Artie Mead: So, hey guys. Welcome back to The History Buff. We’re here to have another conversation in this fifth and final episode of the Berlin Wall series. For this episode, I am joined by Joerg, a fellow History Buff and also fellow tour guide here in Berlin. And we’re going to discuss the fall of the Wall and its consequences. So, hello Joerg.
Joerg Schoepfel: Yeah, hi Artie, hello everybody.
Artie Mead: Would you like to just quickly introduce yourself to everyone?
Joerg Schoepfel: Yeah, well, my introduction as a tour guide is I’m a Berliner since 1988. At that time, we had two Berlins, you know, so I was coming from West Germany near Frankfurt, going to West Berlin. Only Spice did different. And yeah, Berlin was calling me. I mean, I was not the first one, you know, David Bowie was before me, and I followed up his traces. I felt like I’m not the guy for career, I’m more for culture. And so I had a good time. One year later, it didn’t matter any longer, and the Wall fell. I had interesting 90s. It was perfect timing, I would say. For me, the time I would like to go back to most, that and 20s Berlin, personally. Yeah, 20s I missed, but 90s I’ve been here.
Artie Mead: And have you been in Berlin that whole time since then?
Joerg Schoepfel: Yeah, more or less. I travelled two times for half a year to Africa, but I spent most of my time in Berlin.
Artie Mead: Nice. Yeah, no, and I can definitely relate. I just this winter went to South America, and it’s something that I can get used to—spending the winter somewhere hotter. So, yeah, throughout this series about the Berlin Wall, we’ve discussed the reasons behind the building of the Wall, the building of the Wall itself, and its subsequent generations. We’ve talked about the escapes, the escape attempts, the deaths that took place at the Wall. And in the last episode with Ryan, we talked about life on either side of the Wall.
In this episode, Joerg is here with me, someone who was actually there that night, that fateful night in November 1989—which is obviously quite good cred to be able to be talking about that stuff, someone who was actually there. And yeah, he’s here to help me sort of discuss the event itself, also what led up to the event, and also the consequences that came from the event, both positive and negative. Yeah, of course, there are two sides to this story.
Obviously, you know, the fall of the Berlin Wall stands as probably one of the most pivotal moments in global history because it symbolised the end of an era—the Cold War. And obviously, the stark divide between East and West was epitomised. And so it kind of meant that the divide between the East and West was nowhere more palpable than in Berlin. And so, when the Berlin Wall crumbled, it marked the end of this defining epoch. So, let’s start with, I guess, the background to the fall, which we could start with Gorbachev. I guess that’s really where the fall of the Wall started, yeah?
Joerg Schoepfel: Kind of. I mean, let’s say it’s a lot about the economy, you know, so life in East and West was very different, and it was getting more and more different over the years. And we had in East Germany the “Valley of the Unknown.” You ever heard of that? Around Dresden, they couldn’t receive Western TV.
Artie Mead: Oh, okay.
Joerg Schoepfel: So these guys were, let’s say, supposed to know less, but all the others—a lot of antenna signals were going directly to the GDR to spoil the population over there and let them see how good life in the West is. You know that?
Artie Mead: Yes. No, I’ve heard about that. I’ve heard about the antennas. Yes.
Joerg Schoepfel: It’s a lot of propaganda. And so people in the East felt like, “That’s a bad system,” not only by political freedom but also by the chances, the possibilities you have in life. I think that’s a very important point. And this East German system was over-aging.
Artie Mead: Well, the thing is, people forget that in the 70s, the GDR had actually had an economic boom. Well, maybe not a boom in the sort of Western sense of the word, but it had good rising living standards and had a period of, you know, economic and political stability. People were content. But I guess, yeah, that kind of all changed in the 80s, along with most of the other Eastern Bloc states, I suppose.
Joerg Schoepfel: Yeah, and also a growing awareness that they want to participate in decisions. It was not automatically that people wanted to reunite with West Germany. I wouldn’t say that. A lot of people had the idea, “We want changes in our country.”
Artie Mead: Exactly. And that’s what I discussed in the last episode with Ryan—that I made a film about the GDR, and for it, we interviewed some punks from the GDR. And they said, you know, people think that we wanted to destroy the GDR. We didn’t. We just wanted socialism—just not that socialism.
Joerg Schoepfel: Exactly, yeah. The fun thing about Gorbachev, he had been here a couple of months before the Wall fell. And you know, the situation was a bit bizarre and annoying for the leaders of the GDR, because first of all, Gorbachev was way younger than most of the GDR leaders, like Honecker and so on. He was a new generation. He saw changes have to come. I have to do something. And on the street, when he was passing in East Berlin, they all were crying, “Gorby, you’re our man!”
Artie Mead: Yeah.
Joerg Schoepfel: And the leaders were pretty annoyed, you know. They were more hoping that Gorbachev would allow them to use violence against the growing masses of demonstrators.
