Guardian Reports on Both Sides of Berlin

Where you had no money worries
Equal pay for equal work.
For better or worse....the police had an eye on you ... you felt pretty safe...

2 minutes:  You can never forget the past...



The wall is open!

25 Years Since the Fall of the Berlin Wall

Border patrol guards had lost permission to shoot at will at border crossings in the spring of 1989.  This inspired East-Germans to abandon their apartments and risk everything to live elsewhere.  For better or worse, these people felt a need to leave the guided life available to them under Russian influence, and instead, wanted to be in charge of their own futures. 

25 years later, there are plenty of people who miss the security they had under communism.  The term for this is "Nostalgie,"  or nostalgia for the East (Ost).

Differences between the two styles of government are becoming even more clear now, with

• the border disputes between Russia and the Ukraine;
• attacks by radical islamic organizations against capitalist democracies;
• Edward Snowden finding shelter in Russia after his revelations;

25 years ago the threat of losing everything were clear.

Here is a 2 minute news clip, which follows the emotions on both sides of this historical event from the perspective of the Soebel family.  They were on a camping trip in Hungary 25 years ago, read about the offer to pass through a gap in the wall that afternoon on a flier posted to a tree in their campground, and took up the offer!  Guards did not fire upon the picnickers in Hungary, who on the afternoon of August 19, 1989, slipped through a momentarily-opened border with Austria.  Rather than just freeing a handful of citizens, hundreds slipped through that brief gap, setting the tone for what was soon to follow.

http://www.zdf.de/ZDFmediathek/beitrag/video/2220970/25-Jahre-Paneuropaeisc
hes-Picknick#/beitrag/video/2220970/25-Jahre-Paneuropaeisches-Picknick

BERLIN IN PHOTOS TODAY 

20 second video:  Berlin today:


Pilpop filmt Berlin (in Miniatur?)  "Little Big Berlin"


"I dedicate this film to Berlin where I have been living for 19 years now. While the architecture of Berlin is stunningly beautiful, only its inhabitants make Berlin the unique city that it is. In every corner there is something new to discover. And the best thing to do is to film it.
Filmed with my beloved Sony HC9. Edited with Sony Vegas Pro 9.The miniature effect is called tilt-shift, which originates from a particular lens that was used to photograph architecture. The miniature effect is a by-product of that. It can also be achieved by digital postprocessing.
Music: "Hungarian Rhapsody No. 2" by Franz Lisz "
-- Does life in Berlin seem that much different than our own?  Different in which ways?


All sorts of press infos regarding the Fall of the Berlin Wall can be found here: 
HIER GIBT ES ALLERLEI PRESSEMATERIAL ZUM MAUERFALL

URI German Literature and Film Event Monday Apr 14

I N V I T A T I O N The GERMAN section of the Language Department is very pleased to invite you to an exceptional public  Reading and Screening of the works of German writer JUREK BECKER“THE WALL” and “WHILE ALL GERMANS SLEEP” Mon, Apr. 14, at 4 PM, Hoffman Room (SWAN Hall) Jurek Becker (1937-1997), one of the most important (East) German authors of the 20th century, was born in Poland in 1937. As a child he lived in the Jewish ghetto of Łodz, Poland, and survived the Ravensbrück and Sachsenhausen concentration camps. His novel Jacob the Liar, published in 1969, established his reputation worldwide and was made into two movies. Many of Becker's novels, short stories and scripts for television and cinema productions focus on explorations of Jewish identity.  Christine Becker will read from the short story collection The Wall which is a new, brief collection of stories by Becker that have either never been translated into English or published in the USA in book form before (Arcade Publishing on May 6, 2014), and she will introduce the film While All Germans Sleep (Director: Frank Beyer, screenplay: Jurek Becker, Germany, 1994, color, 72 min., with Engl. subtitles) For any questions please contact anettgeithner@mail.uri.edu We are very much looking forward to seeing you! --- CAN ANYONE JOIN THEM / US --  shortly after school a week from Monday ?

Warum ist die Mauer am 9. November gefallen?

Hier spricht Guenter Schabowski, und er hat keine Idee was seine Worte loslassen werden:



Und hier:  50 Hours Which Changed the World

This wall will remain standing Even 50 and also 100 years from now will .
More people had deserted East Germany (230,000 -- through Prague) in the past year (1988) than in the year prior to the building of the Berlin Wall (1960) -- something which of course had been the cause of the building of it in the first place.



4 Min.    Demonstrations; Masses flee the DDR through Hungary
13 Min.  Guenter Schabowski's press conference from 9. November 1989:  The border crossings are all open...  ,,sofort!"  --  YIKES!   (Check out the handwritten notes.  Perhaps written by Egon Krenz, General Secretary, DDR?)
19:45 Min.   7:30 pm news report:  Travel permits are no longer required...
26 Min.   West German politicians react to the news spontaneously
37 Min.   Sonnenallee opens
49 Min.   Song inside the DDR behind the wall:  ,,Auf der Mauer, auf der Lauer sitzt 'ne kleine Wanze"
51 Min.   Joy and disbelief
1:21:  West German police guard the wall
1:50:  500 armed soldiers arrive to reverse the course
(Yes, there's a lot of back-pedalling that goes on, but Gorbachew does eventually congratulate Egon Krenz for having the guts to find such an answer to the people's passion.)

Hier ist Englich Kommentar vom Tom Brokaw ueber sein Interview mit Schabowski am 9. Nov, gleich nach dem Pressekonferenz:  "... one of the most memorable nights off my life."