Telephones

When the wall came down in 1989, only slightly more than 10 percent of GDR citizens had a telephone. The waiting time for a phone was 10 to 25 years. The GDR never built a modern telephone network. A lot of places, especially villages, remained entirely without access to the telephone network. Other than West Germany, where copper was normally used, most East German telephone lines were made of ordinary steel, which was less ex-pensive. The quality of the connection was bad, especially during cold winter seasons when the bare wires froze. People who lived in villages had to provide a justified interest to get a telephone. Doctors and priests had higher chances than others, for example.Since only a few households had a phone, they had to share them with the public. A sign attached to the fence or to the building said “Öffentlicher Fernsprecher / public telephone”. Post offices also had phones. In the city – especially in Berlin – it was easier. Most flats in the newly built pre-fab apartment blocks came with a telephone connection. Several apartments shared the same circuit. Therefore you could only call someone when the line was not being used by someone else in the building. With private telephones in such short supply, public phone booths were in high demand. Especially in the evening hours people had to stand in line for hours to make a call.Talking openly on the phone was dangerous, because the secret police – the Staatssicherheitsdienst (SSD), nicknamed “Stasi” – was often listening in. With tremendous efforts the Stasi managed to bug countless telephone lines, especially the lines for calls to the West. The Stasi, the military and the political parties had their own telephone network, which had a much better quality and technolo-gy than the network available to the general population.