Artie Mead: Exactly, yeah, because he gets in in 1984. And yeah, as you say, he doesn’t have a very good relationship with the SED, the East German Communist Party old guard—or pretty much all of the Politburo. The decision-making body of the Communist Party is full of dinosaurs. I think they call them “Betonköpfe”—so the concrete heads, basically dinosaurs who were refusing to change and, I guess, specifically move with the times. Because Gorbachev was implementing these new policies, perestroika and glasnost—so perestroika meaning restructuring and glasnost meaning transparency.
Joerg Schoepfel: Yeah.
Artie Mead: And so he’s doing these in the Soviet Union. But also, a key part of his reforms is that he is not involving the Soviet Union in the affairs of satellite states. Because it’s important to remember that the GDR was never a part of the Soviet Union. Like Poland, like Hungary, like all of these other Warsaw Pact states that weren’t part of the Soviet Union, they were obviously the Soviet Union’s sphere of influence. In reality, a lot of the big decisions were made by Moscow. But they did have their own government, their own money—so they had some semblance of independence. But, you know, until Gorbachev came to power, a lot of the people in the top Communist Parties in all of these states would always look to Moscow for guidance.
Joerg Schoepfel: Exactly.
Artie Mead: But obviously, when Gorbachev came in, he said, “No, you guys are on your own. You’re not getting any more money. You can do what you want.” So, and I think that was sort of really where the, I guess you could say, the cracks started.
Joerg Schoepfel: Yeah. And he had a difficult counterpart on the U.S. side, Ronald Reagan. He was more of a Betonkopf—a concrete head—on the other side, but he managed. I mean, he saw, “I have to change things.” And at the same time, don’t forget, we had a strong peace movement, and that started in West Germany, but it was also going over to East Germany.
You must know, the battlefield of World War III was both Germanys.
Artie Mead: Yeah, specifically Berlin, right?
Joerg Schoepfel: No, but, you know, the French missiles were going to West Germany. The idea was the Soviets would overrun the West German positions, and we’d beat them there. Meaning all life in West Germany is…deleted.
Artie Mead: I know. Oh yeah, because of the student protest movement against the placement of American weapons.
Joerg Schoepfel: Exactly. The INF agreement later on. And I think that also created something in the GDR. They had a movement called Schwerter zu Pflugscharen. It’s like “swords into ploughshares.” Basically, the system was—you know the difference in the 80s, in the late 80s, between a West German and an East German going to a shop?
Artie Mead: No.
Joerg Schoepfel: The West German asked, “How much is it?” And the East German asked, “Do you have a supply?” You queued up in any queue without knowing what’s at the end. So that was really annoying. Bananas, oranges, nothing was there.
Artie Mead: Oh, well, unless you were in the Politburo.
Joerg Schoepfel: Yeah, of course.
Artie Mead: Some are more equal than others.
Joerg Schoepfel: Yeah, some are more equal. Exactly. That’s the thing. And well, it’s important to remember that with the economics, that’s kind of the thing—people in these communist states did see that the people at the top of the Communist Party, they were this other…you know, there was still an elite under communism. So, yeah, as you said, Reagan also took over. And the thing is, Reagan and Gorbachev had a fairly good relationship.
Joerg Schoepfel: Yeah, kind of. I mean, I remember watching when they finally signed the contract in Reykjavik—the INF disarmament—I think that was ’86.
Artie Mead: It was signed on the 8th of December, 1987.
Joerg Schoepfel: Okay, yes, you see? And, very funny, small episode—Gorbachev shook hands with one of the servants in the hotel, and Reagan was going straight. You know, communist leader is greeting working-class people. But finally, they could get along.
Artie Mead: Yeah. Margaret Thatcher said he was someone she could do business with. So that obviously shows that he was really quite breaking with the communist past—the fact that he was doing business with these two very capitalist world leaders.
Joerg Schoepfel: Exactly. Awareness: economy is bad, and it doesn’t go on with all this armament stuff. So, that gave an impulse, and we had a strong, later on, disarmament movement in East Berlin as well. Right, they were using this blue pigeon, the peace pigeon, and so on.
Artie Mead: A lot of people still have that today, don’t they?
Joerg Schoepfel: Yeah, I see it sometimes in the demos.
Artie Mead: Yeah.
Joerg Schoepfel: It was one of the carriers. It was the church, in a way. Also, a lot of people didn’t believe in God, but they were sticking towards the church and assembling around there.
Artie Mead: Yeah.
Joerg Schoepfel: And the second thing—I think most people lost hope. These dinosaurs will never disappear. So there was no change inside, which is different towards the Soviet Union where Gorbachev was showing that change can happen.
Artie Mead: No. And there are famous images of Gorbachev, you know, walking around on the streets of Moscow and just talking to people. And that was a very powerful image because it was this guy who was meant to be the big leader, who occupied the same office that Stalin had—this big, scary dictator. But he was just going out into the streets and talking to people, hearing their opinions. And don’t underestimate how much that had a very positive effect on his image as a reformer.
Also, of course, you have other movements like, yeah, Solidarność in Poland. And this was because of the economic struggles in Poland. People became increasingly frustrated with the government’s economic policies because, under the communist system, it largely prioritised heavy industry at the expense of consumer needs. And you had all of these various strikes. I think it basically grew into a sort of a wider political movement. And so, with all of this going on across the border, people in the GDR are sort of looking across and being like, “Yeah, no.” And so it’s kind of, I guess, a movement that ends up sweeping the whole of Eastern Europe, really. And that obviously, yeah, seeps into the GDR—into East Germany—and you have the beginnings of the demonstrations.
