At the Berlin Wall. November 9th, 1989-2024 by Rosie Goldsmith
Rosie Goldsmith on the 35th anniversary of the fall of the Berlin Wall.
(From Rosie’s speech given to guests of the German Embassy in London)
Where were you when the Berlin Wall fell?
We all experience milestones, but some, like the Berlin Wall, were both landmark global events and life-changing personal events.
The Berlin Wall changed my life.
Everything I had done before November 9th 1989 led up to that date, and everything since has been marked by it.
In early summer 1989, I was living – rather aimlessly – in the USA but felt a strong pull back home to Europe. That summer I watched on TV as 1000’s of East Europeans fled across borders and East Germans demonstrated in Leipzig and Berlin. I needed to be there, to participate, or, as I wrote in my diary, “to be caught up in the flow of things.”
My fascination for Berlin and Germany had begun way before 1989, and I started documenting this in my diaries from age eleven. That summer my family drove from home in Cornwall to a campsite near Venice where we met a family from Munich – and they taught me my first German words. We visited them, the Alte Pinakothek – and Dachau. I understood little at that age, couldn’t conceive what a concentration camp was, but felt that early urge to understand this vast, complex, troubled and exhilarating country. Later, at my comprehensive school in Cornwall, I started learning German. I had German boyfriends, lived for years in Cologne, travelled across the GDR and Eastern Europe, studied German at university, was overawed by meeting Christa Wolf and Wolf Biermann and Heiner Müller and Günter Grass and Petra Kelly and John le Carré and Ian McEwan and Maik Hamburger – and many more. I was hooked.
Seeing Europe on fire that summer of 1989, and Berlin at the heart of it, I had what I can only call a revelation: I had found my calling. I moved from New Jersey to London with a knapsack on my back (well, not much more!) and rang many doorbells. The BBC – miraculously – opened its door.
I had always been fascinated by journalism and was a devoted BBC radio listener from a young age, but surely a BBC career was out of reach for a shy young girl from Cornwall.
But here I was in 1989 on that doorstep with – I felt – something to offer: enthusiasm, and knowledge of languages and of Europe. I could learn on the job. The stars were aligned. In the autumn of 1989, BBC Radio 4 was setting up a brand-new European affairs programme with the title ‘Eurofile’, in response to the political earthquakes on the continent and I became a reporter and producer on that programme. By September 1989 I was in Yugoslavia, in October Poland, then Hungary, then November in Berlin and Prague, then Bucharest, then Tirana, then Sofia. The walls came tumbling down across Europe, revolutions in their wake, and I was there. I’d been thrown in the deep end of a vast media swimming pool, hardly able to swim but resurfaced months later exhausted but proud.
On November 9th 1989 – to our surprise, the Berlin Wall was breached. I flew there as soon as possible. Two days later our first BBC Eurofile programme went on the air.
“Everyone who knows and loves Berlin or is curious about German history feels an inner need to be here.” I wrote in my diary when I arrived: “I am so moved, surprised, to see the Wall in its new state, with holes, gaps and chiselled-off concrete. It is humbly beautiful, hiding a monstrosity, a No-Man’s-Land behind it…..”
A few days later I wrote:
“I visited Potsdamer Platz today. First thing that struck me was the sound of hammers and chisels! All along the western stretch of the Wall, where you see most of the graffiti – which is truly beautiful in its brightness and urgency and chaos and crazy spontaneity – there are Mauerspechte (Wall sparrows) pecking away. An unforgettable sound – great for radio ofcourse! Enterprising GDR-citizens cross over, hammer off some chunks of graffitied Wall and sell them… The tourist trade is doing very well out of the Mauer – there are already special publications, stamps, postcards, T-shirts and souvenirs. We all want to possess a piece of history.”
It’s worth remembering that in 1989 we had no mobile phones, no digital recorders or cameras, no Ryanair or EasyJet flights to Berlin, few hotels, no Prêt-a-Manger. My diet consisted mainly of chocolate, biscuits and Nescafe – and gut-rotting amounts of plum brandy offered by every interviewee at all times of the day. Everyone smoked. My sleep has never recovered. Sometimes it took days to get somewhere or hours to get a story on the air – if the telephone landlines were working. Every day, it seemed, came some new revelation – or revolution. I lived in a state of perpetual euphoria. The Cold War was over, Europe, we thought, was free. Fellow journalists, cutting our teeth on those stories, became friends. Unbreakable bonds formed. I met my husband Max, also a German speaker, at the BBC – we were thrown together covering the Wall and the Wende. Berlin was our drug.
Over my two decades at the BBC, I made several programmes from Berlin and Germany. I covered reunification, the rise of the right in the former East, arts funding in Dresden, Berlin architecture, the rebuilding of Rostock, Stasi files, Wendeliteratur, the East Side Gallery, I was there for the 5th, 10th, 15 and 20th anniversaries of the fall of the Wall; by the 25th and 30th I had left the BBC and was working freelance in London, collaborating with the Goethe-Institut, the German Embassy and the British Council; talking at schools and universities about the importance of learning German and modern languages and upholding culture in the new united Europe. I created the European Literature Network to promote the literatures and languages of Europe. I published magazines of European literature in English, including The German Riveter, to mark the 30th anniversary of the fall of the Wall. Until the pandemic closed all borders, I visited Berlin every year. Brexit broke my heart.
Several friends have written books about Berlin and, when I finally get down to writing my novel, Berlin will ofcourse be a protagonist. Germany – past, present and future – is my internal magnet and compass. This is what I wrote in 1989:
“Trying to understand why East Germany existed, the division of Germany, the cruel construction of the Berlin Wall, the evil and suffering of the Holocaust, how the far right can possibly rise again, as well as being captivated by German Expressionism and the Enlightenment, by Goethe, Thomas Mann and Kafka: engaging with them gives my life purpose and meaning.”
Which means I’ll still be there at the 40th, 50th anniversaries, and beyond.
This summer I visited Berlin to host a conference – coincidentally, on Nazi propaganda and the far right. It was my first visit since before the pandemic. I’d missed Berlin, missed my drug, missed charting its progress as I had done without fail nearly every year for 40 years, before and after the Wall. I made my usual pilgrimage to Potsdamer Platz – and there they still were by the station: the 4 graffitied slabs of Wall, like ancient standing stones, dwarfed by the surrounding skyscrapers, a reminder of another era – and a warning: Never Again.
In December 1989, after our first BBC Eurofile series ended, and after I’d been months on the road, from Berlin to Bucharest, I wrote in my diary:
“What an amazing time. Our first programme began with the fall of the Wall, our last with the fall of Ceausescu and the opening of the Brandenburg Gate. The past 2 months have been the most extraordinary of my whole life – and I have been a witness. Maybe it has not sunk in yet; maybe it is simply because it felt right for me to be there – it certainly did… The whole of Europe is shivering, rippling, shuddering with enthusiasm, joy and fear. It is the most wonderful time to be alive.”
By Rosie Goldsmith
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