Ambassador Donald Bell Sole writes in his autobiography “This Above All”, September 1989 Accreditation in Berlin

Other military links of mine were derived from my accreditation to the Occupying Powers as Head of the South African Military Mission in Berlin.

First a word about the background to this.  On paper all Berlin is subject to the supervision and control of the four occupying powers - France, United Kingdom, United States, U.S.S.R. In practice, East Berlin is the capital of the German Democratic Republic and the three Western occupying powers have no authority there. West Berlin is a self governing city state over whose domestic autonomy the three Western powers exercise no supervision, but West Berlin is not part of the Federal Republic of Germany, even though it sends representatives to the German Parliament who participate fully but without a substantive vote. The three Western powers exercise exclusive rights over air access to West Berlin and only Air France, British Airways and PanAmerican operate flights between Berlin and the various West German cities. Air traffic control over all Berlin is exercised by the four occupying powers.

Not long after the German surrender in 1945, Allied powers, which were not Occupying Powers, were authorised to set up military missions in Berlin.  South Africa was one of the Allies which availed itself of this authorisation and a small military mission was established there which included a middle ranking officer from External Affairs who performed what were largely consular duties. The South African mission was first headed by a Colonel, but in 1948, after the advent to power of the National Party, the new Minister of Defence, F.E. Erasmus, was determined to get rid of General Evered Poole as Chief of the General Staff. He was accordingly' shunted off to head the SA. Military Mission in Berlin, the rank of head of mission being upgraded for this purpose. 

When the three Western occupying powers set up the Federal Republic of Germany with Adenauer as its first Chancellor and with Bonn chosen as provisional capital, the countries which had been represented in Germany by military missions stationed in Berlin accredited to the Occupying Powers progressively transferred their representation to Bonn/Cologne. There they set up diplomatic missions accredited to the Adenauer Government. South Africa in due course followed suit; General Poole was absorbed into the South African diplomatic establishment and transferred elsewhere. Allies were entitled to retain their military missions in Berlin and many did so, using these missions largely for consular purposes. In the South African case this also applied for a while but when General Poole was taken over by External Affairs, the Department of Defence had no further interest in the mission in Berlin and declined to bear the expenditure involved. The External Affairs officer attached to the mission for consular duties was needed more urgently elsewhere in Germany, so the office of the military mission in Berlin was closed. However, it was decided to retain the accreditation to the Occupying Powers - indeed they urged the South African and other Governments to retain that presence as a sign of moral support for the people of West Berlin and their local government. 

The post of Head of the Military Mission was accordingly vested in the South African Ambassador to the Federal Republic. However, when I arrived in Germany in February, 1969, I discovered that our Protocol Department had overlooked the need to provide me with credentials also to the Occupying Powers. Then the relevant file could not be found and several months elapsed before the credentials reached me.

This then was the background to my first visit to Berlin undertaken in the summer of 1969. The protocol of accreditation required calls on the three commanding officers of the American, British and French garrison forces but not on the head of the Soviet forces in East Berlin; he was merely, sent a copy of my credentials by the joint office of the occupying powers located in West Berlin. On the occasion of each of my calls, the commanding officers had with them their chief political aides from the French Foreign Ministry, the British Foreign Office and the U.S., State Department respectively. I was greatly impressed by the U.S. political officer whom I found to be a real expert on East-West relations, far better informed than Henry Cabot Lodge, then U.S. Ambassador in Bonn. After this first contact, I made a point of calling on him regularly, whenever I visited Berlin, for the remainder of his term, which was extended more than once. When he was finally transferred, I found that his successor was of nothing like the same calibre - I had lost my best informed source for my reports on the evolution and implications of Willy Brandt's Ostblok policy.

I always enjoyed my talks with the American and British garrison commanders and was given a lot of inside information on the problems of the American and British Forces in Germany. I was also initiated into the role of the garrison troops in Western Berlin. They totalled about 11,000; one saw nothing of them outside their barracks and exercise grounds. Their presence was not only morale building, but was designed to act as a deterrent trigger counter to any rush of blood to the head by  the Soviet command in East. Germany. The U.S. Commander told me, for example, that at the time of the building of the Berlin Wall, his predecessor had asked for authority from Washington to make immediately a deterrent show of force, which he was convinced would have induced the Russians to desist; but Washington dilly dallied for 72 hours and the decisive moment passed.

On my first visit I was also received by the RA.F. at Gatow and met three officers who had been trained in South Africa during the war - at Port Elizabeth, Oudtshoorn and Port Alfred respectively, and one who had liaised with our Dakota squadron which took part in the Berlin airlift, operating into Tempelhof from Lubeck.

