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Abstract
During the early years after the erection of the Berlin Wall in 1961, a number of smuggling operations from behind the Wall were executed, and the reports of them spread through the Western media. In the 1960s and early 1970s, the popular Swedish men’s magazines Lektyr and Fib Aktuellt published several exclusive photo reportages about such operations, providing Swedish readers with information about the East Germans’ desire to escape their country, and the West Germans’ willingness to assist. This article discusses the Swedish escape reports as examples of border crossing through their form as well as their content. It is analysed, how the escape reports published in Sweden both represented and generated border-crossing activity. The smuggling stories also illustrate the entangled character of popular print media: the travels of texts and pictures beyond national, cultural and lingual borders as well as travels between apposite publications. The material of the article consists of a total of ten reportages published in Lektyr and Fib Aktuellt between 1965–1966 and 1973.
Notes
1. Tunnel Under Muren 1 Lektyr 43: 1965, 2. All quotations from Swedish to English translated by the Author.
2. Tunnel Under Muren 1 Lektyr 43: 1965, 2–3, 4–5, 32; Tunnel Under Muren 2 Lektyr 44: 1965, 20–21.
3. With the long tradition of leisure time entertainment reading, both Lektyr (launched 1923) and Fib Aktuellt (launched 1963) combined pinups, nude pictures and articles on sex with articles on crime, politics and current issues, international affairs and military history. Both magazines became explicit sex magazines in the late seventies; however, until the mid-1970s, they were rich in detailed analyses and features on subjects other than sex. In this respect, 1960s and 1970s Lektyr and Fib Aktuellt were part of the news press market and comparable to weekly current issues in magazines and tabloid newspapers. The combination of nudes and feature subjects was also a commercial success. From 1965 to 1975, the combined circulation of Lektyr and Fib Aktuellt rose from 500,000 to 540,000 sold copies. Arnberg, Motsättningarnas marknad, 273.
4. The author’s name of Lektyr’s tunnel story, ‘Eberhard J. Fuchs’, did not yield any online search results related to Berlin, West Germany, East Germany, the Tunnel 57 operation or Stern Magazine. The name and the story content are similar to the famous Tunnel 57 operation in the divided city of Berlin in October 1964 initiated by a student with the family name Fuchs. The first name varies in research literature. According to Kemp (1987, cited by Mueller, “Escape from the GDR, 1961–1989,” 719), the student is called Victor Fuchs, and the operation took place in October 1965, while Flemming (Berlinmuren. Gräns genom en stad) refers to the student as Wolfgang Fuchs and dates the operation to the autumn of 1964. The English Wikipedia article on the Tunnel 57 operation does not mention Fuchs in relation to the operation. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tunnel_57
5. Saarenmaa, “Circulating Nazi-imagery”; and “Playboys and Politicians”.
6. The tensions and threads of the closed border between the East and West were used as sources of narrative suspense in Billy Wilder’s Berlin-located comedy One, Two Three (USA, 1961) as well as in Terence Young’s James Bond film From Russia with Love (UK, 1963).
7. Linderoth, Kampen för erkännande, 34–5. According to Linderoth, the East German propaganda authorities argued that negative writing related to the Persson case in Sweden drew on West German sources and was influenced by West German propaganda against East Germany. Also, East Germans pointed out that even if Persson were found guilty for a serious act of felony, he was released without charges.
8. Ibid.
9. Nevertheless, the overall generic framework of the stories is Cold War spy entertainment rather than Cold War foreign politics. The stories are centred on the high-spirited actions and operations executed by individuals rather than state-level diplomacy. This comports with Cronqvist’s (Mannen I mitten) analysis of the centrality of the spy drama in Swedish Cold War popular culture. According to Cronqvist, the Cold War literature captured in Swedish popular magazines described the experiences of ordinary people, those who had (or were rumoured to have had) some kind of personal recollection or family connection to intelligence or other Cold War activities.
10. Almgren, Inte bara Stasi … Relationer Sverige DDR 1949–1990; Linderoth, Kampen för erkännande.
11. Saarenmaa, “Circulating Nazi-imagery.”
12. e.g. Badenoch et al. 2013.
13. Cronqvist and Hilgert, “Entangled Media Histories,” 132.
14. e.g. Mükke, Korrespondenten im Kalten Krieg; Meyen and Fiedler, “Die Grenze in Kopf.”
15. Saunders, Who paid the piper?, 2.
16. Bastiansen and Werenskjold, The Nordic Media and the Cold War.
17. To relate the reportages in other news coverage to the issue in Sweden, I examined East Germany related reporting in digitised Swedish daily newspapers from the same time period using the search words ‘East-Germany’, ‘Berlin Wall’ and ‘escape’. The most interesting in relation to men’s magazines reportages were the tabloid newspapers Aftonbladet and Expressen.