Joerg Schoepfel: Exactly. I mean, one more thing. You had already the “goulash communism” in Hungary, which had a half-open border towards Austria. And so there had been slight things, yeah. And I mean, I know a guy who was one of those who occupied the German embassy in ’88. And he wanted to get out of the country. He was not a hardcore capitalist or whatever, but he’s typical of that time—very young, with his wife. And they both thought—
Artie Mead: “This will never end.”
Joerg Schoepfel: Yes, exactly. And that’s something important. That was really a sort of turning point. Because all the way through 1988 and 1989, East Germans became pretty sick, obviously, of this system that they thought was never going to change. And so, yeah, people started—because obviously, Czechoslovakia and Hungary were a part of the Eastern Bloc—it was quite easy for them to just cross the border because it wasn’t a closed border; it was fellow Eastern Bloc.
So, yeah, during the summer holidays of 1989, several hundred East Germans sought refuge in the West German embassy in Prague. Czechoslovakia dismantled their part of the Iron Curtain, and this meant that obviously these Germans then tried to go around it to the West. But then they kind of put up border fencing again to stop people from coming. So then that’s when people started seeking refuge in the West German embassy in Prague. And yeah, it swelled to several thousand at one point.
Joerg Schoepfel: Yeah. And it was quite dramatic—all camping, all just camping outside.
Artie Mead: The embassy?
Joerg Schoepfel: Yeah. I mean, it was very dense. It was the territory of the embassy, finally. So in the beginning, it looked like, “Ooh, this will be very stiff.” I think it was solved with money, like all the time, you know. West Germany bought them out.
Artie Mead: Well, yeah. So there were numerous diplomatic negotiations. And then finally, it was brought to a compromise, and the refugees were allowed to emigrate to West Germany. And there’s a very famous video of Hans-Dietrich Genscher—the West German foreign minister—announcing from the balcony of the West German embassy that these East Germans camping out there will be free to go to the West. But I think you’re right; they were probably sold.
Joerg Schoepfel: Yeah. Genscher was, by the way, driven by his own biography as he was coming from the city of Halle. And I think he even escaped. And so that was his big mission, right?
Artie Mead: That was his big mission. Yeah. And he doesn’t even finish his speech on the balcony because I think he just says that they’re going to leave. And when he says, “Your departure…” or something like that, then they all just erupt in cheers—a very emotional roar from the crowd. And so obviously they had to travel via the GDR, via East Germany, because the East German government wanted to make a sort of example of them and say, “We’re going to expel you.” And so they travelled in sealed trains.
Joerg Schoepfel: Yeah, it was trains. And of course, some people felt like…
Artie Mead: Yeah.
Joerg Schoepfel: But finally, that was killed before.
Artie Mead: Exactly. And to be honest, I think this ended up working against the GDR government. Because I think this whole thing—seeing this train leave—it was like, “Oh, okay, so it is actually possible.”
Joerg Schoepfel: Yeah. But on the other side, you know, that was not the first case. My mother-in-law, she was trying to escape over the green border between Hungary and Yugoslavia in 1971. She was caught in Yugoslavia. Officially that country was neutral…
Artie Mead: Pushbacks?
Joerg Schoepfel: Oh, okay. So they sent her back to Hungary, where she was in prison for a couple of weeks, and then sent to the Stasi prison here, Hohenschönhausen, where she spent more than a year. And then she was released.
Artie Mead: She spent more than a year there?
Joerg Schoepfel: Yeah, that was a normal penalty for illegal—
Artie Mead: Illegal?
Joerg Schoepfel: Yeah.
Artie Mead: Border crossings.
Joerg Schoepfel: But then, yeah, a couple of years later, she applied to leave the country, which many people did, and that was a way to get out of the GDR.
Artie Mead: Oh. And then, yeah, the West German government would buy you.
Joerg Schoepfel: Yeah. You had some horrible years—bad situation, always interviews, not a nice flat, no career—and then finally, if you insisted, you were bought out.
Artie Mead: After this, in 1989, the GDR closes the border with Czechoslovakia to try and kind of stem the problem, but I think it ends up just making it worse. And by this point, East Germans are, you know, calling out louder and louder for democratic reforms. That’s free travel and—well, two major things—free travel and free and fair elections. That’s the two things they’re mostly calling for. So these huge protests are going on across the country.
Okay, they started in Leipzig, but now they’re going on all over the country. By this point, by October 1989, you have demonstrations often in Alexanderplatz, which is the central square in East Berlin. And they’re actually now starting to be attended by quite high-ranking Communist officials, I think, who also want reform. And so the pressure grows and grows. And it leads to, on the 18th of October, the resignation of the long-term leader of the GDR, leader of the Communist Party and leader of the GDR, Erich Honecker.
