The Six Days

A few blocks west of the Bernauer Strasse tunnel, where 57 East Berliners crawled to freedom last week, an escape of another sort was taking place. Concocted of cigar smoke and the reek of raw schnapps, a blur of spinning spokes and the beat of a brass band, this form of escape goes by the name of "Sportpalast Fever," and can be indulged in once a year when Berlin holds its famed, phantasmagoric Six-Day Bicycle Race.

More than 40,000 West Berliners jammed the drafty, bomb-wracked Sportpalast last week, paying $100,000 for the privilege of watching a handful of men in silk spin madly around a banked oval track, for prizes ranging from a few bottles of wine to a brand-new DKW sedan. To beleaguered Berliners, the Six Days serves as carnival, communal songfest and emotional blowout. Only a fraction of the crowd is made up of racing fans, and as one old man said of the event, "It would be great if it weren't for those cyclists."

Berlin's Six Days dates back to 1909. By the early 1930s, the races were often rigged, and they attracted the booted whores and gaudy gangsters who gave Berlin its cynical, sinful aura. Left-wing Playwright Georg Kaiser described the Sportpalast scene in those days: "Inhibition has gone to hell. Cutaways shake. Shirts tear. Buttons pop in all directions. Differences flow away. Nakedness where there used to be disguise: passion. It's worth it--this brings profits."

Dancing with Disrespect. Hitler outlawed the races soon after he came to power in 1933 because he found them dishonest and degenerate, and converted the Sportpalast into a propaganda forum. World War II left it a gutted shell, but in 1953 a group of enterprising promoters slapped a new roof on the ruin, installed a new track, and the Six Days was back in business.*

Last week's race was, as usual, a ten-ring circus. The brassy oompah of Otto-Otto Kermbach's band thundered the Sportpalast Waltz--a ditty whose magic lies in the fact that every few bars the audience can join in with three short, shrill whistles. When enough beer and schnapps had flowed (nightly sales total 18,000 glasses of each), spectators swarmed onto the infield to dance. Fist fights flared in the smoky upper reaches of the grandstands, known as the "hayloft." The occupants of this low-cost Olympus exercise dictatorial power over the groundlings, demanding and usually getting kegs of free beer from the celebrities they spot in ringside seats below them. If no beer is forthcoming, the haylofters boo their target unmercifully, indulging in a "cult of disrespectfulness" that is half the fun of the Six Days. When West German Defense Minister Kai-Uwe von Hassel appeared one night, he was roundly booed. But when he donned a crash helmet and bravely mounted a racing bike, the crowd went wild.

Pigtails to Forget. Another high point was the election of "Miss Hayloft"--the girl from the galleries chosen each year as most representative of the Six-Day spirit. This year's winner was a busty Berlinerin with steel-rimmed glasses and pigtails. One traditional figure of the Six Days, however, was gone for good. He was Kruecke (Crutch), a bicycle racer whose career ended decades ago when he was run over by a streetcar. Year after year he turned up at the races, and when proceedings got dull, the crowd would cry: "Kruecke, ein Lied!" The old racer then hobbled forward and whistled a song. When Kruecke died last year at 70, he received one of the grandest funerals Berlin has seen since the war.

It is traditions like these that make Berlin's Six Days a self-perpetuating institution. As long as the bikes whirl colorfully around the steep wooden track, as long as Otto-Otto's band is blaring, as long as the beer flows and pretty girls parade the aisles, Berliners are happy. Explained one spectator last week: "On a night like this, you forget about the Wall and Ulbricht and all the misery in the world."

*Today's racing teams no longer have to pedal round the clock as in the pre-war era. Now they can sleep from 5 a.m. to noon.

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