The British O.C. who carne to Berlin a year later was an exceptionally interesting character. He was Major-General the Earl of Cathcart. He told me that he had all the papers of his ancestor, Sir John Cathcart, who was Governor of the Cape Colony, and was surprised to learn from me that in South Africa they would be worth a small fortune as Africana. This Cape Governor (after whom Cathcart is named) was a most colourful character, who served as an a.d.c. to Wellington at Waterloo and was ultimately killed at the battle of Inkerman during the Crimean War. He was the bearer of a rare document called a Dormant Commission, the existence of which was known only to Queen Victoria, the Secretary of State for War and himself; it entitled him to take over command of the British forces in the Crimea in the event of the British Commander being killed or incapacitated. I later sent the general a photograph, with brief history, of the Cathcart Arms Hotel in Grahamstown, South Africa's oldest hotel,       for the book which he said he intended writing about his ancestors.

Following my accreditation in Berlin, I made a number of protocol calls on city dignitaries such as the Oberburgermeister, the Speaker, the President of the Chamber of Commerce etc and thereafter I visited Berlin four or five times a year.  As already mentioned, the Germans have a saying: "Berlin ist eine Reise wert" which is very well justified. The first summer my children came over, we took them on a tour of the major cities of Germany and they were unanimous in finding Berlin the most interesting. Since South Africa has no relations with the German Democratic Republic I was not permitted to travel to Berlin other than by air and never, even surreptitiously, ventured into East Berlin. But Mrs. Diederichs, when her husband, then Minister of Finance, and I were busy with official engagements, went for a ride on the S-bahn (a metropolitan railway operated by East Berlin which runs through both sections of the city). She took a train at an S-bahn station in West Berlin, which travelled through part of East Berlin, and got off the train when it reached another station in the western zone. Her husband, when she told him of her exploit, was quite horrified.

Because of West Berlin's anomalous political status, difficult protocol problems arise from time to time. I recall one such example. The head of a consular mission is required to pay a courtesy call on the Mayor as head of the Government of West Berlin. When a visit of this' kind is paid, it IS normal for the flag of the country represented, the flag of Berlin and the flag of the Federal Republic of Germany all to be flying when the consular representative makes his call. The Soviet Government had long refused to allow their Consul-General to make the customary call on the Mayor as long as the West German flag was flying and the Mayor had refused to receive him without the West German flag being flown. After months and months of arguing a solution was found during one of my visits to Berlin. The solution was to arrange for the Soviet Consul-General to pay his visit at the same time as a visiting Minister from Togo, with the result that four flags were flown viz, the Togo flag, the Soviet flag, the Berlin flag and the West German flag, My comment was: "Such are the tortuous manoeuvres in conducting an Ostpolitik."

West Berlin has an aging population, the majority female, and from time to time is pronounced to be a dying city. But I found it a metropolis of astonishing resilience and I liked the West Berliners themselves better than the Rhinelanders ,among whom we lived.  It was also always exciting to be in West Berlin, not least because the city's population included a goodly percentage of young radicals, many of whom had "emigrated" to West Berlin to escape conscription. When I addressed  a meeting in West Berlin, I never knew what to expect. I of course ensured that when our Cabinet Ministers visited West Berlin,·they were sheltered from this sort of thing; but I did arrange "the unexpected" for some members of a group of South African University Principals. These had been visiting the Federal Republic as guests of the German Government and at a dinner I gave for them at the Embassy residence in Cologne, some of them complained that their programme (arranged by the German Government) had been rather tame and that they had had little opportunity of meeting German students. So I offered to lay on a 'visit to West Berlin. Two or three led by Sir Richard Luyt, Principal of U.C.T., accepted my invitation and got rather more than they or indeed I had bargained for, as far as the university students of West Berlin were concerned. The Principals thought for a moment that they might suffer physical injury.

In spite of being an enclave in East German territory, West Berlin maintains a sizeable export trade with South Africa; so I got to know a number of West Berlin industrialists. The city is also a major exhibition centre and from time to time we arranged South African exhibits there, usually in conjunction with 'the German South African Association, which had a strong branch in Berlin.

The South African Government still owns property In Berlin. This is the site of the former South African Legation, which was razed to the ground during the fighting in 1945. It is situated in the Tiergartenstrasse, formerly a thriving thoroughfare, but. now no more than a tarred road running through open land - for the whole of the area, part of the diplomatic quarter, was devastated during the war and there remain just a few isolated buildings, including the former Italian Embassy, that escaped major damage and which accordingly have not been pulled down. 

The City of West Berlin had plans to develop and re-activate this area, mainly as park land and for recreational purposes, and to this end was anxious to buy up as much vacant land as possible. I was accordingly approached with a request to seek Government approval for sale of the Legation site to the City. But while desirous of showing goodwill towards the City, I felt that on historic grounds, ownership of the land should remain vested in the South African Government. Although in the short and medium term it seemed out of the question, who could say that in the long term East and West Germany will never be reunited - in which case Berlin would certainly again become the capital of a re-united country. In these circumstances, the compromise arrangement which I persuaded both the South African Government and the City of West Berlin to accept was that the ground should be leased by the Government to the City for a nominal rental of 1 D-mark per annum, ownership being retained by the Government, and that the Government would be consulted by the City in the event of the City wishing to erect any permanent building on the site. The first year's rental was presented to me at a formal ceremony when the lease contract was signed I have kept the actual coin in my coin collection, having transferred 1 DM from my own account to the Embassy account. I also arranged for a small plaque to be erected on the road side at the site of the Legation identifying the land as South African Government property.