And I think after this, people were like, “Oh, okay, maybe things will change.” But then as soon as Egon Krenz became the leader, people realised, “Oh.” Because he said he was a reformer, but I don’t think he really was. He was still part of the old guard. So you still have, you know, lots of voices calling out for change, for reform. They don’t believe that Egon Krenz is going to deliver it. And to be honest, by then, events are moving too quickly.
And then on the 7th of November, because it’s still spiralling out of the government’s control, the entire GDR government resigned. So that was 7th of November. You had a new government that was installed quickly, whose job was to basically try and sort this situation out. So they meet two days later, on the 9th of November, to draft an emergency travel law. So they draft this law. However, the man whose job it was to then go and present it to the press was not present at the meeting.
I always say that he was outside having a cigarette, but I don’t know if that’s actually true. I don’t think we actually really know.
Joerg Schoepfel: We don’t know.
Artie Mead: Him having a nice cigarette is just—it’s quite funny to imagine him just sort of outside while his colleagues are inside discussing this law. But anyway, he then goes inside and is given a load of very hastily scribbled notes on what the law would be, and he is sent immediately before the press.
Okay, so Günter Schabowski, he’s the spokesman for the government. This is not the only reform he is announcing. He’s announcing loads of different reforms, and he puts this emergency travel law to the back of his press pack and he forgets about it. So, and then he gets to the press conference, which is full of not just German journalists—you have journalists from all over the world.
He’s reading out the reforms, and apparently the journalists that were there were actually quite bored because I think he doesn’t read out this travel restriction. It’s only at the very end that he announces, and it’s actually after being asked specifically by a journalist about this travel law. So he’s reading out all of these rather sort of dull reforms.
And then after almost an hour, an Italian journalist stands up and asks him, like, “I thought there was also meant to be some sort of travel…a lifting of the travel restrictions.” And he then gets out the travel law that’s been very hastily drafted. And he looks at it, he puts his glasses down, and he’s like, “Yeah. Okay. So private travel to foreign countries can be applied for without any prerequisites. So reasons for travel and family relations permits are issued at short notice.”
He is then asked a question by a journalist, which was, “Well, okay, when is this going to come into effect?” Because he hadn’t actually said when the law was going to come into effect. Now, because he wasn’t at the meeting, he obviously didn’t know when the law was going to be. So he consulted his notes, but it didn’t say on the notes when the law was going to come into effect. So I think he just improvised, really, and was just like—and what he said turned out to be one of the biggest cock-ups in history—and he says, “To my knowledge, effective immediately, without delay.”
He had no idea, obviously, what a Pandora’s box those words were going to be and how pivotal they were going to be. I do personally think it was an honest mistake, but there is this theory that the GDR was engineering this all on purpose because they were so broke, because, you know, the upkeep of the Wall cost a lot of money. There is a theory that they did this on purpose.
Joerg Schoepfel: Yeah.
Artie Mead: But anyway, we’ll let you know why in a sec. So obviously, it’s being watched live on television. I mean, did you see this?
Joerg Schoepfel: Yeah, I mean, my impression was, you know, these guys were all a bit corny, in a way—politicians from a different age. And if you look at the guy, Mr. Schabowski, and you see him, you feel like this is also one of the dinosaurs. Also, he is a bit younger than Honecker, and you could definitely see this guy was not trained with modern public relations—definitely not. So he was completely confused and overrun by a live press conference, you know, that is the first thing. He was not aware that questions would come that would bring him into trouble.
Before, these kinds of conferences were never something happening in real time. That was all pre-arranged, and so on. So he’s confronted with a situation he was never trained for. That’s, for me, a clear sign. And then I have this—you can look it up on the internet—the handwritten note. If you read it, it’s not concerning this travelling. It looks like a random notice of someone who was going over various topics, and this very topic was not elaborated on the note.
So, yeah, and you saw him and you felt like this is one of these administration guys from the GDR—a greyish person and a bureaucrat.
Artie Mead: It’s funny because I think, you know, he’s sort of regarded as almost a hero these days. But I think he actually genuinely just didn’t know what he was doing, which is quite funny, really. So, yeah, obviously, this press conference is being watched live on the television. It’s being listened to live on the radio. And so people start flooding down to the checkpoints—the various checkpoints in East Berlin. And they obviously say to the border guards, “Well, we’ve just heard that we can travel west,” but the border guards haven’t heard anything about this.
Joerg Schoepfel: Well, they had been on TV as well, you know. I mean, they had seen that.
Artie Mead: But they hadn’t had the order.
Joerg Schoepfel: No order, no instruction at all.
Artie Mead: Because, as we said, if Schabowski had been at the meeting, he would have seen that it was going to come into effect at midday the next day. That’s when it was actually going to take effect. Basically, yeah, by about 10 p.m., the border guards are completely overwhelmed with East Germans at the checkpoints demanding to be let through. But the border guards, obviously because they haven’t had an order, are refusing. And people, I think, do get quite annoyed.
Joerg Schoepfel: Of course. I mean, they were like, “Hey, get out of my way. Didn’t you see that on TV? What are you doing here? You’re standing here as you’re not supposed to do,” you know? And you can watch videos of that. These people were very confused. You must know, guys who served in the guards or in the Stasi in the GDR were kind of alien to the rest of the population. These were very strange guys. Nobody did that voluntarily. No person that I personally know was doing this kind of a job. You know, that was a terrible job.
