Chapter 18: Hauptbahnhof Leipzig

The immense train station was surreal, a window into a hundred years of history. Twenty-two sets of tracks hit a dead end in Leipzig, more than in any other German terminal. We came to a jolting halt outside the station; the chain reaction of compressed couplings resonated through the cars like a wave of dominoes as the electric locomotive reversed direction. I opened the window and peered out to watch the darkness under the approaching arch swallow the rear cars of the train. The high-pitched squeal of the brakes contrasted with the deep, almost inaudible, German voice echoing over the loudspeaker. “Train 173 from Dresden, now arriving on Track 4.”

Despite the station’s immensity, my car near the front of the train was left protruding out in the open, unprotected from the chill wind. I closed the window and made my way down the aisle with my luggage bouncing off the seatbacks. I tossed my garment bag out the door and onto the platform, then backed my way down the steps; my oversize suitcase nearly knocked me over as I awkwardly dragged it down the steps while trying to brace it with my knees. The cold seeping in from every angle drove in the realization that my new trench coat was going to be horribly inadequate for the next two winters. I turned to face the station, took my bags in hand, and drew a deep breath. “Well then, Elder Price,” I mumbled aloud, “let’s see what you’ve got…”

The deep breath had been a mistake: I started coughing up soot before I could even finish the sentence. The thick, sulfurous discharge from ten thousand coal-heated buildings burned my eyes and throat as I made my way forward into the station. My arms were quickly tiring, but the tiny wheels on my suitcase were of no use on the rough surface, so I kept moving with one arm outstretched, holding my garment bag as a counterbalance to keep the heavier suitcase just barely off the ground. My flat-soled shoes provided little traction on the frosty asphalt, and my cautious gait drew a few quizzical glances from passersby.

The backlight on the acrid haze made the station appear completely dark inside. I squinted as I approached the main atrium; a few rays of light found their way through the soot-blackened skylights. Gradually my eyes adjusted to the dim interior.

Time may as well have stood still for a century or more in the Leipzig station. I was curious to see a Deutsche Reichsbahn-era steam engine on the track beside me, but it didn’t seem a bit out of place in this setting. The old steam engine must have had quite a history, I thought, puffing its way around Europe for so many decades. Looking around at the masonry walls of the station, I noticed light, grouted pockmarks contrasting with the darkened sandstone blocks of the support columns – telltale scars of war deliberately left untended by the 40-year regime that had collapsed less than a year before. It seemed odd to me that the soot didn’t stick to the grout like it did to the sandstone.

The heavy Saxon dialect was a bit intimidating as voices echoed from all corners of the station, blending together into a white noise that may as well have been Mandarin. In an instant, eight weeks of language training suddenly disintegrated into a purely academic exercise. Some excited teenagers passed by, and I tried to decipher small fragments of their conversation. I forced myself to think in German and tune out the overall din, but to my dismay the only words I understood were the English terms they interjected: “…Stars…Film… Hollywood…”

I was so busy fretting over my language woes that I didn’t stop to think about the context until I rounded the end of my train and saw Nazi flags draped all across the station. I realized that I had been duped by the steam engine and other props; as it turned out, the whole train station was serving as a movie set! Pre-war Germany was being cast complete with propaganda posters, munitions, and storm troopers in uniform. The frantic teenagers who had passed me by joined a throng surrounding the directors’ chairs.

My mission call to East Germany had thrown me right into the wake of the Wall’s fall, and the reality of the new freedoms and opportunities descending on the population through the rent Iron Curtain was embodied in these star-struck teenagers. They stood with open notebooks in hand, lining up for the chance to spot their new idols. Less than a year before, they had just begun to watch western TV openly after years of secret viewing, and here they were getting autographs from the stars themselves.

I left the crowd behind me and neared the front entrance of the train station where, I had been told, a local stake missionary would meet me and serve as my temporary companion until transfers were complete. I wondered how on earth would he ever find me given the huge crowd and all of the commotion – until I saw my reflection in a kiosk window. The suit, the nametag, the luggage, the deer-in-the-headlights gaze… Missionaries are certainly conspicuous, I acknowledged – greenie missionaries on transfer day even more so. I propped myself up against a stair rail and began to scan the crowds.

No sooner had I set down my luggage on the steps, than a spry, elderly gentleman approached me. He looked at my nametag and extended his hand. “Elder Price?” he said.

