What was going on when I was born?

IT is one of the quiet, persistent anxieties of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization that its most important European member is also the most penetrated by spies from the Warsaw Pact. Lying on Europe's ideological fault line, the Federal Republic of Germany faces not only the massed divisions of the Soviet Union and its allies; in the midst of its open, pluralist society lurk the agents of a formidable espionage establishment run by Germans who happen to be Communists. In the last two weeks, a major spy scandal has abruptly shattered the somnolent end-of-summer atmosphere in Bonn, pushing these quiet anxieties to the forefront of NATO concerns. It started in a low key with the disappearance of two secretaries and a West German army messenger, and then became dramatic and serious with the reported defection to East Berlin of Hans Joachim Tiedge, a senior counterintelligence officer in charge of catching East German spies.

TO audience and critical responses that ranged from cautiously enthusiastic to an unqualified rave, Hugh Wolff, the newly appointed 31-year-old conductor of the New Jersey Symphony Orchestra, made his official debut Wednesday night at the Garden State Arts Center here. Mr. Wolff and the orchestra attracted a sellout audience for an all-Tchaikovsky program that included the polonaise from ''Eugen Onegin,'' the D major Violin Concerto, with Itzhak Perlman as soloist, and the Symphony No. 4 in F minor. The evening also included a post-concert champagne reception in Mr. Wolff's honor, sponsored by Johnson & Johnson and the Midlantic Bank. The concert had been scheduled as a guest appearance long before Mr. Wolff was appointed music director.

When the nationwide celebration that is the Festival of India arrives in the city Sept. 10, it will provide New Yorkers with a wider and more intense exposure to India's cultural history than any but the most privileged Indians could hope for in a lifetime. The festival offerings in New York, which will continue through 1986, begin with seven programs of dance and song at Alice Tully Hall in Lincoln Center and will include an exhibition at the Metropolitan Museum of Indian art dating from the 14th through the 19th century - sculpture, painting, jewels, wall hangings, and a spectacular 17th-century red and gold imperial tent. There will also be concerts of Indian music, with Indian soloists such as the sitarist Ravi Shankar, conducted by Zubin Mehta, at Avery Fisher Hall. The American Museum of Natural History will mount two photographic exhibits, including one on Indian wildlife; the Brooklyn Museum will display 4,000 years of terra cotta art, the Museum of Modern Art will offer 49 classic and contemporary Indian films, the Cooper-Hewitt Museum will exhibit contemporary designs created in cooperation with Indian craftsmen, and the Asia Society will display Kushan sculpture and art from the court of the 16th-century emperor Akbar.

The Northwest River, which supplies drinking water to Chesapeake, Va., contains so much salt from ocean tides that city officials have warned residents with high blood pressure that the water might be hazardous. More than 600 miles north, in the tiny central Maine town of Millinocket, the Great Northern Paper Company has started conserving water in depleted reservoirs by generating power with oil rather than with scarce water. In the fashionable Beacon Hill section of Boston, the water table has fallen so low that 88 town houses' foundations, which are supposed to remain underwater, are exposed to air and have begun to rot. Chance of Drought in 1986 The problem in these and many other areas - from Maine's cracky coast through New York's man-made canyons to the rich plains of the Carolinas - is the same: A yearlong drought has depleted water supplies. Unless this fall is unusually wet and this winter especially snowy, hydrologists warn that the entire Eastern Seaboard faces a severe drought early next year.

More than one million suburban public school students in the New York metropolitan area resume classes this week, with school officials confident that they have reached the end of a long drop in enrollment but unsure about how to handle a number of new issues. These include, for many administrators, a more ethnically mixed student body and parents' demands for programs that are more social than scholarly. The suburban school administrators say they have been affected little by the national debate about the quality of public schools because the vast majority of their students already meet or exceed suggested standards for academic performance. Instead, they said, they are dealing with problems such as what to do for ''latchkey children'' whose working parents are not home to care for them when school ends. Educators on Long Island, in Westchester and Rockland Counties, in southwestern Connecticut and northern New Jersey said parents wanted schools to open earlier in the morning and close later at night. Communities, they said, want the schools to search students for drugs, discipline them for drinking, instruct teen-agers about sexuality and warn younger children against sexual abuse.