Artie Mead: Yes.
Joerg Schoepfel: So, people with a special mindset. And I think it’s a lucky thing that nobody started to shoot.
Artie Mead: From the vibe, though, I feel like the guards that night knew that if they did shoot someone, it would probably lead to a full-on revolution.
Joerg Schoepfel: Definitely. It was a vibe. I think they could feel it, even though I wasn’t there.
Artie Mead: Yeah.
Joerg Schoepfel: But very possible. On the other side, some of these guys might have seen as well that the system was going to drown. That you cannot stop that any longer. But, I mean, you might have heard that during the demonstrations in Leipzig, they were collecting a lot of blood conserves. So some guys had the idea this will end up in a massacre and we need loads of blood.
Artie Mead: Yeah.
Joerg Schoepfel: That’s something you can research today—that they already prepared for a more violent suppression of these demonstrations. So I still think, I mean, we talk about individuals. There was no order, no instruction, and it’s good that nobody got nervous or came to the wrong conclusion. I’m not sure if simple border guards would have followed an order like “shoot now.”
Artie Mead: No, I think it was definitely—they could feel what way it was moving, and they knew they had to move with it. I think that’s probably what it was.
Joerg Schoepfel: Yeah. And at Bornholmerstrasse, about 10,000 people were there. You had 100 border guards. I mean, everybody can calculate—even if I shoot 10 demonstrators, they will overrun us.
Artie Mead: Yes, exactly. And so at the Bornholmerstrasse crossing, which is, I think, at 11 p.m., one of the border guards decides to try and ease the tension—because there is obviously rather a lot of tension—tries to ease the tension by opening the border very slightly, allowing just, like, a trickle of people through to make it look like they were doing something. But, yeah, obviously, within seconds, everyone sees behind them that they’ve opened up the gate, and so they all push up together. They bunch up together and break down the barrier.
So, yeah, they then force themselves on through to the West. And, yeah, then you have, you know, obviously scenes of celebration, jubilation, and I guess you could say unity, because most of these East and West Berliners have not been together for 28 years. Yeah. So that must have been quite a time, really. They go on through, they’re partying, and that’s obviously where you have the iconic kind of images of them, you know, dancing on top of the wall, which I guess you can remember.
Joerg Schoepfel: Absolutely. I mean, for me, you know, I was 22, and the wall was only one thing in my life. I had other interests at that time.
Artie Mead: So, if you were in East Berlin, it probably would have been…
Joerg Schoepfel: Of course. For me as a West Berliner, I was probably just like, “Oh, cool. That’s great.”
Artie Mead: And then?
Joerg Schoepfel: And then a big party. A lot of people were drinking. It was just happiness—a big party again. Many people over there. And you felt like, “Okay, that’s cool. It can be something big.” But my family didn’t have relatives in the East, so for me, it wasn’t like reuniting with somebody I personally knew. And it felt like, “Oh yeah, strange.” But, you know, I was born five years after the wall was built, and so for me, that was already a given thing.
Artie Mead: Okay.
Joerg Schoepfel: And the people in the GDR, they were all of German background, but somehow, with 30 years of dividing, also two different cultures were created or existing.
Artie Mead: Yeah. And I mean, that kind of leads us nicely onto what we’re going to be talking about next, which is obviously when you talk about the wall falling, you know, what comes with that is a big sense of euphoria. Because obviously a lot of people didn’t like being locked up in this totalitarian regime. And, you know, immediately after the wall fell, you did have this kind of jubilation, this elation, certainly in the East. Afterwards, the SED—the Communist Party—very swiftly lost its grip on power.
On the 1st of December, it had its right to rule, which was enshrined in the constitution, struck out of the constitution. So that basically meant the end of communist rule in East Germany. And then you had the first free and fair elections in the GDR in March 1990. And this yielded a majority of MPs who were pro-reunification. So then that took place on the 3rd of October 1990, and that is celebrated every year as Tag der Deutschen Einheit. However, as you were alluding to, I think it’s important to remember that, yeah, reunification and everything that came afterwards was not universally positive.
Joerg Schoepfel: I mean, look, two countries unite, you expect kind of a conference; you negotiate on an equal level. The reality in one sentence was, “Thank you for demonstrating; now we will supply the rules.”
Artie Mead: Yes, what the West said.
Joerg Schoepfel: Yes, the West said that. And they were even explaining, you know, changing most of the administrative heads in the GDR. In the beginning, there was euphoria, of course, because you also have to know this is the only revolution in Germany that was done by the people.
Artie Mead: Yes, the peaceful revolution.
Joerg Schoepfel: Yeah. How did we get rid of the Nazis? We needed to be defeated by the Allied powers; the German people didn’t get rid of them. So this dictatorship now—the German people, or those in the GDR, got rid of it, you know, by bravery, by demonstrations, by demanding.
Artie Mead: Yes.
Joerg Schoepfel: And a lot of people had no idea what was coming. Me, honestly, I was in the demonstration against reunification. My parents were really angry with me. I was one of the few because I, at that time, was very critical towards the Western world and capitalism.