“Yes,” I answered. I began to apologize that he would be stuck with a greenie still learning the ropes.

He wasn’t listening. “Elder Price,” he said again, very slowly this time, staring at my nametag.

“Yes!” I answered again.

“Elder Price,” he said once again, even more slowly, with his brow curled in deep thought.

This time I didn’t respond, but rather waited for an explanation of his odd behavior.

He tapped on my nametag. “You know,” he said, “when I was a full-time missionary many years ago, I had a companion named Price. We used to call him Hamp. I know it’s a big place over there across the pond, but is there any relation?”

“Of course,” I answered, “he’s my grandfather!”

“Well what do you know?” he said, “I’m Elder Schreiter! Your grandfather called me Herbie.” A smile emerged on his wrinkled face. “To think that I’d be serving with Hamp’s grandson sixty years later!” he added, “We’ll have lots to talk about, but first we need to catch our bus.”

Though eighty years old and barely over five feet tall, he still insisted on carrying one of my bags across the street to the bus stop. A noisy, Hungarian-built bus nearly struck us as it pulled into the stop and spewed a thick, black blanket of exhaust over the waiting crowd. We boarded the bus, which set off along the traffic-ridden streets toward Herbie’s building. Along the way, I asked him question after question about my grandfather, his own mission experience, and all that had elapsed in the meantime. Though I hadn’t spent much time with my grandfather while he was alive, I felt now like I was connecting with him in real time.

Leipzig is an amazing city, full of culture and a conflicted history. Herbie quickly shifted into tour guide mode as we passed various landmarks nearly hidden by dark, approaching storm clouds. As he proudly recounted, Bach and other famous composers directed choirs, composed masterpieces, and performed their works among the cathedrals, concert halls, and conservatories dotting the skyline outside our bus window. My drooping eyes turned the backdrop into a dreary daydream, interrupted at each turn by another historical note from my new companion.

Though the former regime had left a dismal scene encircling the historic buildings, the newfangled vibrancy of the population was palatable; in fact, the pivotal role the city had played in the course of history seemed to be repeating itself. Right about the time Joseph Smith grimaced in pain at the hands of leg surgeons in a log cabin on the American frontier, the fate of nations was being decided on the outskirts of Leipzig – where Napoleon finally met his match in the Battle of Nations, predecessor to all modern warfare. Now, after having been all but completely destroyed in the Second World War and neglected in the following decades under the occupational Soviet empire, Leipzig was coming back to life.

Herbie was proud to proclaim that it was, in fact, the people of Leipzig whose peaceful protests along the very streets we were traveling had sparked the beginning of the end of the Soviet Superpower and the Cold War. This new, pivotal role had put Leipzig on the front page of the history books once again.

After a clamorous, bumpy bus ride alternating between disheveled cobblestone and rippled tarmac, we finally entered his building in a courtyard of the Altstadt, or “old town.” The scene could well have jumped straight out of one of Hamp’s mission photos; only now the buildings appeared even more dilapidated. Sister Schreiter, a lively old lady with a warm smile, greeted us by tapping on a frosted window three floors above. We climbed the flights of creaky stairs, passing a shared toilet on every other landing that would have sent chills down my spine even without the winter winds whipping up through the plumbing. Sister Schreiter rushed down the steps to meet us and was already taking my coat before we even reached the apartment door.

I set my luggage aside, trying in vain not to block the small entryway. She immediately took my arm and offered me a seat around a small corner table, letting me know I had arrived just in time for “Abendbrot,” literally evening bread, or a light supper. A coal-fired stove radiated heat onto one side of my face. When she left the room to slice the bread, I stood up to turn and warm the other side. I spotted a wedding picture on the wall and wondered whether my grandfather had played any part in pairing up the newlywed couple. When Sister Schreiter re-entered the room with some open-faced salami sandwiches, I remarked to her that she didn’t look to have aged a bit since the wedding picture.

She laughed. “Oh no,” she said. “We’re actually newlyweds now.”

“Really?” I said, wondering whether she was kidding around.

“That’s not me in the photo,” she explained, “It’s my sister!”

“Oops,” I said. As I thought about what she said, though, I became more confused than embarrassed.

“You see, behind the Iron Curtain, if you wanted to marry within the church, your selection was very limited.”

