Energy: Berlin Remembers

Through the bitter German winter of 1948, West Berliners were kept alive by the Berlin airlift, a dramatic cold war counterploy to surmount a Soviet-inspired blockade of the city. Two million tons of food, fuel and clothing were flown into Tempelhof and other airports by U.S. and British cargo planes on 277,569 flights over a 15-month period. This year, with two-thirds of the U.S. under the siege of winter, Berliners responded with aid of their own. In a month-long Help America fund drive that ends this week, they raised $500,000 to help the American Red Cross aid families hardest hit by the Big Freeze.

The hat-passing idea belonged to Peter Lorenz, 54, president of the West Berlin parliament. After reading of U.S. storm ravages, he appealed to Berliners to help those who had helped them, and set up an account with the German Red Cross to receive contributions. Thousands responded. Within eight days, $208,333 was collected from those who remembered. Said a 31-year-old engineer: “It is our way of saying ‘Thank you’ for what you have done for us.” Germany’s most famous boxer, former Heavyweight Champion Max Schmeling, now 71, donated $400. A war widow of 75 added: “We Berliners haven’t forgotten the help you Americans gave us.”

Lorenz received letters from grateful Americans, some of them German immigrants. His political critics chided Lorenz for using Help America to further his own political ambitions. But it seemed they were mainly annoyed about not getting the idea first. They had to admit that Lorenz’s idea struck a soft spot, one as nonpartisan as the weather.