined by a West German orange salesman who said he served in an anti-aircraft battery in Hamburg during the war. Dinner: VM27' ($11.74)

    Later outside we parted company, Dick to the home of a private family who took in guests at Fairtime and I along the Tr�ndlinring to the International on a balmy late evening. Fritz greeted me at the lift. I was opening a pack of cigarettes. When I saw how he looked at them I offered him the pack. �Nein, nein. Nur Eins." He took just one, ran it across under his nose approvingly, nodded, �Amerikanische Zigaretten. Nach Abendessen." for after dinner. He carefully put it in his shirt pocket and patted it. Home

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Sunday September 4 - The Leipzig Fall Fair opened at noon. Left photo below, taken prior to the opening, shows Zoltan Merszei, Dow Chemical Company CEO, Mrs. Bolen and Ambassador Bolen greeting DDR chief of state Erich Honecker, virtually invisible (along with Prime Minister Willi Stoph) behind a pig-pile of photographers. In the right photo, Herr Honecker shakes hands with Mr. Bolen. I had expected to be able to photograph the occasion peacefully but was rudely pummeled on all sides by coverging camera-hounds

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AMBASSADOR BOLEN AND LEADER HONECKER AND RUDE CAMERAMEN

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TWO BIOGRAPHIES
1. Ambassador David B. Bolen was appointed by President Carter as Ambassador to the Deutsche Demokratische Republik in 1977. He was born in 1923. He attended the University of Colorado where as a track star he ran the 100-yard dash in 9.5 seconds, and was the first UC student athlete to qualify for the Olympics, running in the 440. After military service in World War II he graduated from UC with honors in 1950. In 1960 he received a Masters Degree in Public Administration from Harvard. In 1966-67 he attended National War College senior training in foreign affairs. In 1974-1977 Mr. Bolen was Ambassador to Botswana, Lesotho and Swaziland. In 1977 Mr. Carter appointed him Ambassador to the DDR. He presented ambassadorial credentials August 22, 1977 (only a few days before I arrived there myself).
2. Staatsratsvorsitzender Erich Honecker born 1912, was General Secretary of the Socialist Unity Party and Chairman of the Council of State (Staatsratsvorsitzender) of the DDR from 1971 until 1989. In 1961 he oversaw construction of the Berlin Wall. After the Wall came down in 1989 he fled to the Soviets but when the Soviet Union dissolved he was deported to a reunified Germany where he was tried for treason and other crimes, including the deaths of 192 Germans who tried to escape the DDR. He was sentenced to life but due to terminal cancer, he was released from prison and died in exile in Chile in 1994

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    After the Bolens left the U.S. BDO it became crowded with the curious. We plunged right in as visitors approached and began answering their technical questions. Literature began to fly out of the racks. Immediately we had to limit distribution to commercial and Party officials because students would have wiped us out by evening.

    When the Fair closed for the day, Dick, Associated Press correspondent Steve Miller (who had been very helpful to us), myself and a couple of other folks went to one of the most historic restaurants in the world - Auerbachs Keller. The restaurant has operated continuously since it was was founded in 1525. Patrons over the centuries include Martin Luther, who preached and introduced the Reformation to Leipzig at nearby Thomaskirche on May 25, 1539. Johann Sebastian Bach was musical director at Thomaskirche from 1723 until his death in 1750.

    On May 12, 1789, Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart played the organ at the church. Johann Wolfgang Goethe attended Leipzig University from 1765 till 1768. The place was a favorite haunt of Goethe, and in his play, Faust, there is a scene in Auerbachs Keller. Richard Wagner was born in Leipzig in 1813 and lived there. Felix Mendelsohn-Bartholdy led the Gewandhaus Orchester in Leipzig from 1835 till 1847. Robert Schumann And Mendelsohn founded the Conservatory of Music in 1846. Many other great people patronized the restaurant over the centuries. For example, I dined there September 4, 1977. Home

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Monday September 5 - While calm prevailed in Leipzig, DDR, turmoil gripped the Bundesrepublik across the border, which I had left only a few days previously. In what became known as �Deutscher Herbst� (German Autumn), on September 5 Hanns-Martin Schleyer, president of the German Employers' Association, was kidnapped by the Red Army Faction, a terrorist organization also known as the Baader-Meinhof Gang after two of its leaders. They held him demanding release of RAF prisoners. (A Lufthansa plane was later hijacked by the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine. The Baader-Meinhof demand was refused, Schleyer was killed and imprisoned gang members were found dead in their cells. (This grievous situation and other factors were to affect my departure from Europe, as you will see later).

