Hello, welcome to Focus.
November 9, 1989. Do you remember?
Europe and the entire world celebrate
the 20th anniversary of the fall of the Berlin Wall.
We went to Berlin to collect the stories of those who risked their lives for freedom,
of those who helped the people who wanted to cross the Wall
and of those who painted it.
We went to Hungary to trace the first opening of the Iron Curtain in 1989.
Let's go.
On the night of 9 November, I was at the restaurant.
Nobody had heard anything.
Around midnight we noticed Trabis in front of the door,
which was pretty unusual.
That's when we telephoned the radio to find out what was going on.
And they said the Wall had fallen.
Six adults drowned whilst trying to cross the river.
Four children from West Berlin drowned
when they fell in the river while playing.
Since they fell on the East Berlin side, people weren't allowed to help them.
They drowned in front of the firemen, their parents and all the bystanders.
It's a picture that travelled around the world.
The border soldier Conrad Schumann fled two days after the wall was built here,
showing that even those securing the border with guns
were not in favour of the border.
In West Berlin I belonged to one of the biggest escape organisations,
of the Free University of Berlin.
This group built underground tunnel systems to East Berlin,
counterfeited passports and converted cars.
In 6 years the group helped 950 people escape the GDR.
It's in 1984. You can see Kiddy with... -With an air rifle.
Standing in front of the Wall and painting it meant we were in East Berlin
because the Wall was built about five metres from the actual border,
whose boundaries were always marked with big signs
warning you that you were leaving the American sector.
It's important as a damning reminder of this separation.
It's a pictorial protest against walls past and present,
be it in Korea, Mexico, America, Palestine or Israel.
Walls still separate people everywhere. They should all be painted away.
These paintings are a sort of alibi to say to those who never knew that period:
"Look at the Wall. It wasn't any fun living in a city divided by a wall."
"Above all else don't make the same mistakes made by your elders."
"Look at the Wall. It was truly shameful."
A report by Julie Martin.
Joachim Zeller, you were seven years old
when you came from Poland to the German Democratic Republic in 1959,
two years before the Berlin Wall was built.
Did you have a feeling of being imprisoned even as a child?
Yes, you couldn't help it.
We were living in Luckenwalde,
and every time we wanted to see our relatives in Berlin,
we had to pass through checkpoints even into East Berlin.
Those were redundant from 1961,
but from then we were no longer able to travel into the other half of the city.
So one really did have a sense of being imprisoned by the Wall.
You moved to East Berlin later
to go to university and embark on an academic career.
You actually lived right next to the Wall.
What was that like?
It happened because of an error by the authorities.
Normally, people weren't given flats next to the Wall,
but due to an exchange of flats,
and because the border control official was away,
I was assigned a flat there.
You couldn't choose your own place.
We lived in the last house on the Eastern section of Brunnenstraße.
From there we could see Bernauer Straße in the West.
We were directly above the Death Strip.
It was very unnerving to see
how the border regime was perfected year after year.
Houses were crumbling all over the GDR and new construction was impossible,
but construction work on the Wall was ceaseless
until the demarcation line was complete.
I think people can do without this kind of security,
and thankfully, the system doesn't exist any more.
It suppressed people who simply wanted to move freely
and who desired freedom of expression.
The developments which Ms Göncz referred to
culminated at the end of 1989.
One very important factor was the Solidarność movement in Poland.
On June 4th 1989, elections were held in Poland,
even though they weren't 100% free yet.
And in Hungary it was very obvious
that people wanted to liberate themselves from the old socialist system.
Also, we mustn't forget that the Soviet Union was on the brink of collapse.
So it was a combination of different factors.
At the same time, the GDR had a political leadership
which failed to recognise the signs of the time
and which tried to continue on a political course
that had already proved a fundamental failure.
Young people especially wanted to get rid of the system,
but also older people, who had lived under the regime for a long time,
began to say that enough was enough and that it was time for change.
The escape was made with 50 cars.
It was organised like a treasure hunt.
No one knew the whole escape route in advance.
They always only revealed the next meeting point.
The final meeting point was Csorna
and that's where we started to move in queues,
honking and driving through red lights.
We had to stick together, we were afraid of being caught.
We arrived at the Klingenbach border checkpoint,
and from then on the escape fortunately went through successfully.
We arrived at the border and it was very hectic, we panicked,
because the border was closed and we didn't know
how the Hungarian border guards would react.
We left our cars and took the essentials and headed towards the border.
We saw that the border was closed and were afraid we might not succeed
or that the Hungarians would stop us again.
It wasn't clear at all whether we would succeed.
There were only three possible solutions to this problem.
Firstly, to send the refugees back to the GDR.
Secondly, to allow the East Germans to stay in Hungary.
Thirdly, let them leave.
Letting them live in Hungary could have been a temporary measure,
but one must know that those people didn't want to stay in Hungary.
There was only one possible solution - let them travel via Austria
to the Federal Republic of Germany.
The domino effect saw the Communist states fall one by one.
First East Germany, then Czechoslovakia,
finally Romania and Bulgaria.
This made the process of European unification possible.
We are very proud that Hungary was the courageous country,
with brave politicians and a brave population
who took this historic decision
and that we were the country that cut the Iron Curtain for the first time.
This piece of barbed wire separated two worlds.
And 20 years on it's as it always should have been.
Thanks to the Hungarians, their courage to take this step,
because that was not a matter of course.
Starting a career in science wasn't particularly easy in the GDR.
But the country needed skilled people,
so getting onto an ideologically neutral math and science course was possible.
However, for me as a Catholic, things proved more difficult.
Because of my faith I didn't participate in state rituals like the Jugendweihe,
which made life quite difficult for me.
Somehow I was always lucky that things worked out in the end.
But in order to really climb the career ladder
and to move up the ranks within the system,
you had to be a member of the party or of an organisation subordinate to it.
But maybe you didn't want such a career anyway?
No, I didn't.
We have to face up to the fact that a dictatorship
can be a very convenient system for some people.
Everything is organised for you,
and whatever is regarded as essential for everyday living,
is provided by the system.
If you forget about freedom, democracy and self-determination
and concentrate purely on your everyday existence,
then you can have quite a good life even under a dictatorship.
And...
There were many people in the GDR
who openly declared their belief in the system.
They not only had a good life,
they were also convinced that socialism represented the future of mankind.
One can only imagine the disappointment of those
who saw socialism and communism almost as a form of religion
and who were preaching hatred against the capitalist system.
Children were taught in play groups and schools
to hate capitalism and the class enemy.
If pursued over several decades, this sort of education leaves its marks.
So it's no surprise that people distance themselves from the new system.
And especially when problems occur
and when the promised prosperity doesn't materialise immediately,
people will draw comparisons:
'Things were a lot easier in the past,
now we have to fend for ourselves.'
Many older people, in particular those in their 50s,
weren't given a chance to establish themselves within the new system
and to make use of the opportunities it offered.
This obviously led to disillusionment.
First of all, no political system lasts forever.
But while it does exist, it needs to evolve and change.
Young people sense this.
They want to free themselves from those who tell them how to organise their lives,
they look for new ways.
Also, we shouldn't forget how much has changed over the last 20 years.
Today's globalised world is very different from the world of 1989,
which was defined by the dualism between East and West,
between socialism and capitalism.
Today we face different challenges,
such as climate change and environmental problems.
Our lives are defined by the internet.
In light of all these changes, we have to re-think politics
and question if we have made the right choices so far.
We are very fortunate
to have a community of states in the form of the European Union,
which provides us with the platform to do this,
and which is free of war and conflict.
That's all for this week. Bye.