Artie Mead: Yeah.
Joerg Schoepfel: And I thought, “Oh, this will end badly in a bit of experience.”
Artie Mead: Yes. And that’s the thing is that when you talk about reunification, it’s fair to say that it doesn’t have—especially when you talk to East Germans—the way that it was subsequently enacted, it was not ham-handed, but yeah, it had a lot of effects, which are still being felt today.
So the most obvious of these was privatization of East German industry and businesses. Because obviously, under communism, it was a centrally planned economy, which has its own complications and disadvantages. But the thing about communism that you have to remember is that it did provide for everyone. And even now, when I meet East Germans, I do meet a lot of East Germans who say they miss quite a few aspects of that. They miss not having to worry about their paychecks, their rent, their bill payments. In financial aspects, life was a lot easier in the GDR.
Obviously, there are people who say, “Oh, well, they weren’t allowed to go on holiday to anywhere, and they were only allowed to go to, like, Russia and these places.” But there are certain things that I think people nowadays, especially with how everything has become so expensive, look back on and think, “It was nice not to have to worry about money.” That was just a nice thing.
Joerg Schoepfel: Money was just a side thing. I mean, on the other side, you couldn’t buy anything with money, so you didn’t need any. But yeah, let’s say also the social gap was not so big. If it was there, it was more about privileges. You know, some are more equal than others. That was not expressed by owning millions or billions—it was more like, “I have a nice house in the countryside; you don’t. I have Levi’s jeans; you don’t,” you know, stuff like this.
And you also have to see that the lack of everything created a solidaric society. If everybody’s lacking things, you know, you help each other. In a way, there was also kind of a nice common sense in the GDR—not all people, and we have that in the West as well. But let’s say the more the gap between rich and poor was growing in the last 30 years, the harder it is to find this kind of solidaric society. And yeah, but let’s say a lot of people felt, after a couple of years, waking up, “Where’s my identity?”
Artie Mead: Exactly. That’s the thing. And, you know, because obviously the world was in a very euphoric place, especially at the end of the Cold War. Because obviously, you know, after the wall fell, then you had reunification a year later. Then, the next year, you had the collapse of communism in Eastern Europe across the whole of the Eastern Bloc. And then obviously, December 1991, Gorbachev resigns, and the Soviet Union dissolves. So that’s really thought of as the end of the Cold War.
So there is this kind of euphoria, but the thing is, yeah, it’s like, as it got further into the ’90s, I think people were like, “Well, what was this for?” Because the thing is, two million East Germans lost their jobs because of privatization. There was a special company that was set up.
Joerg Schoepfel: Yeah, Treuhand, that was more like a state-run institution administering all the privatizations.
Artie Mead: A special company, which I think to this day is quite hated in the former East.
Joerg Schoepfel: Yeah, definitely. I mean, they didn’t do it fairly.
Artie Mead: They did it too quickly.
Joerg Schoepfel: Yeah. And, you know, knew somebody who could make a good deal.
Artie Mead: Yeah, exactly. And so I think that’s what a lot of people feel could have been done better. And yeah, it was just that it happened so quickly. Because of the speed with which reunification happened, because looking back on it, I—I mean, I wasn’t alive then—but if you look at it, it did happen.
Reunification happened within a year. To be honest, after spending, you know, 40 years as different systems, because there’s a phrase—even though the wall is gone, the physical wall is gone—you still have the wall in people’s heads. And that kind of encapsulates the fact that, you know, 40 years living in a different system, it is going to make you think slightly differently.
Someone from a communist system is going to value, you know, if someone pulls out a dollar bill, it’s probably going to value that a lot less than someone from a capitalist country.
Joerg Schoepfel: These people were literally screwed up. I’ll give you two examples. First of all, a lot of East Germans after the wall fell felt like, “I need a decent car now. Get rid of this terrible Trabant.” Understandable.
Artie Mead: Which everyone was eligible for, but you’d be…
Joerg Schoepfel: Waiting on average seven years.
Artie Mead: Is it seven years?
Joerg Schoepfel: Also sometimes 10 to 15. The used one was more expensive than the new one. So they were going, as they didn’t have the means, to the used car markets. And they were screwed up. You know, car dealers who deal with used cars very often are difficult personalities. You as a person who lives in a capitalist system, you’re used to that—you know you have to be careful. These guys, they had no awareness that somebody was trying to screw them up.
Artie Mead: Yes, exactly.
Joerg Schoepfel: That didn’t exist.
Artie Mead: Yes, that’s so true. And I remember seeing a picture that really fascinated me. It was an East German who goes into a Western supermarket that had just opened its first branch in the East. She’s standing next to a huge Milka cow, looking at it with her trolley, and she’s just like, “What on earth is that?” Because obviously in the East, they didn’t have that. They didn’t have advertising—well, I mean, they had advertising, but it wasn’t on the same scale, with the colours and the decadence.
Joerg Schoepfel: The variety of dog food in a Western grocery shop was reaching the variety of all items in the East German grocery shop.
Artie Mead: And they didn’t understand why you would need more than one type.