18. 386 Genom Ulbrichtmuren på leksakspass 1 Lektyr 25:1965, 3, 4–5, 33, 34; 386 Genom Ulbrichtmuren på leksakspass 2 Lektyr 26:1965, 10–11,40; 386 Genom Ulbrichtmuren på leksakspass 3 Lektyr 27: 1965, 22–23, 34; 386 Genom Ulbrichtmuren 4 Lektyr 27: 1965, 22–23, 37.
19. 386 Genom Ulbrichtmuren på leksakspass 1 Lektyr 25:1965, 3.
20. Lektyr 25:1965, 5.
21. Lektyr 25:1965, 34.
22. Lektyr 26:1965, 10–11.
23. Lektyr 27: 1965, 37.
24. Lektyr 26:1965, 21.
25. Fröcka tag vid Checkpoint Charlie Lektyr 27:1966, 22–23.
26. Dygn av ångest mellan öst och väst Lektyr 1965:51, 2–3, 4–5.
27. Tvärs genom taggtråden Lektyr 3: 1966, 26–27, 34.
28. Lektyr 3: 1966, 34.
29. e.g. Nytt mord vid gränsen. Fib Aktuellt 1966:10, 6.
30. Då var flykten över muren ett hjältedåd, nu är det extraknäck. Fib Aktuellt 1966:36, 22–23, 4, 44.
31. Fib Aktuellt 1966:36, 22.
32. Almgren, Inte bara Stasi … Relationer Sverige DDR 1949–1990, 146; Linderoth, Kampen för erkännande.
33. Mitchell 2016.
34. e.g. Keussler and Sculenburg, Fluchthelfer - Die Gruppe um Wolfgang Fuchs; Detjen, Ein Loch in der Mauer; and “Fluchthelfer nach dem Mauerbau.”
35. Detjen, “Fluchthelfer nach dem Mauerbau,” 801.
36. Det äkta paret hjälps över gränsen – det kostade dem 50:000! Lektyr 38:1973, 42–43.
37. Hon flydde över gränsen i en tigerbur! Fib Aktuellt 1973: 48, 60–61, 62.
38. Fib aktuellt 1973:48, 62.
39. Almgren, Inte bara Stasi … Relationer Sverige DDR 1949–1990; Abraham, Die Politische Auslandsarbeit der DDR in Schweden; Linderoth, Kampen för erkännande.
40. Almgren, Inte bara Stasi … Relationer Sverige DDR 1949–1990.
41. Ibid., 51.
42. Ibid., 52.
43. The reporting organisation was DDR-Kulturzentrum, which was established in 1967 in Stockholm. The purpose of the centre was to spread information and to strengthen positive images of East Germany and to advance the aims of diplomatic recognition of the GDR in Sweden. Linderoth, Kampen för erkännande, 149–51.
44. Almgren, Inte bara Stasi … Relationer Sverige DDR 1949–1990, 165.
45. Ibid., 193–5.
46. Expressen (launched 1944) and Aftonbladet (launched 1830) are the two major Swedish tabloid newspapers. Both tabloids define themselves as politically independent, although Aftonbladet has been historically connected to the social democratic party.
47. Smuggelåret Aftonbladet 31.12.1964.
48. Fantastiskt Flykt över muren i Berlin mitt på ljuva dagen! Expressen 13.6.1964.
49. Flykt Genom Berlin-muren med 11 ner-sövda barn Aftonbladet 10.9.1964.
50. 57 Flydde under muren i Berlin Aftonbladet 5. 10. 1964; Den otroliga flykten i Berlin Aftonbladet 6.10.1964.
51. The image of the crawling man is apparently one of the photographs from the Tunnel 57 operation originally published in Stern Magazine and then internationally circulated.
52. Ny Flyktvåg förhindrar avspänning i Berlin? Expressen 10. 11. 1971.
53. E.g. Dödsmuren 4 år Expressen 31.8.1965; Berlinmuren – snart är den fulländad Aftonbladet 16.12.1967; Muren fyller 10 år Expressen 10.8.1971; Muren 10 år Aftonbladet 15.8. 1971; Här är tyska muren som ingen talar om Expressen 22.11. 1971; Dödens Gräns Expressen 27.2. 1973; Berlinmuren 15 år idag Expressen 13.8.1976; Muren som delade världen 13.8.1981; Skammens mur 20 år Expressen 2.8.1981; Här byggs dödens stängsel Expressen 7.9.1983.
54. e.g. Nelson, “American Cultural Icons Defining the Cold War.”
55. Arnberg 2020, 273.
56. Sundevall, “Porr i vapenskåpet och bögkompani på Gotland.”
57. Cronqvist, Mannen I mitten; Saarenmaa, “Circulating Nazi-imagery”; and “Candid Conversations.”
Additional information
Notes on contributors
Laura Saarenmaa
Laura Saarenmaa, Research Centre for Journalism, Media and Communication (COMET), University of Tampere, Kalevantie, 4 Tampere FI-33014, Finland. E-mail [email protected]