THE answering machine at Jobtrac for Veterans responds with the opening chords of Bruce Springsteen's anthem for Vietnam Veterans, ''Born in the U.S.A,'' a song that addresses the frustration and disillusionment many veterans have faced trying to find employment. Jobtrac for Veterans, established nine months ago to help alleviate that problem, is part of a more comprehensive job training and placement package run by the County and the Private Industry Council under the Federal Job Training Partnership Act. Its office is in Sunshine Cottage on the Valhalla campus of the County Medical Center, but it may be forced to leave that space in the next few weeks. On this Labor Day, the fate of the Jobtrac for Veterans program is uncertain, even as an effort is under way to increase employment opportunities for Westchester's Vietnam-era veterans by making them a ''protected class,'' thereby eligible for preferential hiring treatment under affirmative action. Such status is already accorded to minorities, women and the disabled and has its greatest impact in Civil Service employment.

WHEN Dorothy Moses began to limp 17 years ago, her doctor handed her a cane and told her to use it till she got better. Fourteen years and many doctors later, the Teaneck resident learned that she had multiple sclerosis. Although there still is no cure for this crippling nerve disease, New Jersey has considerably more to offer multiple sclerosis patients and their families. Two outpatient clinics now serve victims of MS and an internationally known group of researchers at New Jersey Medical School in Newark and the Veterans Administration Medical Center in East Orange are making encouraging progress in identifying its causes and altering its course.

His tennis philosophy, Mats Wilander said, is based on a personality he calls typically Swedish. What this means is that aspiring to be No. 1 in the world is not the magnificent obsession it is for Americans, driving such players as John McEnroe and Jimmy Connors to be better than they ever imagined they could be. For Wilander, it is enough to have played well and to treat his victories like after-dinner mints. He may be the third-seeded player in the United States Open, but if players' attitudes and court surfaces were factored into the rankings, Wilander might always be playing on the outside courts, looking in.

President Reagan, facing growing Congressional pressure to counter the nation's deepening international trade problems, today reiterated his free-trade position and threatened to veto protectionist legislation. In his weekly radio speech, Mr. Reagan virtually threw down the gauntlet before Congress, which has grown angry over the wave of imports that most economists and labor leaders say cost thousands of American jobs every month. Several bills seeking legislation to limit foreign imports and thus reduce the nation's trade deficit are expected to reach the Senate floor next month. U.S. Economic Interest Stressed ''Whether it's tax, trade or farm legislation that comes across my desk, my primary consideration will be whether it is in the long-run economic interest of the United States,'' Mr. Reagan said. ''And any tax hike or spending bill or protectionist legislation that doesn't meet the test of whether it advances America's prosperity must and will be opposed. We must not retreat into the failed policies of the past, whether they be protectionism or higher taxes.''

LONG ISLAND school officials are keeping a watchful eye on Washington as they prepare to open the doors of the local public schools this fall. Parents, teachers and administrators are all looking for new ways to make schools better, a goal embodied in part in the State Board of Regents' action plan to be largely phased in this year. But school officials fear that the pursuit of quality education may suffer hefty budget cuts if the Reagan Administration succeeds in its effort to end the Federal tax deduction for state and local taxes. Long Island schools will receive a $62 million increase in state aid this fall, but local officials say the increase is negligible when compared with the needs of the Island's 121 school districts.

IT is a happy time for public officials, especially those aspiring to higher office, when they see a political issue and a ''good government'' issue coincide. Some key Republicans have long seen such a conjunction in legislative districting practices in Democratic Southern states, which they feel discriminate against both blacks and the G.O.P. Last week, Republican members of Congress and the party's national committee joined with Democrats in filing briefs opposing the Reagan Administration in the first major legal test of the recently amended Voting Rights Act. In saying the Administration had misstated the intent of the act, the legislators, who included Bob Dole, the Senate majority leader, heightened the conflict between the White House's states rights philosophy and the Republican Party's desire to bolster its strength at the local level and broaden its appeal to minority voters.

Within the next five years, Sterling Drug Inc., a worldwide manufacturer and distributor of pharmaceutical and personal-care products, will be leaving the 320,000 square feet it leases on Park Avenue at 40th Street for the new facility it plans to build on a 103-acre country club and golf course in River Vale, N.J. Last month, the company closed on a deal to buy the River Vale Country Club, where it will put up a 450,000-square-foot worldwide headquarters building. Preliminary plans call for the headquarters to be a single structure of modular design that will rise to three and four levels, depending on the property's terrain.