Love and Surveillance across the Berlin Wall: A case of two divided biographies in West and East Berlin

Abstract

This paper traces the biographies of two actors, from India and former Zaire (present day Democratic Republic of Congo), and their everyday experiences of being in the divided Cold War city of Berlin (1970s-80s). Both life trajectories shed light on the actors’ love/family relationships across the Wall and how these were made possible and maintained over the years. Whereas being non-East German came with the advantage of being able to travel to the other side of the Wall unlike their East German counterparts or partners, experiences of heavy surveillance by the Stasi (the GDR’s State Security Service) were an everyday reality also in this case. What was everyday life like amidst stories of simultaneous loss and personal tragedy as well as hope and resilience? Whereas examples of divided German lives abound in literary and historical scholarship on the divided city, stories of African and Asian actors are largely missing in this repertoire. The paper addresses this gap following a biographical approach based on oral testimonies. How did the actors build their own networks and resource pools in order to overcome the constraints imposed by the existence of the Wall? How did entangled migrant lives shape the stories that in turn craft the city?