Protocol-wise I received from the City of West Berlin the finest treatment of any city I have officially visited as Ambassador anywhere in the world. A chauffeur driven car was always placed at my disposal; if Elizabeth accompanied me she was always greeted with a bouquet of flowers at the airport; a variety of entertainment was offered - the best available in Berlin - in the form of theatre, opera, symphony concert or cabaret; if I so desired, the protocol office was prepared to arrange all my appointments in Berlin, a courtesy which I appreciated but did not utilise, except in the case of' appointments with City dignitaries like the Oberburgermeister and members of his cabinet; if I brought a South African Cabinet Minister or other visiting V.I.P.'s to Berlin, the protocol office would make all the arrangements requested of then, with superb efficiency, excelling especially in providing charming escorts, speaking perfect English, when it came to showing the V.I.P. visitors the sights of the city. The whole public relations organisation established by the city was indeed outstanding, not least because it has to be, since the city is so dependent on subsidies from the Federal Government in Bonn.

One unforgettable memory of Berlin is associated in my mind with the Apollo space probes. One Apollo probe went badly wrong, it looked as if it might end in disaster and frantic efforts were made to get the team home safely. I was listening to the Voice of America, broadcast by the Berlin U.S. forces programme, on the radio installed in my hotel room, until the time arrived for me to go to the opera. The taxi driver who took me to the Opera House had his radio tuned in to a German version of the same programme. He told me that half of Berlin was listening in. The opera (it was "Tales of Hoffman") duly started bur my thoughts were far away wondering how the Apollo team was faring. Early in the first act there was a scene where one of the actors asked "Was gibt es neues?" (What's new?) His companion replied that the Apollo team had splashed down safely. At .this the whole audience rose in an ovation, clapping and cheering - and it was some time before the opera action could proceed.

Cultural Ties.

Public relations in the cultural sphere also took a sizeable slice of my time. In those days a cultural agreement was still operative between South Africa and the Federal Republic. It was later (after my time)suspended by the German Government as an act of protest the South African Government’s racial policies.

The agreement was administered by a small committee comprising officials of the two departments of education in Bonn and Pretoria which met annually in the respective capitals in alternate years. When it met in Bonn, I sat on the committee; when it met in Pretoria, my German counterpart was present. Each Ambassador also had a Cultural Counsellor on his staff. For most of my stay my Cultural Counsellor was Tertius van Huyssteen, who had taught German at Paul Roos in Stellenbosch. He did an excellent job, as did his wife Miems, but his successor, a retired University Professor, was a disaster.

The German Government had a considerable budgetary allocation for the promotion of cultural relations with South Africa, but we had practically nothing apart from the salaries and allowances of our Cultural Counsellor and his secretary.

Follow Up:  Sole took the story further in an article published in the South African Journal of International Affairs, Volume 11,Issue 2, Winter Spring 2004.

After the reunification of Germany, the South African government duly gave 12 months' notice of the termination of the contract. When funds were available it erected a new embassy on the site, a short distance from the new federal chancellery built by the German government following the move back from Bonn to Berlin. The site is accordingly immensely valuable - in contrast to the little that would have been received had it been sold to .the City of West Berlin in 1970.

In recognition of my role in preserving the site for posterity, my wife and I were invited to attend, at our own expense, the inauguration of the new embassy building on 14 November 2003. The inauguration ceremonies were on a grand scale with speeches by the South African ministers of Foreign Affairs and Public Works; the German Foreign Minister; representatives of the architectural team, and the builders. Music was provided by a quartet from Soweto, followed in the evening by a magnificent gala dinner for 400 guests at Berlin's top hotel at which the master of ceremonies was Tim Modise. No expense was spared to make the inauguration a most memorable event.

My wife and I were given a conducted tour and were delighted to find that the new building, in terms of the headline on an article on the subject in the Mail & Guardian of 19 December 2003, was an 'Embassy of Miracle and Wonder', a magnificent edifice which, as a showpiece, was comparable to South Africa House in Trafalgar Square, London. Designed by South African architects, it is a tribute to what South Africa can become in the course of the next two decades. It is light and airy with a number of African motifs. Considerable use has been made of African products and South African art and sculpture are well represented.

After the tour, I felt very proud to be a South African. I was also happy to present to the ambassador the original one Deutsche mark coin I had received for the first year's rental of the site 33 years earlier. Together with the symbolic key presented to him by the builders, it will form part of the embassy's archives.

Regrettably, as a professional diplomat, I experienced two disappointments. It would appear that, .apart from the administrative personnel, our South African diplomatic staff does not speak German- a matter which was the subject of critical comment to me by two top German official guests who chatted to me in their own tongue. I was also surprised to learn that, although Germany is our principal investment and trading partner in continental Europe, the Department of Trade and Industry has no representative on the staff of the embassy, other than a locally recruited German official. It is important, in my judgment, that the situation in each of these two respects be remedied as soon as possible, but the indications are that little or nothing will be done.