    Meanwhile at the Fair I visited the Dow office. They told me that Dow and the East Germans were discussing DDR technology for conversion of lignite coal to fuels and petrochemicals. Dow had lignite deposits in Texas and the DDR had updated Fischer-Tropsch technology. German scientists Franz Fischer and Hans Tropsch developed a process in the 1920s to convert lignite and other hydrocarbons into liquid motor fuels and lubricants. During WW II Germany, which had no oil reserves, derived as much as 124,000 barrels a day of fuel from 25 such plants, but it wasn't nearly enough. The invasion of the Soviet Union involved occupation of Rumania and its Ploesti oilfields and refineries, which supplemented supplies until the Soviets retook the fields later on.

    After the war, German scientists recruited by the U.S. Bureau of Mines continued to work on synthetic fuels in Texas in a program initiated by the Synthetic Liquid Fuels Act - the Carthage-Hydrocol Process sponsored chiefly by The Texas Company and the Stanolind Process sponsored by Amoco. When government funding ran out, the projects were jettisoned as "technological successes and commercial failures."

    Knowing the high cost of this process, I still followed developments at the fair because in 1974 the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC), mainly Arab nations, had put an embargo on shipments of crude oil to the U.S. and Europe. European refineries had a one-day supply of crude when a settlement was reached. All importing nations were seeking alternative supplies. Could it be that Fischer-Tropsch technology would be used by Dow?

     Along came dinner-time. After work Dick and I left the BDO and went to the Jenny Marx Restaurant. Yes, this beanery was named after Karl's sister. The East Germans, under Soviet domination, had renamed a whole city, Chemnitz, Karl-Marx Stadt, and it was Karl Marx this and Karl Marx that - Karl Marx University, Boulevard, Street, Alley, Road, Building, Outhouse, whatever - all over the DDR.

    We were joined at table by a staid, dignified Swedish gentleman, Michael Odervall, Second Secretary of the Swedish Embassy in Berlin. Right away it was fun. He spoke German but no English and Dick spoke neither German nor Swedish - so immediately I found myself trying to translate what he said in German for Dick, and then trying to convert Dick's English responses into German for the Swedish diplomat.

    As I recall, Mr. Odervall was responsible for selling Volvo limousines to high DDR government officials, because that's what they rode around in (No Wartburgs or Trabants for them). Anyway, he started right out: �Leipzig ist ein' heilige Stadt, denn man fasten zwischen Messen." This took some explanation. I said to Dick in English that Mr. Odervall's statement meant that Leipzig is a holy city because they fast between Masses. (In German, Messe can mean Mass as well as Fair). Between Fairs, it's beer, bread and potatoes, but during the Fairs out come the oranges, along with meat, fresh vegetables and other scarce commodities.

    The Jenny Marx menu contained an overwhelming selection of beers - a page of columns of fine print. When the waitress came to take orders I chose Pilzn, the original Pilsener beer from Czechoslovakia (why not?) but Mr. Odervall, after poring over the extensive list, ostentatiously but politely complained to her that the various beers designated as premium, aged Uralt were far too expensive and that he would take a regular brand of beer instead. I looked at the menu and discovered that the Uralt beers cost one Pfennig more than the regular beers. I explained to Dick what all the fuss was about. In sum, Mr. Odervall was funny and the evening was enjoyable. Home

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Tuesday September 6 - Dr. Ernst Reiss, Dr. A.S. Steinert and F. Cerwenka of the Akadamie der Landwirtschaftswissenschaften der DDR (Academy of Agricultural Sciences of the DDR) visited the stand and requested a copy of the only biochemicals reference guide we had. I couldn't give it to him 1. because it was our sole copy and 2. it was full of return address cards, which were not permitted by the DDR. A bunch of Soviets wandered through but were reluctant except in two or three instances to give their names. They were directed to other U.S. offices for help.

