I hardly publish articles written in English, actually I never do if I dont have to. German is my mother tongue and I feel somehow uncomfortable when writing English. Today is a special occasion — as we all know — and another special one as I introduce a letter, written by my dear friend, who was asked by another friend, a English speaking one, to tell him more about the German reunification 20 years ago. Thats why the letter is in English and so I am able to invite also non-German speakers to read this article. When I read the letter for the first time I was very touched and I was not the only one who asked oneself if this piece doesn’t deserve a broader audience. So I decided to ask her to give me permission to publish it here, even though I knew that I will have this long, long interview yesterday and this blog has a strong visual approach. But a blog is always about sharing. So why not share some personal expierience and give it some lines more…

The thing with this letter is, that it is written from the west side of the inner German boarder, and I guess this should be an interesting addition to the article yesterday…

»Can you tell me more about 3.10.?«

This year we celebrate the 20th anniversary of the Berlin wall having come down, which took place on 9th of November 1989. But the government decided some 18 years ago or so to make the 3rd of October the official memorial date, where the legal and monetary reunion took place in 1990 (so actually only 19 years ago).

Thinking about that time still moves me to tears, like yesterday when I passed a sign/memorial on the street on Potsdamer Platz. Also at the moment there are a lot of interviews, clips and original audio-pieces broadcasted on the radio and I am totally cought by that – every year again.
For example a few days ago it was the 20th anniversary of a special occasion in the Prague embassy of Germany where more than 700 refugees were seeking shelter. After more than ten days crumbed together in the garden of the embassy they were allowed to travel to the West. There is a famous audio piece by Genscher, the minister of foreign affairs back then, going something like: “I came to tell you, that today your depart…” and nothing more than incredible screaming was to be heard. Everytime I hear that, and even when I write about that now, I get goose flesh.

It may sound stupid, because especially younger folks don’t quite share my strong feelings about that occasion. But I am old enough to have a clear memory of these days back 20 years ago.
Growing up right at the border in the west – you probably have heard of “Fulda gap”? – where every guest was taken to the border strip, and everybody had relatives in the east, sometimes just few km apart, but unfortunately on the other side. My father is from Berlin, so our family used to travel at least once a year on this long and exhausting journey through the former east by car, waiting for hours on the border, every cm of the car got searched through. I remember sending parcels to the eastern relatives with the classic west stuff – coffee and chocolate – every now and then.

Since the embassy thing in September ’89 it was clear, that there was a change going on, but it still was a big surprise when suddenly on the 9th of November we were able to watch the wall coming down on television – that was a very emotional moment for us eastern Westgermans.

And then suddenly they all came over. We already got a lot of refugees since summer 1989 but then from 10th of November on Fulda was INVADED by Thuringians and Saxonians, being one of the nearest cities.
They all came to pick up their 100 DM “Begrüßungsgeld” (welcoming money), queueing for ages in the freezing cold, with babies and elderly (EVERYbody got 100 DM, y’know)
The city council couldn’t quite cope, so they asked in our nearby school (where I was aged 16) for volunteers to help. So I found myself taking care of the Eastgermans for more than a week providing tea, soup and babyfood.

After some occasional visits I made my first serious steps direction east in 1991 to Weimar to join some fellow architecture students there and from 1993 on studying visual communication at the Bauhaus-University. I ended up living there almost 13 years (with some breaks inbetween in Berlin, The Netherlands and Hamburg).
If I am asked where my hometown is, I tend to say Weimar instead of Fulda because I lived there for the most important part in my life and met most of my best friends there.
And that all would never have been possible without the German reunion. My profession and life would be completely different I guess.

This is, in short, the story of my great emotional involvement with the German reunification. I wish more people would remember these days – and the years (and conditions) before theses days in autumn of 1989.
When I moved far west to Rhineland (Düsseldorf, Cologne area) I was shocked, that most of the people I met there have never ever been in the eastern part of Germany. After all these years! And unfortunately meanwhile a lot of eastern Germans tend to speak about the GDR times as “not all too bad” which is absolutely rubbish. It was a bad, criminal, repressive system. Let us not forget.