Background and Berlin

I am an exercise in irony. On the one hand, I am the product of a secure childhood, the eldest of three siblings, and confident in the assurance that my stable parents (my father a fish exporter and my mother a housewife until she turned forty) were there for me to call and come home to in Esbjerg no matter what misadventures, big or small, might befall, from failed love affairs to ethical dilemmas. I was lucky in my choice of parents.

On the other hand, I have always experienced myself as somehow different from others, something of an outsider - and this existential loneliness became more pronounced as I entered adolescence.

One aspect of this dissonance, and another irony, was my tendency toward silence. Reflecting back on my younger years, I was probably extremely observant and aware of others; at any rate, I was described as "very quiet ... never says anything." This declaration inevitably invokes skeptical amusement across the spectrum of friends, family, and acquaintances from my more recent life - and I don't blame them!

That early silence cost me. My chronic sore throats spoke up for my silent pain. Had I known then what I know now about the physical ramifications of emotional repression, I would have expressed my feelings. I would have learned to say, "No!" rather than having my boundaries violated. And violated again. And again.

My education was neither what I had originally planned nor was it restricted to conventional definitions. Growing up working "in fish" at my father's business every summer, I developed an understanding of how widely diverse people and their backgrounds can be. I followed up this early experience with the completion of my high school language exams, a full-year Niels Brock business course from Aarhus, more life experience as a pub waitress in Esbjerg and England, and finally legal secretarial training.

I had intended to study psychology and archaeology - these were my true interests. But I decided to take a year or two to travel and applied for a job as a correspondent for the Foreign Ministry. I wanted to see some parts of the world and especially to go to the United States. I never did study psychology and archaeology. My career with the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, which took me traveling all over the world (five times stationed abroad), lasted twenty-two years.

In 1978, I encountered another personal irony. When I took my first posting to Berlin, East Germany, I suffered from serious homesickness, which would prove to be an ongoing challenge for many years. The irony is that, while big changes are difficult for me, I can't stand it when things become too static. It's a confounding dilemma.

Being in East Germany was an incredible and eye-opening experience.

Having spent my entire early life in Denmark, I found it hard to comprehend that an ideology could rob people of freedom - personal freedom, freedom of speech - in a country just a few kilometers from my own childhood home. It was difficult to take in.

I also had a hard time accepting that my life as a diplomat was so different. Driving through Checkpoint Charlie from East to West, I was driving through a gate into another world, and the contrast between these two worlds was severe for me. Another irony: I felt best in the East. There were too many Mercedes, too many mink coats, and too much food in West Berlin. It was a showcase of the West, and there was too much of everything. The difference was too great and made me feel ill.

Although I was more comfortable in the East, I seem to have seen it all in a dull monochrome. When I returned in 2012, I was surprised to see how green the city was. There were the beautiful linden trees on Unter den Linden where the Embassy had been. The trees had been there when I was there; I just don't remember them. I realized then how gray my experience had been.

We went about our business as if in a bubble because we were not to have anything to do with the East Germans, and neither should they have anything to do with us. But at least I could understand what was happening around me and what people were talking about. I didn't feel quite as isolated as I did many years later in Moscow, where, unfortunately, I never mastered the language.

Those with whom we did have contact were obviously employed by the Stasi, the East German security police. Our housekeepers, our chauffeurs - in fact, every local Embassy employee, including, of course, the secretaries (it was necessary to have locally employed secretaries if we were to have any hope of getting through to the East German authorities, so it was seen as normal and acceptable), was employed by the Stasi. We knew that they spied on us and reported our doings, and they knew that we knew. Odd as it was, this was our version of normal conditions.

We also knew that there were microphones in our apartments and houses in the diplomatic ghettos in which we resided. We joked that the houses consisted of 50 percent concrete and 50 percent cables and microphones. The situation also resulted in some amusing situations.

My apartment on Leipziger Strasse was under surveillance enhanced by microphones. Our telephones were tapped, and all telephone conversations were recorded on tape. I shared a phone line with a colleague in the same block of apartments, and of course I could not call out when she was on the line.

We installed a direct line between the two apartments so that each of us would know if the other was on the line. By the same means, we could determine if there was a problem with the surveillance tape having run out. This happened quite often, and when the Stasi's recording tape was not working, neither were our telephones. No tape - no outgoing calls.

Fortunately, we discovered an effective solution. If we stood in the living room and spoke to the "secret" microphones, a Stasi employee would immediately react to what we said.

Our situation was similar to the 2006 German film Other People's Lives (originally Das Leben der Anderen), in which a cynical Stasi agent finds himself transformed by human compassion. In that film, as in our lives, many people were employed to check up on many other people, with the positive aspects (if one chose to look for them) including a total lack of unemployment and the capability to immediately reach the authorities.

An example of this extremely efficient access to authorities involved a visit from my mother.

The preparation for her trip had been a tedious affair involving myriad forms to satisfy the East German Embassy in Copenhagen. All of this had been accomplished, my mother had obtained her visa, and I had been looking forward to calling her to wish her a good trip. But I could not get through. I contacted the coworker with whom I shared the line. She was not using it. I came to the conclusion that there were problems with the surveillance tape, and after more frustrating attempts to get through, I lost all patience.

I stood in the living room and projected in loud and clear German that I wanted to call home to my mother, that they knew she was due to come the following day, and that it was important to get through. The reaction was quick - too quick for efficiency, it would seem. When I managed to get a line out, I found myself listening to the taped recording of a conversation I had had with my mother some days before. They had reversed the recording device.

This did nothing to improve their standing with...