Twenty years after the fall of the Berlin Wall, author Oliver Fritz reflects on growing up behind the Iron Curtain

East Berliners climb the wall which had divided the city for 28 years. Photo / AP Expand

East Berliners climb the wall which had divided the city for 28 years. Photo / AP

Imagine a country where prices don't go up for more than 30 years yet salaries rise by around 4 per cent every year.

A country where unemployment is unknown, employees are unsackable and childcare is readily available for next to nothing.

Of course, no such country exists.

But once it did and for 22 years I was one of its citizens. What was this country? East Germany, of course.

To the West, this rather small country behind the Iron Curtain was known mainly for two things: its Olympic athletes and the erection of the Berlin Wall in 1961.

Western authors and filmmakers regularly used it as a backdrop for spy stories and made it a place of dullness and danger that was home to fearful and wary people whose wardrobe did not extend beyond brown, grey or green tones.

What an insult. The great majority of East Germans had no trouble receiving Western radio and TV stations and, as much as we liked watching American or British spy movies, we were equally enraged by this misleading portrayal of our homeland.

The German Democratic Republic, as East Germany was officially known, existed from 1949 to 1990 and in 1989 it was among the 20 industrial leading nations of the world. It was a member of the United Nations and had diplomatic relations with 150 countries.

People did not have to queue for everything, nor was it customary to communicate only in hushed voices. We were not in constant fear of being randomly arrested, nor did churchgoers have their fingernails pulled out as a punishment. And our dress sense and haircuts did, more or less, keep up with Western trends.

What Western visitors to East Germany often commented on was that our women seemed very confident. Little wonder, perhaps, considering that 90 per cent of them earned their own money and more than 60 per cent worked full-time.

They also married young and if the marriage later turned out to be a mistake, they equally quickly filed for divorce. Many of my friends had single mothers, at least for a while. But the state did all it could to actively encourage young families to stay together and have children.

Interest-free loans and payments upon a child's birth were two incentives. Others included the provision of an efficient nationwide childcare network and the granting of additional paid time off work for parents.

The days of my childhood in East Berlin in the 1970s were filled with fun, laughter and excitement. Corporal punishment in schools was forbidden, school uniforms were unheard of, my mates and I enjoyed taking part in the activity events organised by the Pioneer organisation (East Germany's answer to the Scouts) and when we wanted to play on our own we could chose from three adventure playgrounds nearby.