Northpinellas: 'Beers up, borders down'

About two weeks ago, Schlereth dropped by Hoppers Grille and Brewery on East Lake Road to meet with a small group of Monday night regulars. Most are Americans, but some are European expatriates who come to Hoppers for the distinctive beer produced by its Austrian-born brewmaster.

Schlereth's ears perked up when he struck up a conversation with Michel, a tourist with an unmistakable East German accent. Having grown up in West Germany, Schlereth wanted to find out if the two of them had anything in common other than their love for Germany's national beverage. Between swigs, they discovered an amazing tale of happenstance.

Schlereth and Michel learned they both were drafted to serve their respective countries during the same years of the Cold War. Schlereth was assigned to the West German border police. Michel served in the East German army.

Then came the bombshell: They both were stationed to patrol the same 50-mile stretch of the Iron Curtain during the same years. That meant Michel was Schlereth's exact communist counterpart 34 years ago.

And here they were, drinking beer and swapping stories in an East Lake pub.

"When he explained to me where he had served, then I was like "Wow,' " said Schlereth, who is called Yogi by his friends. "This is finally reunification at the real level."

The chance meeting last month is something that as a young man Schlereth would have sworn could never happen. A unified Germany seemed unbelievable.

"I looked at the border and said, "How strange is this?' " Schlereth, 53, recalled thinking at the time. "It's absolutely impossible for me that this will ever change."

Although both men grew up in small towns about two hours away, they were worlds apart.

Schlereth grew up in Hammelburg, a town known for its beer and wine. Along with the rest of West Germany, the town was backed by the United States and its allies.

Michel grew up in Hohenossig, a town of about 800 near the city of Leipzig. Like the rest of East Germany, the small village was controlled by the Soviet Union and its Communist bloc. Chocolate, television and all the other consumer trappings of the West were suppressed.

Both men said they had no animosity for the other side. That's just the way things were, they said.

"There were no hate feelings at the time," Michel, 52, said with Schlereth translating. "There was more a frustration of looking at the situation and saying, "How is this actually possible?' "

Both were drafted in 1968 as 18-year-olds. Schlereth was stationed in the central region of the German countryside, about 35 miles from where Michel was assigned as a private in the East German army.

Between them was the fortified border known as the Iron Curtain, a phrase made popular by Great Britain's Winston Churchill to describe the Soviet barriers against the West. In Germany, the description was dead-on accurate.

On Thursday at Schlereth's garage-turned-office in Clearwater, the two men combined their memories of the border to sketch what it was like. They both remembered the two barbed wire fences, each about 10 feet high, about 100 feet away on the East German side.

The fences were riddled with trip-wire booby traps that sprayed bullets. Between the fences, the ground was covered in land-mines. German shepherds were used to patrol the area and there also were large watchtowers manned by about a half-dozen guards.

The East German forces had orders to shoot anyone trying to defect to the West.

Looking at the border, Schlereth recalled thinking, "How is this possible? How could we stand here as Germans, we as West Germans with our American allies, and we look across this border and we are looking at East Germans, who are my age, who are accompanied by Russians. We were looking at the political division of the world at the current time. "I was 18 and I looked at it and thought, "This is just absolutely crazy,' almost perverse at the time to me," Schlereth said.

Because they patrolled the same area, it is possible that they may have looked at each other across the border.

"We could have gotten in a situation where we possibly could have pointed guns at each other," Schlereth said. "When you run into a guy who was in the very same situation as you, except on the other side, it kind of closes the circle."

After serving in the border patrol, Schlereth traveled around Central and South America and studied at Massachusetts Institute of Technology, graduating in 1982. Three years later, he moved to Clearwater, where he works as an architect.

Michel became a trucker after he served in the East German army. Like fellow East Germans, he treated the literal collapse of the Berlin Wall in 1989 and the figurative collapse of the communist Soviet bloc with caution.

"Suddenly in front of our eyes, things were falling apart literally," Michel said. "The whole political system, suddenly crumbling. So first it was pure astonishment and disbelief. Everyone was very careful about what they said about it because the state's security police was still everywhere."

Michel and his wife, Johanna, 51, were visiting friends in East Lake when they went to Hoppers Grille and Brewery about two weeks ago. When asked what he thought about meeting Schlereth, Michel said "Super."

They both joke that they met because of their search for good German beer. The brewmaster at Hoppers, Austrian-born Franz Rothschadl, has won national awards for his beer.

"The urge to look for the right place to find the right good quality beer literally brought us together," Schlereth said. "And it's very typically for a German. We grow up with beer."

Schlereth and Michel were at Hoppers as part of a weekly tradition started by Rothschadl called a Stammtisch, where pub regulars meet at their designated table to drink and share laughs.

When asked what he thought was the moral of the story, at first Schlereth said jokingly, "Beers up, borders down."

But after a few moments, he added, "There is no reason to hate."

-- Ed Quioco can be reached at (727) 445-4185 or quioco@sptimes.com .

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