Young Berliners Laud Exchange Program
Young Berliners Laud Exchange Program
(Editor's note: This is the fourth in a series of Michigan's Youth for Understanding student exchange program in which the Ann Arbor community and its Council of Churches have played major roles. Stuart D. Gross, Saginaw News Staff writer, is in Europe to evaluate the program's work and worth. His stories are being made available to The Ann Arbor News and other Booth newspapers.)
By Stuart D. Gross
BERLIN-This might be different world if our parents had had exchange programs, a young Berlin university student says.
And another former Youth for Understanding teenage exchange program students said he is kept busy interpreting the policy of the United States toward Berlin to Berliners.
They are Volker Heinrichs, 19, language student at the Free University of Berlin, who spent 1959-60 with Mr. and Mrs. George Morlock of Monroe, and Dietrich Schneider, 25, nearing a doctor of philosophy degree business administration at the university, who spent 1954-55 with Mr. and Mrs. George Dean of Charlotte.
"An exchange students gets closer contact with people of another country by living in their homes," Heinrichs said. "They learn people are the same all over, that they have the same emotions and feelings. This is forgotten when nations are involved. But it must be recognized.
"Our parents did not have the advantage of an exchange program such as we have. I believe if they had enjoyed such an experience, things would have been different."
Both of these young men are looking forward to the time the Common Market will bring about a United States of Europe. "The time will come,"they said, “when we will think of ourselves first as Europeans, secondly as Germans.”
Schneider credits his year as an exchange student with giving him the background and knowledge of language to be able to communicate with Berliners with understanding.
Berlin, a visitor soon discovers or is told, is like no other city. It is the symbol of the West’s resistance. The wall, as ugly a thing as man ever will build, casts a long, dark shadow that the bright lights and industrial noises of West Berlin cannot remove. It makes Berlin residents, such as Schneider who drove this reporter along it one night, uneasy and fearful.
“I’ve never seen it at night before,” he said during the ride that never once halted because to do that might result in an incident. “It looks worse than the daytime. I don’t like it. I can see them." He pointed to some rifle slots in the bricked up portion of an abandoned factory window. "They stand behind there. You never know when they might do something."
Schneider visited the United States last fall, and the Charlotte Rotary Club gave him money to buy a Christmas tree for the wall. It was the first American bought tree on wall at Check Point Charlie the American sector, he said.
The wall went up last Aug. 13, and since then Schneider said he has been asked many times if America really will back up West Berlin.
“I tell them this is my impression of American determination,” he said. “I get the impression that the American people are behind West Berlin even stronger than they are behind West Germany. West Germany is a partner with America. But West Berlin is different.
“West Berlin is the place Americans have decided communism will go no farther. It must not come through the Brandenburg Gate. I explain many times to people that I believe America will fight for Berlin.”
Schneider said Berlin is not a “nervous” city, but it is apprehensive. He said the rumors are about that the Russians will sign a separate peace treaty with East Germany this fall. He does not know what that will do to West Berlin. Berliners, he explained, have lived in an atmosphere of fear and rumors so long that they are commonplace.
"You can't think about the fear," he said.
As their antidote, both Schneider and Heinrichs spend much time working in international exchange programs, including Youth for Understanding. Berliners are eager and anxious to open their homes to American students, they said, so they can get to know them and to do their part in building better relations between the two nations. Both of these young men wish exchange programs could be worked out with Red nations. Then, perhaps, the shadow of the wall would not be so long or so black.
[image]: THEY UNDERSTAND: Volker Heinrichs (left) and Dietrich Schneider, Berlin residents and former Youth for Understanding, are sold on the benefits of the teenage student program. Each has spent a school year in Michigan, Heinrichs in Monroe and Scheider in Charlotte.