Throughout the Cold War, a relentless barrier separated the Western allies from the Soviet Bloc. This inhuman frontier was made of concrete walls, barbed wire, vicious dogs, machineguns, mines and guard towers and ran the width of Europe. Early in my military career, I spent time at the Berlin Wall and along this inner-German Border, or Iron Curtain. There I only saw my enemy through binoculars, or as a gray presence far away. It was only years and years later, as a middle aged man, that I was given the chance to see them as they saw themselves, in the remarkable German movie, “The Lives of Others.” For that revelation, I have to thank the quiet star of that film, Ulrich Muhe.

In a strange way I believe I know Ulrich Muhe. He is the great German actor whose stellar career was capped when he won personal, international honors for his role as the Secret East German State Security, or ‘Stasi’, officer in “The Lives of Others”. This German production won the Oscar for best foreign film in 2007. In this movie he portrayed with uncanny clarity the inner turmoil of a true believing Communist security officer whose society, decayed from within, employs his secret skills to elicit information from an entourage of literary and artistic fellow citizens. When he learns he serves only his masters’ personal aims, rather than those of the national security, he gradually rebels at the hypocrisy and corruption. He truly portrayed a conscience in turmoil.

Muhe was born in a little town named Grimma, in what was once the Communist East ‘German Democratic Republic’ district of Saxony. He was only a few months younger than me. He became a construction worker out of school, then served his national service as a guard at the Berlin Wall, or as the Communists would have called it then, the “anti-fascist protection wall”. I believe that it was there, while doing his duty at the wall, he changed. I know it changed me.

In 1977, as a young artillery officer, I saw the Iron Curtain for the first time. It impressed me, raised in St. Louis, Missouri, so much so that upon my return I reflected upon that modern barrier at that time:

“Westminster College, Missouri, is an ocean and a continent away from Hof, West Germany. What they have in common is the Iron Curtain. Winston Churchill coined the phrase at Westminster during a commencement exercise. Graduates of that day over 30 years ago can still see the subject of his address if they were to visit Hof, a post of the US Army in Bavaria.

A tour of the inner-German border, or Iron Curtain, is conducted there by members of an American armored cavalry regiment. The tour is somber, with undertones of a bazaar side show. Held behind a relentless apparatus of steel, concrete, dogs, machine-guns, soldiers, and landmines is the ‘new socialist society’. As far as the eye can see, the fence complex reaches across town, fields and hills. But people built the thing.

I imagine macabre East German engineering awards distributed for wall innovations. Here a stipend for self-firing devices activated by a person attempting to scale the wall. There professional recognition for the creator of the iron bar that can stop 32 tons of pressure. Who could this be? Why?

The permanence of the fortified border is more psychological than physical. No construction expense is too great to impede a new escape technique, but in the end, the mind is the greatest deterrent to escape. Each two million Mark kilometer of barrier is supported by a communist miasma of half-truths and lies. Together they serve to keep the people in a constant atmosphere of distrust. Distrust is rewarded in that strange land. The armed apostles of the new socialist faith always travel in pairs, one to prevent the other from escaping. Who will report me? Who will report my plans? These are the questions that stop escapes, more so than barbed wire, dogs and mines.

‘Go ahead, Comrade, escape to the West. We still have the wife and kids.’ This cynical choice is a fact of East German life. This is what passes for a modern 20 th century civilized nation. Hostage taking was outlawed by Pope Innocent III in another age, termed dark.

In a field not far from Hof, a balloon carrying two escaping East German families landed. These families will always hold a special place with me in the years to come when I remember Hof. They are free now, just as we are. They prove that even beyond the wall there will always be places where thoughts remain free.”

I had no idea then that perhaps I was describing the turmoil really working upon the soul of the guard, Ulrich Muhe. For all I knew, he was literally one of the guards I saw ‘over there’, beyond the wall in the east at that very moment. They were forbidden to wave at us, and had to hold the binoculars to their eyes whenever they looked across the border towards us in the West.

A miasma of distrust is what characterized that dictatorship. Muhe left his military service after his time at the wall and became an actor. He became an actor because he believed that at least in that profession, in that country, people spoke the truth to one another. Upon the collapse of the wall and the end of Communist East Germany in 1989, he learned differently. Given access to his Stasi files, he learned that not only four of his closest colleagues, but his very wife, were compelled to inform on him for years.

Wholly one out of every 14 people in the Stalinist East ‘German Democratic Republic’ were either willing or co-opted workers for the secret security apparatus. Imagine the anguish of learning that those you trusted, those you loved, had informed against you. Imagine then as they secretly confessed to communist agents about your political loyalties, your beliefs, and your every action. Imagine too that this wasn’t enough. The Stasi were masters of the telephone tap, the hidden camera, the surveillance personnel, the faked encounter, the elicitation and the ultimate betrayal. This was life in a police state. This is when Ulrich Muhe finally said ‘enough’.

Ulrich Muhe stood before all the cameras of the world in 1989, when it took great courage since the Communists had not yet given in, and spoke at Alexander Platz, the Times Square of old East Berlin. He denounced the Communist system, and demanded freedom of speech and freedom from police state oppression.

Thus, when in later years he portrayed someone living under that system, he was wholly prepared, indeed by his entire lifetime, to do so. He was quite literally born for that role. His characterization of what it meant to live in that place, in those times, will live forever. When asked about his success, it is said his response was, “I remember.” Ulrich Muhe died of stomach cancer at the age of 54 only months after the Lives of Others won the Oscar in 2007. He was born for his star, because he remembered, and told the truth. He helped me understand someone I once thought was my enemy; he made me a better man.