Joerg Schoepfel: Butter is butter. Why do you have the golden and the green and the silver one?
Artie Mead: Yeah, exactly.
Joerg Schoepfel: And the second example I can give you—at that time, you know, the communities, the local towns and so on—they were not in debt. That system didn’t exist. So now they’re released, and five years later, they all had the same amount of debts as Western communities. So that means they were completely screwed up. They got nothing out of it.
Artie Mead: Yes.
Joerg Schoepfel: Smart guys came in, saying, “Oh, you need a consultancy,” and then, “We have this nice idea of reforming the marketplace.” So five years on, a lot of people made loads of money, and what I think is that it was simply forgotten to protect these people.
Artie Mead: Yes, exactly. First of all, it happened too quickly, and they didn’t think of these people that needed protection. Because under communism, you were directly being taken care of by the state. But when that state was gone, these people didn’t have this protection. So, yeah, I think that’s why these days, some people are quite nostalgic. I’m not going to say everyone is, because it’s definitely not everyone from the former GDR, but you do still meet some.
Joerg Schoepfel: And you had a two-class system. Look, it starts with no East German in a top position. They were all removed. They were seen as former party members. But even more sincere, the economic equality was not given. It starts with, at that time, East Germans had salaries that were a third of what was normal in West Germany. So when they got unemployed, the unemployment insurance paid them one third.
Artie Mead: Which is not enough to have a decent life.
Joerg Schoepfel: Exactly. The same with retirement. You were maybe 55 when the wall fell. You had no chance to build up something new, and you ended up with a retirement payment that was close to the dole.
Artie Mead: Yeah. And you had all of these… And also, if you were trained in law in the East, your qualifications would not be accepted, and you’d have to retrain.
Joerg Schoepfel: Teachers also.
Artie Mead: Yeah. So it’s this idea of the West coming in and thinking that everything is better in the West. Whereas what it should have been… That’s what a lot of people say, it wasn’t reunification—it was the West coming in like a bulldozer and bulldozing everything, including the things that people liked about the GDR.
Joerg Schoepfel: Yeah.
Artie Mead: And this was encapsulated in 2005, I think, when they demolished the Palast der Republik, which is actually on my wall. And the thing is, even people who didn’t like life in the GDR, they did like the Palast der Republik because it had nice memories for them.
Joerg Schoepfel: It was a venue for cultural stuff.
Artie Mead: Exactly. And so even if you didn’t like life in the GDR, the fact that it was got rid of really kind of solidified this image of the West coming in and bulldozing everything.
Joerg Schoepfel: And rebuilding an imperial palace. Come on, that’s corny. That’s like China.
Artie Mead: Yeah, I don’t know. I really wish they’d kept the Palast der Republik because it was a really cool building. I think it’s such a shame, really. But, yeah, that’s why I think now, you know, some East Germans felt that their identity was, as you say, disregarded, devalued, and they felt less than. Although I will say, I’ve met quite a lot of Wessis who can be quite snobby.
Joerg Schoepfel: Yeah, definitely. A lot of Wessis had high…
Artie Mead: Oh, and Wessis meaning Westerners, by the way, and Ossis meaning Easterners.
Joerg Schoepfel: Is it a derogatory term?
Artie Mead: Yeah, I mean, for some people it’s still like that. And so they were very arrogant, thinking more or less that these people in general are stupid. They didn’t see the point that the Ossis had to move and the Wessis didn’t. You ask people to change completely, to adapt to a new system, and you yourself don’t have to move one millimetre.
Joerg Schoepfel: Exactly. That’s the thing, and I think that’s where the kind of imbalance came from, really.
Artie Mead: Cool. We’re sort of reaching the end. Do you have anything else you want to mention?
Joerg Schoepfel: Yeah, well, the sad thing for today is, of course, that we have a far higher number of supporters of extreme right-wing ideas in the former GDR.
Artie Mead: Do you think that’s for good reason, though? Okay, not for good reason, but I will say I think part of it is because they are economically left behind.
Joerg Schoepfel: Yeah, I think it’s still this feeling of being kind of defeated or screwed up. I mean, that’s very stupid to support extreme right-wing only because you have a bad feeling. So I cannot respect that, but have some understanding that they don’t trust the Western system. But yeah.
Artie Mead: It’s not that I agree, but I think I can understand the reasons behind why they are voting the way they are. I’m not saying I agree with that, but, like, you know, it’s the way that reunification was dealt with, you know, with not due consideration of the fact that these people lived in a completely different system that completely took care of financial, you know, matters pretty much. You know, there wasn’t kind of due consideration given to that.
Joerg Schoepfel: And you know, the strange thing is this feeling is stronger than the reality because that town I come from didn’t get enough money the last 30 years to keep it nice, you know. So there’s one experience: you cross on the highway from Hessen to Thuringen, and the highway in Thuringen is very nice. So much money was going in there. So the cities look very nice in the urban areas. You have now a lot of jobs, a lot of young people. There’s no reason to really complain today, you know, but still, this feeling is bitter. Also, the reality is nowadays no longer that you can say that they are having disadvantages in today’s life—maybe in earning or owning property, but not in salary of today, not in what’s going on in the future perspective. A lot of people come back. They were leaving the GDR for a while for jobs because all the industry died, as you said. Yeah.
