A first visit to a madhouse is always a shock.
(Anna Freud)
The riots had taken Paula G'Norebbe downright aback. Out of the blue, the environment had taken on a very raucous air. At the university, lectures had stopped abruptly; there had been frantic student meetings; posters and banners had appeared everywhere. Then, groups of people had left for the roads, hooters had wailed all the time, and leaflets had been distributed indicating where to go to. – Paula hadn't gone for the action. She had hurriedly gone home to her little roof flat in Friedrichshain. That had been easy, because the busses and the U-Bahn, the Berlin metro, had still been working. In the Jungstraße, everything had appeared normal. So, Paula had done her homework – and had expected that affairs were going to cool down within short time.
But that hadn't happened, as the newspaper headlines – and the neighbours – had told her from day to day. The university was closed – and was serving as a staging post for the anti-government forces. The Jungstraße was not affected, but soon fresh milk and fresh eggs had failed to arrive. Soon, people had started panic buying. Then, electricity broke down for hours, only to come back for short periods thereafter. – Paula had exploited the Christmas Truce to flee to the Middle African embassy at the Zietenplatz, only to discover that several hundred folks had had the same clever idea. – But the embassy staff had resourcefully improvised: they had rented a bunch of hotels on the Baltic coast, ordinarily closed because of the season of the year, and had transferred the refugees in a bus convoy.
At Kühlungsborn, the riots had been far far away. Paula had spent her time talking with other Middle Africans and learning about their experiences in Germany and with the Germans. Almost everybody was surprised and shocked by this sudden outburst of violence. Well, there seemed to be a darker side of the German soul, something one had dismissed because of the generous uplift Middle Africa had been treated. – Nevertheless, it had been a great holiday. – But then, the holiday wouldn't end, as the urban centres were hit by the New Year's insurrection – and the subsequent events. At least, Paula had been able to send a cable to her parents in Deygbo and tell them she was in a safe place.
By the end of the second week of January 1950, the riots had died down – or rather had been suppressed by overwhelming force – and the refugees had been driven back to Great Berlin. – Someone had broken into her flat, ravaged it and stolen everything not nailed down. One of the neighbours was dead, had been killed in an accident, the other neighbours claimed. In the Jungstraße, many windows were broken, but the shops were open. – The university buildings were gutted by fire, as were a lot of houses downtown. Soldiers and police were dominating the streets, where cleaning up was still first priority and traffic was duly restricted.
Yes, lectures would be resumed, Paula learned after two days. In Charlottenburg, at the Technical University; the civil engineers had agreed to host the architects. Money arrived from Deygbo via the embassy, enabling her to make good the losses from devastation and theft. – People were fervently discussing recent events. The state had eventually won, but only after the armed forces had been called in. Scores of rioters had been killed by the soldiers, and many thousands of them were in custody, but others certainly had only gone into hiding. The general expectation was that there was more to come, that this wasn't the end – but only the beginning...