From my expression she sensed that I’d need a lengthier explanation.

“My fiancé at the time went off to fight in the war. He had volunteered to serve on the Wehrmacht’s eastern front, but he never came back from Stalingrad. Well, the Wall went up, my choices went down, and I never did marry.”

I was even more intrigued, and she continued her tale.

“But my sister always told Herbie, ‘when I pass through the veil, you have to marry my sister.’ So he did just that. A year after my sister passed away in 1985, Herbie and I were married. People ask if she’ll be jealous in the afterlife, but I think we’ll all get along just fine!”

I certainly had landed in another world, and I suppressed my initial judgment after hearing her story.

Meanwhile, Herbie had brought in a shoe box of photographs along with letters, postcards, and newspaper articles that Hamp had sent him over five decades of correspondence. Some of the letters had been intercepted by the intrusive Stasi, with suspicious content blacked out by meddling letter-openers.

I was caught up with questions and found myself particularly enthralled with what Herbie had endured in the post-war years while trying to patch the Church back together. He had quite a story to tell, but – perhaps tiring of my questions – told me I would have to wait for the book to hear the rest of the story. I thought he was joking, but Sister Schreiter promptly assured me that a book of stories of the East German Saints – including Herbie’s personal accounts – had been compiled by Hartmut Schulze, the Leipzig stake president, and was currently in publication.

A knock at the door interrupted our conversation. My new companion, Elder Koblenz, a tall Swiss Army recruit freshly released from his regiment, had arrived to pick me up. He appeared to be in a hurry to keep on schedule, so I quickly gathered my things and bade the Schreiters farewell. On the way out the door, Herbie handed me a picture of him and Hamp as missionaries.

“I want you to have this,” he told me.

The sight of the mismatched pair made me laugh.

“That’s just the effect we had on the whole town of Rathenow,” he said, acknowledging my laughter with a wide smile.

I slid the photo into my coat pocket and gave him a heartfelt handshake and a gentle tap on the back that on account of his age deliberately fell short of the customarily forceful missionary back-slap.

We crammed my luggage into the miniature-sized Opel Corsa, leaving Elder Koblenz crammed against the steering wheel as he put the car in gear and pushed the accelerator to the floor. The wheels spun out on the wet leaves; once we got traction he maneuvered like a madman in and out of traffic. The late afternoon skies were prematurely dark with the combination of storm clouds and smog. Obscured by the darkness and freezing rain, the weak tail lights of Trabants and Wartburgs – East Germany’s pitiful excuses for automobiles – would suddenly come into view directly in front of us, and more than once I just about kicked a hole in the floor panel trying to hit an imaginary brake pedal.

I was finally able to relax when we were forced to slow to a crawl in standstill traffic “What’s on our agenda tonight?” I asked, trying to strike up a conversation with my new companion.

“We’ll have a half-hour drive to Halle, but our first order of business will be to get gas for the trip,” replied Elder Koblenz.

I strained to keep up with his Swiss accent. I looked at the fuel gage and curled my brow.

He handed me his weekly planner. “We’ve still got half a tank, but we’re booked for the whole week,” he explained, “so it’s the only time I could squeeze it in.”

Amused by his typically Swiss clockwork, I joked with him. “Well how much time did you schedule for this traffic jam?”

Elder Koblenz shook his head. “This isn’t traffic,” he retorted, “It’s the line for the gas station!”

East Germany’s infrastructure was in shambles with no sign of relief; it certainly could not keep pace with the influx of western vehicles. I looked up and saw a dim, neon “T” at the end of a sea of cars marking the location of the communist-era InterTank station. Elder Koblenz continued, “And, by the way, if you’ll look over the planner, you’ll see I blocked out an hour to fill up.”

The recent surge of interest in the Church that accompanied the fall of the Wall had missionaries in East Germany scrambling to keep up with appointments. The planner was booked solid with appointments, and – sure enough – he had an entire hour blocked out for getting gas. And sure enough, it did end up taking the entire hour and then some. I studied the planner while we waited, and – to make use of the time – began to copy appointments onto my own, blank planner sheets. By the time we pulled out of the station, we had to make up some time yet again; with the full load, the little Corsa struggled to keep up with Elder Koblenz’s right foot.

