Along the Wall and Watchtowers: a Journey Down Germany's Divide Book

If anybody could be well placed to document a journey along the line that once separated the two Germanys, it is Oliver August. His family's farm was divided by the boundary between West and East Germany for 50 years. His father escaped from East Germany hidden in a suitcase on a horse-drawn cart. His grandparents were left behind, and his father could only return twice, for their funerals.So it is not surprising that one of the two most poignant moments in what is a cross between a travel book and a social history, is when August revisits the family farm. There he finds his uncle, aunt and cousins unwilling to even talk about their lives--a dramatic event for anybody trying to recreate his childhood. The other moment is when he discovers that his mother helped friends escape from East Berlin by smuggling a walkie-talkie into the eastern sector.It is certainly the way in which the artificial divide of Germany affected the lives of ordinary people that comes across best in this book. The countryside takes second place to the personal accounts of problems experienced by people, particularly in eastern Germany, in coming to terms with the changes in their lives. Irritations, such as the on-going and tedious saga of his mother's ageing car which he uses to make the journey are less important than the fact that this was a pilgrimage for August, now working for The Times of London. --Kathleen BuckleyRead More