#flashback89: Memories of the Fall of the Wall - Part I

The memories come from the children and (young) adults of the time. They are told by the staff of the German Digital Library and their families or were sent by email and on social media channels. They are published anonymously.

On the 35th anniversary of the fall of the Berlin Wall, we would like to give you the memories to read again and ask you: How do you remember this time? What story would you like to tell?
 

Part I: The children remember

 

Alf, historical times and an orange

‘The day the Wall came down, I was ten and wanted to watch Alf on ZDF. My father explained to me why that wasn't possible and why I should watch what was on instead. ‘You're living in historical times,’ he said. A few weeks later, we drove to Thuringia to visit our relatives and I was disappointed that the border guard didn't want the orange I offered her through the car window. I can still see her agonised smile in front of me. And I think of my father, who probably also smiled a lot at the border.’

Bathtub, baking cakes and a trip to Berlin

‘Thursday, 9 November 1989, I'm a happy child; just twelve. Friday, 10 November 1989. School's out. Closing time. I'm too small. Stay with grandma. Mum, Dad and D want to take the train to Berlin. Grandma is scared. She calls out of the window on the way to the station: ‘And what if they close the border again?’ ‘Not now!’, or something like that, Daddy's voice echoes back through the new-build blocks. Saturday, 11 November 1989, bath tub, baking cakes, playing cards, listening to Deutschlandfunk, I think. Because that's how it often is when I'm at Grandma's. No news from Berlin; how could I, without a phone? Sunday, 12 November 1989, everyone back home, full of stories, tired and happy. Grandma is smiling. And I'm a happy child.’

Special food, Smurf class and lobster on New Year's Eve

‘I was only four years old when the Peaceful Revolution led to the fall of the Berlin Wall and can therefore only associate certain changes in my childhood perception with the event in retrospect. First of all, renaming everywhere: the kindergarten suddenly became the ‘Gorbitzer Früchtchen’ instead of the 138th kindergarten Gorbitz-West, I was not in the pioneer class but in the 1st Smurf class and without changing my nursery, I lived in Lise-Meitner-Straße instead of Olga-Körner-Straße. Burying the SED tone. Halls instead of shops where you went shopping. A land of milk and honey and crowds of people helping themselves with trolleys, for which a basket was previously sufficient. Everything smelled sweet and synthetic - especially the new car, which always made me sick to my stomach. I had long preferred the rattling and stinking of our Trabant. On the other hand, I always recognised the Renault well in the streets full of uniform Trabant corpses that had become worthless and ownerless.

Particularly pleasing: playgrounds were built everywhere - from sanded wood with slides and ropes and on sand! One block of 4 on a slab (WBS 70 classic). Before, there were only these rusty poles in the kindergarten courtyard. The nursery school teachers were always pretty sure that my ‘yoghurt with the corner’ was spoilt and disposed of it. My mother later told me that Dresden was particularly poorly supplied with such ‘special foods’ in the last years of the GDR, so many people simply didn't know how sour but safe yoghurt tasted. On New Year's Eve 1989, we had lobster and snails - simply because it worked and there was a lot of curiosity; nobody wanted to eat it.’

To Part II: The (young) adults remember...

At the beginning of #rückblende89 - a (temporary?) conclusion and many thanks for the stories (published in January 2020)
 

Would you like to tell us a memory of the fall of the Wall? Write to us at kommunikation [at] deutsche-digitale-bibliothek.de (we are working on a third part...)