As we approached the outskirts of Leipzig, a noisy tha-thump tha-thump resonated from the expansion joints in the concrete through the Corsa’s miniature suspension system and directly into my spine. The concrete of the Hitler Highways – built during the 1930s as part of a highway network that was to serve as a model and precursor for Eisenhower’s future interstate system – had held up amazingly well considering the lack of maintenance since that time. Huge bridge piers, still unfinished more than fifty years later, stood like chimneys dotting the deep valleys – abandoned when the public works labor force transitioned to feed the military machine.

The beat of the tires crossing the joints began to accelerate as we maneuvered through the thinning commuter traffic, and then reached a steady tempo as Leipzig disappeared into the haze behind us. The rhythm was almost soothing as the darkening sky hinted that an invisible sun must have passed an invisible horizon, masked by a thermal inversion like I had never seen. I could make out the outline of bleak concrete housing blocks in the outskirts of the city, which, in turn, made way to decrepit older buildings in the countryside. The villages we crossed through looked like medieval ghost towns, but an occasional dim light flickering through a window indicated that someone was at home there.

We passed a sign that read, “Halle 50 km.”

“Only 30 k’s to go,” said Elder Koblenz, glancing over to see if I’d be confused.

I complied. “How do you figure?”

“That’s a trick we used in the Swiss Alps, too,” Elder Koblenz explained. “Signs were replaced with errant distances in order to confuse the approaching artillery. They hoped the Russians would overshoot the city.”

It all made sense in a strange new way, except for the question of why the signs hadn’t been replaced after all those years.

I stared out the window into the darkness; the occasional village lights eventually gave way to a constant, eerie glow from the surrounding industrial areas, dwarfing everything else in view. In my head I was trying to formulate some questions for Elder Koblenz in German before opening my mouth and exposing my grammatical incompetence. Meanwhile, I felt the seatbelt tugging at my shoulder and realized the photo Herbie had given me was beginning to bend under the pressure. The headlights of oncoming cars shone through the metal barriers in the median. I pulled out the photo and stared at the silhouettes illuminated by the pulsating strobe lights.

There they were – quite an odd-matched, young pair battling language barriers and cultural differences – but bound together by a common belief and adopted heritage. They had been deployed among a people who were looking for a new future after passing through the ravages of war, poised on the verge an utter economic collapse. I knew they were both destined to be Patriarchs, and I knew where Germanity was heading in that moment in the 1930s as if it were an inevitable path into a deep chasm. But what could those two young fellows have imagined while looking into that camera lens sixty years before? No more than I could have imagined what life might have in store for myself, my new companion, and a new nation at that juncture in 1990.

The little Opel raced forward through the night, zipping past Trabants, Wartburgs, Ladas, Skodas, Moskoviches and other, irreplaceable relics that – despite their go-kart engines – still couldn’t quite be rendered obsolete. Though Elder Koblenz had the pedal to the floor, occasionally a sleek, black Mercedes or BMW would, in turn, race past us like we were standing still. Who was at the wheel of these Wessie status symbols? Entrepreneurs, insurance salesmen, bankers, drug dealers, Amway distributors, computer programmers? Which would the people embrace and which would they reject? The gathering forces were ready to capitalize on every ounce of naïvety and excitement in the air, and the unwitting populace was about to get it all crammed down their throats.

A hundred unseen regiments were forming their ranks; some would be allies to the East German people, but others were most certainly enemies and obstacles against which the people hadn’t had the time to develop defenses or build up immunity. I knew full well that the preachers of the established parishes placed us somewhere between the drug smugglers and pyramid frauds on the parasitic scale. Their battalions were in red alert mode, with printing presses and distribution networks in full steam to arm their parishioners with an arsenal of anti-Mormon literature. I had felt like a pioneer when I opened the letter bearing a prophet’s personal signature a few months prior. Having himself served in this setting during the opening volleys of the Cold War, President Benson had called me into action at its close. But now I was wondering whether we had missed the wave; our race down the derelict highway seemed symbolic of the race for the souls of a newly liberated people.

A lengthy conflict that could have ignited into World War III in any previous year of my life was now fizzling out into a great, unknown void all across the East Bloc. It was a time of unprecedented uncertainty and opportunity. I laid the photo of Hamp and Herbie into my Bible; the jet lag finally caught up with me, and it knocked me out completely.

~~~~~~~~~

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