     Meanwhile in my wanderings about the hall I began to collect cards from a spectrum of people and companies such as Helen Semler, a consultant with Chase World Information Corporation, Dr. Hans Bundy and Dr. Manfred F. Beckemeyer of American Cyanamid's Cyanamid Europe - Mideast - Africa subsidiary, Dr. Peter Bellingham and M.N.R. Goodden from ICI, Leslie Colitt from NBC Radio News in Berlin, Melvin Duncan of Union Carbide Austria and others from UOP, Shell Chemical, Gates Rubber and on and on. Then it was back to the Falstaff for dinner and off to bed. Home

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Wednesday September 7 � I visited with a nice gentleman from Poland, Mgr. Piotr Zelenski of the Instytut Przemyslu Skorzanego, of Lodz. He told me that Poland had bought DuPont's Corfam business. DuPont had introduced the material as the first poromeric imitation leather in 1963, for the shoe and leather-goods market. It was very durable but unlike leather, would not conform to the foot and lacked breathability. (Clunk, clunk, clunk! Yours truly can testify to that). DuPont had spent millions on Corfam but gave up on it in 1971 as a train-wreck. Stifling a smile. I thought, it would be just like Poland to buy up something like that. Good luck to them!

    Meanwhile, my efforts to discover more about East German lignite technology took an unexpected turn when Dr. Hein Klare of Akademie der Wissenschaften der DDR who probably knew more about such matters than anyone else at the time, offered to write an article for my paper about the latest developments. Some 30 years later, I still await the promised article. I long ago gave up standing on one leg and holding my breath.

    A highlight of the Leipzig Fall Fair was a soiree for participants sponsored by the DDR Chamber of Foreign Trade Kammer F�r Aussenhandel. The reception, with tables heaped with delicacies, was held in the Kongresshalle, an ornate edifice on Dr.-Kurt-Fischer-Stra�e. I dressed in my suit with a white shirt and string tie which drew praise from Helen Semler. Arm-in-arm we strode from Interhotel International to a waiting conveyance to the reception.

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Left - The ornate Leipzig Kongre�halle, right - Reception ticket stub

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    For a while Dick and I stood in a solarium aside from the milling throng, discussing activities at the U.S. BDO. Of all the requests we had received for goods and services the likeliest seemed to be from Rumania for a crawler crane shovel. Dick had fired off a Telex to Henning Vontillius, chief of the BEWT in Vienna. I don't know what happened to that request and have no idea that any business of substance was conducted. Following the reception I returned to the International and dined VM 34'90' (U.S. $15.17).Home

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Thursday September 8 - The BDO got word that Ambassador Bolen was coming down from Berlin for a ministerial meeting with State Secretary Dr. Gerhard Beil, First Deputy Minister of the Ministry of Foreign Trade, and a trade delegation of his associates that afternoon. Object of the meeting was to discuss progress and future planning in trade negotiations with American firms.

    In the late morning Mr. and Mrs. Bolen arrived and were interviewed by Wilfried Hoffmann of Allgemeiner Deutscher Nachrichtendienst (ADN) the East German news service covering the Fair. The staff of the U.S. BDO then met with the Ambassador. Privately I reported to him on the substance of what I had learned, namely that Dow and the DDR were negotiating a technology exchange on brown coal-to-liquid-fuels, petrochemicals and lubes, and that because of U.S. and world concern about OPEC and possible world oil shortages, the current situation was no longer reflective of East-politik or West-politik, but Oil-politik

    I also said that whatever it looked like, not much was really going to happen because, as one U.S. industry source had told me years earlier about the failed Bureau of Mines Fischer-Tropsch plants, "Oil is liquid and flows out of a pipeline. And even though coal comprises some 80 percent of U.S. hydrocarbon reserves,it is solid, abrasive, corrosive, expensive to move, and generally a bitch to handle." Further, I said I had seen the display of East German chemical facilities on the main floor and it seemed to me the technology they offered was dated and it was doubtful U.S. companies would show much interest.

Left - Ambassador and Mrs. Bolen are interviewed by Wilfried Hoffmann of the Allgemeiner Deutsche Nachrichtrendienst East German news service. Right - Ambassador Bolen prepares for the upcoming afternoon ministerial meeting.

