Back on Familiar Turf

Michelle Bachelet and her mother arrived in the German Democratic Republic (GDR) in 1975, after both were detained and tortured by the regime of Augusto Pinochet. Her father, Alberto, was an ally of the late Marxist president Salvador Allende and died of a heart attack after enduring prison and torture for months.

His wife and daughter came to East Germany via Australia, joining about 40 other Chilean refugee families in Potsdam, just southwest of then divided Berlin.

"We were told that Chileans were moving in next door and that we should help them settle -- tell them how German society works and show them where the shops are," remembers Elke Pissarek, a former neighbor in Potsdam's Lilienstrasse.

"Her mother was bourgeois, she could not understand that we had to line up outside of shops," she said.

Socialist agreement

The Bachelets were invited to the GDR under an agreement between the East German authorities and the Socialist Party of Chile, which Bachelet had joined as a student in Santiago.

She recently told the German weekly newspaper Die Zeit that she has fond memories of her four years behind the Iron Curtain, recalling that it is where she married her now estranged husband, fellow Chilean exile Jorge Davalos, in 1977.

"Whether the readers like to hear this or not, the time I spent in Potsdam and Leipzig was a very happy part of my life," she said. "I was 23 years old when I came here. I could continue my studies. I got married and it is also the place where I had my first child. My experience in Germany was beautiful."

Elke Pissarek's husband Detlev said he remembered a young woman with firm political views who loved to play music with her Chilean friends in the basement of the gray apartment block they shared.

"We became like one big family," he remembers fondly.

"She was discreet, not pushy at all, but at the same time she was politically engaged and in favor of radical solutions. She was clearly ready to return to Chile and to take up arms for her beliefs," he told AFP news agency.

Flower power

Bachelet returned to Chile in 1979, but Potsdam is still home to many of the Chileans who came here some 30 years ago.

One of them, Luis Gonzalez, recalls a 1970s flower-child with a serious streak.

"She was slim and beautiful, she looked like a hippie with her long hair and her jeans. But one could see that she was a leader, that she knew how to inspire people," he said.

Bachelet's old neighbors said they still follow her political career with interest and pride.

"In a way, she cut her teeth here. I think it is great that she has remained true to her convictions," Detlev Pissarek said, while his wife said she hoped Bachelet could inspire all of Latin America to swing to the left.

Bachelet's visit will not take her to Potsdam, but she will stop in Leipzig, the eastern city where she spent months studying German at what was then called Karl Marx University.

Back home

In late 1978, she moved to East Berlin to pursue her medical studies at Humboldt University. Five months later, she received permission from the Chilean authorities to return home and bade Europe farewell.

Bachelet was elected Chile's first female leader late last year, just after Angela Merkel, who grew up in East Germany, became the united country's first female chancellor.

The two women are due to hold talks during Bachelet's three-day visit, her first official trip to Germany since taking office.