Artie Mead: And mostly young people. Yeah. That’s what the problem was. Yeah. But.
Joerg Schoepfel: Many of them now go back. Yeah. Because there’s enough to do at home, and they feel more comfortable. So that’s really a bitter experience because it feels like, why do you follow up this rat hunters?
Artie Mead: Yeah, I think that’s the thing. I, you know, I know that maybe that sounded a little depressing talking about that when talking about the fall of the wall, but it’s just important to remember that for all the joy and happiness that the wall falling brought, it did also bring quite a lot of hardship as well. And, you know, it’s just that, I guess it’s that age-old adage, you know, not everything has a fairy tale ending. But the.
Joerg Schoepfel: Good thing is, I mean, I have two children; they are 17 and 22 now. And for them, this whole East-West thing is not such a thing. Yeah.
Artie Mead: No, I think that’s true, actually, you know, and, you know, because I like history. I mean, I have a podcast called The History Buff, so that should be obvious. But basically, I like to talk about history to pretty much everyone I meet. I like to find out where they’re from. I like to know, you know, sort of, yeah, where they’re from, like talk to them about their country’s history, blah, blah, blah. And then often when it’s a German, you know, I’ll sort of be talking about, you know, the East and the West and sort of seeing whether, kind of gauging whether, like, what their sort of opinion is. And to be honest, yeah, definitely most young people are not quite so—they’re not quite so, yeah, worried about those.
Joerg Schoepfel: Distinctions anymore. That’s not the issue. That’s more other things that count, you know—your attitude towards certain issues or whatever. I mean, you always have some, but that’s not.
Artie Mead: The main. Yeah, it’s really not. I guess it’s because they didn’t really have anything. Yeah, they didn’t. They weren’t alive when it was there. So I guess you could say the wall in the head is now disappearing. It doesn’t look like it’s become a generational wall. No. Unlike, unlike the generational trauma from the war, which I think is definitely still a thing. But I think the wall is, it looks like it is.
Joerg Schoepfel: Disappearing. It’s disappearing. I mean, life went on, and we are facing different problems. You know, I mean, I realised in my life four major changes. The first one was fall of the wall. The second one was 9/11. And now we have COVID and the attack towards Ukraine. The last two happened in the last.
Artie Mead: Three years. Yeah. Yeah. So it’s kind of like time is happening, like just speeding up and becoming—it’s just happening. It’s all happening really quickly. Well, okay. Well, if that’s everything, well, thank you so much for joining me. It’s been really nice to cover this whole series about the Berlin Wall, talk about different aspects of the wall. And, you know, the fall, it was a pivotal moment in history. The Berlin Wall itself was, I like to say that, you know, it was obviously kind of not very—it wasn’t a nice thing. But part of what I love about it is that it encapsulates this era. It represents this era in time, which to me is really fascinating. I would have given anything to see it, to be able to see East and West Berlin. I would have loved to have just seen—did you ever go to East Berlin?
Joerg Schoepfel: Well, of course, several times. I mean, time warp. I was even having a fun story. So I was travelling along the so-called transit highway. So that was leaving West Berlin, West Germany, going through East Berlin on a designated highway.
Artie Mead: There was three, wasn’t there? There was three.
Joerg Schoepfel: Exactly. Tough border. And so I was hitchhiking. I was in a car. There have been other people. And one of the guys was an African. And when we were already leaving West Berlin, West Germany didn’t control us. We were entering the East German border, and they asked for papers, and this African guy didn’t have any because he was an asylum seeker. So the East Germans said, yeah, but you don’t have a passport. So it was coming to stay in the no man’s land because we couldn’t go back.
Artie Mead: You were going from West.
Joerg Schoepfel: Berlin to West Germany. Okay. Right. Right. Right. Right. And well, so that was getting very complicated. So I went to the East German border guards and told them, listen, we live in a very unfair system, you know, they were taking the passport of this poor asylum seeker. That’s capitalism, you know, so he cannot travel. Isn’t that mean? And they understood what I wanted, and they really allowed him to pass, you know. I mean, I was triggering them on their propaganda. They were not these guys believing the bullshit.
Artie Mead: No, but you were kind of reverse psychology. It was kind of like reverse psychology. Of course, they couldn’t do different. No, I love that. Well, thank you for that story. Thank you for being here. Yeah, it’s been lovely chatting to you.
And guys, I hope you enjoyed this series about the Berlin Wall. Please, yeah, like and subscribe if you’re watching on YouTube. Or rate if you’re listening on a streaming service to the podcast. But yeah, I’ve really enjoyed doing this series.
So I think what I’m going to do next is with some tour guide mates is a series on the GDR as a whole, as in, like, the founding, the Communist Party, because talking about the Berlin Wall, it’s involved obviously talking a lot about that stuff. So yeah, I definitely want to delve deeper into the GDR as a country.
And so yeah, thank you for joining me, guys, and thank you, Joerg. Thank you for being here. Cheers, and yeah, see you guys very soon. Bye!