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    After lunch Ambassador Bolen continued to study documents in his office. At 1500 DDR State Secretary Dr. Gerhard Beil, First Deputy Minister of Foreign Trade, entered the U.S. BDO followed by Directors General Siebold Kirsten and Dr Werner Forster, Deputy Director General Steger and Dr. Fritz Schmied. Dr. Beil announced that at the end of September a DDR technology contract lasting through 1984 would be concluded for the exploitation of Dow's lignite deposits in Texas. Also the deal called for import of unspecified chemicals from Dow.

    Dr. Beil also said that the American firm Honeywell had been awarded a contract to provide instrumentation for the Schwedt refinery, the DDR's largest. Other matters were discussed, as Alan Parker translated for Mr. Bolen, who briefly acknowledged my help in speaking about brown coal techology. As I sat at the foot of the table I realized that the meeting had been well-orchestrated on all sides. There was no nonsense, we stood, a quick toast was imbibed and the meeting dissolved about 1540. Home

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Friday September 9 - I attended a ceremony at the Monsanto office where the company was awarded a gold medal for improving rubber technology through a newly-developed chemical, "Santogard PVI," a pre-vulcanization inhibitor. Standing left in the left photo is Dr. Georg Wilde; next left, Ian M. Clifford of Monsanto Europe SA, Director, Rubber Chemicals - Europe, who received the MM award on behalf of Monsanto. Next to him is Dr. Hartmut Rosin, DDR Director of the Bureau of Standardization, Measurement & Testing, and to his left is Uwe G�rlt, Director of the Department of Advertising of the Leipzig Fair Office, who presented the gold medal award.

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    The photo at right shows one of the aisles of the chemical exhibits in Halle 6. This building and others at the Fair were much larger than airplane hangars. There were catwalks where men in long white lab coats walked back and forth well above the displays on the floor below. I was told on good authority that these men were lip-readers and were trying to pick up on conversations held in the aisles and in the exhibits and displays which had no ceilings. Some of the participants' offices did have ceilings and there was never any sign of people exiting or entering these places. Paranoia? I don't think so.

    Men with gold Communist Party pins on their lapels began showing up. Dr. Werner Pl�tner, first deputy representative of the general directorate (1er Stellvertreter des Generaldirectors of VVB Chemieanlagen (the association of chemical apparatus works) and Heinz Keller, director of VEB Maschinen-und Apparatebau Grimma visited us and summed up the crux of U.S.-DDR participation in the Fair. Said Dr. Pl�tner, "We are a nation of only 17 million people. To help redress the balance of trade between ourselves and the U.S.A. we would like to set up arrangements whereby we can offer our chemical technology to the U.S." They gave me a bunch of literature.

    In the evening I dragged myself back to Interhotel International for dinner and my rear end followed some time later. Some ladies at the hotel asked me about my day and I explained in German, "This morning I was two meters high, now I am only one meter high." Home

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Saturday September 10 - More Party pins this morning when Dr. rer. nat. Wolfgang Lahr of VVB Chemieanlagen Leipzig and Ing. Rolf Peter of VEB Maschinen-und Apparatebau Grimma Chemieanlagenbaukombinat graciously and patiently walked me through a grand tour of their numerous wares on the exhibit floor. I remember climbing into a polyvinyl chloride polymerizer tank and a huge lime-soda calciner at a soda ash exhibit. There was also a scale model of a normal paraffins plant on display.

    By this time I was really exhausted. After a few visitors came in for chats, the American contingent including Dick Bell of BEWT, Alan Parker of State and sundry others got together for dinner in the evening at the Falstaff and we blasted on our last evening in Leipzig. I don't remember much, but I remember our sense of relief that the party was over and we drank to that. I navigated back to the Interhotel International, conceding to Fritz the liftboy I was Ein bi�chen besauft. Home

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Sunday September 11 - I settled with the Interhotel International in Leipzig (VM 647'10" - $ 281.35), loaded my bags into a taxi and went to the Messegel�nde and Halle 6 for the last time. Students swarmed to the stand and cleaned out the rest of the literature from the bins. A few questions were answered. I rambled around the hall chatting and shaking hands with people whom I had met earlier. The fair closed at 6 p.m. and with handshakes and hugs we departed the Leipzig Fall Fair for the three-hour drive back to Berlin. The folks I worked with and many others (except perhaps Herr Klamm) I met in Leipzig - U.S. and German - had all been wonderful. I shook hands with Dick Bell, a fine man, and I believe he said he was on his way to Vienna to visit with Henning Vontillius at the BEWT office and then go on to Plovdiv, Bulgaria from there. Those of us going back to Berlin piled into a car. (I don't care which one it was).

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The above photo was taken September 11, 1977 at 6:15 p.m. in Leipzig, Deutsche Demokratische Republik on the road to Berlin-Hauptstadt following the closing of the Leipzig Fall Fair of 1977. It reflects the murky feel of the time in the DDR .

    The structure looming in the background, some 91 meters tall, is the monument commemorating The Battle of the Nations, when, during October 16-19, 1813, an alliance of nations defeated the French army of the Emperor Napoleon. Germans call it the V�lkerschlachtdenkmal (The People�s Battle Monument), because German forces from various principalities fought on both sides.

     On the field European allies of five nations, said to number about 400,000, fought Napoleon's forces, reckoned at about 200,000. The battle resulted in French losses of about 84,000 killed, wounded and captured and some allied army losses of 50,000 to 55,000. It was by far Napoleon's largest battle and the largest in Europe before World War I.

    The monument is said to stand on the spot of the bloodiest fighting where Napoleon saw his army destroyed. The losses on both sides were heavy and the defeat led to the ouster of Napoleon and exile to Elba the following year.

    (Napoleon in 1815 returned to France from Elba, raised the French army anew and fought the British army under Field Marshal Arthur Wellesley, First Duke of Wellington and the Prussians commanded by Prussian Generalfeldmarschall Gebhard Leberecht von Bl�cher at Waterloo, Belgium June 18, 1815, where he was again defeated and this time was exiled by the British to the island of St. Helena in the middle of the Atlantic Ocean).

    After Germany was beaten by the Allies in 1945, in World War II, the nation was split into West Germany (The Bundesrepublik) comprised of American, British and French sectors and East Germany (Deutsche Demokratische Republik), dominated by the Soviet Union.

     For a time the DDR wondered whether to tear down the memorial as a possible affront to the Soviets, but it was decided to retain the structure in memory of the Russian troops who had fought on the side of the Germans at the battle of Leipzig in 1813.

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We reached Berlin and my all-time favorite Gasthaus, the Interhotel Unter den Linden. I remember eating a late light dinner at the hotel restaurant and being so tired from eighteen-hour days in Leipzig that as soon as I could I rode the elevator to Zimmer Nr. 229, threw my dirty clothes and a few folders into suitcases and packed up. Then after leaving a call for 8 a.m. so I could meet Jon and get to Tegel in time, I collapsed in bed and fell asleep immediately. Home

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Monday, September 12 - The day began poorly. At 7 a.m. a loud-mouthed Raumpflegerin (cleaning-woman) with jangling keys burst through the door into my room and began shouting that the room had to be cleaned and that I was supposed to be out of there. I had really had it. Sitting up and clutching my bedclothes around me I screamed, �Maul zu! Geh! (Shut your gob! Go!) Startled into silence she left and closed the door softly. I remained in bed for a few moments but there was no more rest. What the hell? I got up, dressed, grabbed my suitcases and went down to the front desk to check out.

    I paid the bill for September 11 for Zimmer Nr.229 - my last night�s stay in Berlin, Deutsche Demokratische Republik - VM 46 ($20 U.S.). Jon came from the U.S. Embassy and handed me a slip of paper which read in pencil, "dep: Tegel 9:00; arr: Frankf 9:55 dep Frankf: 11:00 arr NY 14:25." It seemed I would arrive at my ultimate destination at JFK International in New York at 2:25 p.m.that afternoon, Eastern Daylight Time. Lovely. But strange things were about to happen.

    We climbed into the car and I waved goodbye to Charlie for the last time ever. We rode along the western side of the Berlin Wall to Tegel and there was more graffiti on that edifice than I had ever seen in New York, even during the ravages of Taki 183 (Google Taki 183 if you wish). Among all the jumbled colorful spray-painted designs were huge letters proclaiming in German, �DOWN WITH HONECKER � DOWN WITH SCHMIDT� Amen.

    I thanked Jon for all his excellent help, picked up my return tickets for Pan Am 681 to Frankfurt and Pan Am 73 Frankfurt to JFK. I boarded and ordered an orangesaft from the cabin attendent. I shrugged off the hour-late departure but the flight was peaceful, devoid of any announcements and was uneventful. I was on my way home. Then when I arrived at Frankfurt-Main things deteriorated in a hurry.
    Since I was an hour late getting to Frankfurt-Main from Berlin, I rushed to get to the gate for Pan Am 73 back to New York. But there was no need to hurry. The airport was full of police in powder-blue uniforms and the West German army with automatic rifles slung at the ready because of heightened security due to the antics of the Baader-Meinhof gang kidnapping (see September 5 entry). I was subjected to a full-body search in curtained cubicle by an embarrassed older gentleman who kept apologizing, and then finally allowed to go down the hallway to the boarding area. Because of this hoo-hah it was about noon before I took my assigned seat beside a starboard window of Pan Am 73. I sat back expecting an early departure.

    When the plane was loaded with passengers - nothing happened. Then over the loud-speaker came the News of the Day: the Captain reported that since there was an air traffic controllers' strike at Heathrow Airport in London, where most trans-Atlantic air traffic was directed from Europe to the U.S and vice-versa, we might have to be re-routed over the air control tower at Stavanger, Norway, in which case the plane would have to take on more fuel. I looked out the window and saw a tanktruck labeled STICKSTOFF (nitrogen) pull up underneath and figured they were either filling or taking off fuel and in either case loading a nitrogen blanket as a fire-safety precaution.

    Time marched on. A young soldier not yet twenty sat on the aisle seat, with his pretty dark-haired girlfriend, about the same age, a barmaid from Stuttgart, between him and me. She spoke virtually no English so I did the best I could to translate for her what was going on.The soldier was on leave and taking her home to Dee-troit to meet his family. He had a New-York-Detroit flight to catch when he got to JFK and was understandably antsy about it. One p.m. came and went. Two p.m. came and went. It turns out there were a lot of GIs on the plane and their leave time was ticking. Murmuring and muttering grew louder and louder.

    Then the Captain did something that is just not done. He ordered drinks all around for everybody courtesy of Pan Am even though the plane was not in the air. I had to smile and the soldier asked me why. "Wait till everybody has a drink. There'll be no more noise." So as we sat there awaiting flight departure the cabin attendants wheeled their carts up and down the aisles, everybody got a drink, and the cabin became quiet as a library.

    About 3 p.m. Frankfurt Main time the Captain announced that we had been given clearance to fly over Heathrow, the chocks were pulled from the landing gear, Flight 73 rose from the Frankfurt Main runway and toward dusk we were only six miles above London, a bit later over the bright green of Ireland, the Emerald Isle, headed southwestward into the night.

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(Note about the camera used for the fuzzy pictures appearing in this diary: it cost about $15 in the early 70s and was made for short-distance photography. The flash, located next to the lens, gave human subjects such frightening red-eyes that to stifle a general outcry Kodak gave away free towers, elevating the flashbulb from the lens about three inches. Focal length was a few feet. Beyond that, even fuzzier. Mostly, the photographer lacked skill).

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    Anyway, you can bet they lost one of my bags. Luggage-losing had developed to a fine art by 1977 (I understand that more and more luggage is lost far more efficiently these days and, further, more luggage is unrecovered - that's why today I fly with a bag overhead and a bag under the seat). When I sleepily went through U.S. Customs late in the evening at Kennedy Airport, the Customs inspector asked me if I had anything to claim. I responded, "Clean laundry out, dirty laundry back," and showed him my passport,which included a prominent folded note from the appropriate Federal agencies.

    "Oh, one of them, eh?" he said, looking at the note and waving me on through. Somewhere they lost one of my suitcases. Fortunately it was found by Pan Am and the next day I discovered it had been flung into my front yard in Bay Ridge Brooklyn like a newspaper delivery. It was wonderful to get back to home and family. No �Ausweiss bitte!" was needed at the front door. Home

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