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Something About November

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1961 Belin  (2)

Just after midnight on 13th. August, 1961 East German soldiers raised the beginnings of the Berlin Wall

with barbed wire and bricks  between communist  East Berlin and the democratic western section of the city. Halting free access into West Berlin until Its fall on the 9th November, 1989  when at a  press conference the German Democratic Republic  central committee spokesman Guenter Schabowski  announced that citizens could travel to West Germany immediately. This unintentional announcement was the crack in the Berlin Wall that turned into a flood of Berlin citizens as they took a chisels too to it , tearing it down with their hands.

In the mid 1980’s I had the surreal experience of crossing Check Point Charlie into East Berlin with my friend Pete from Adelaide. It was early January, East Berlin was covered in snow and grey. It was the time of the Cold War, I felt some what uncomfortable and it was not just the freezing snow penetrating my thin soled boots. Emphasized by the East German Border Guard who took me into a room to rummage through the contents of my pockets.

In the monochrome light of winter East Berlin looked like a scene form an old black and white “Film Noir” movie.  It was as if post war Europe had not given up it’s grip, where Britain and Australia had moved on with the swinging sixties, endured the recessions of 1973 – 1975 and again in1981 –1982. The reality was back then the mid 1980’s World War II was in all tense and purposes still not over. Allied forces were still in occupation. The Shooting  war had just transformed into a war of neighbour spying on neighbour and for ever looking over your shoulder.

Belin

West Berlin was a half a city surrounded by a sea of Soviet controlled East Germany linked by a rail corridor from Hamburg. Alien to all the norms of Australia and England.

At the time I was a keen super 8 home movie maker. The under cover East German State Security or Stasi did not take kindly to tourist taking pictures of bridges, railway stations, public buildings, the military and police. That limited my options a bit.

I could not resist getting a few candid shots of a train leaving a station via a rail bridge. My favourite shot was of a chorus line of snow ploughs clearing one side of the Unter den Linden (a wide duel carriage way) past the Brandenburg Gate and up the other side of the Unter den Linden.

In all and tense and purposes the War ended forty four years after 1945 when the Berlin Wall came down on 9th November, 1989, swiftly followed by the collapse of the Soviet Union. This week Germany celebrates the reunification of Germany twenty five years ago and Australia and the Commonwealth commemorates  this November 11th. 96 years since the end of the Great War.

There is something about November.

Norts.


Filed under: Adelaide, Australia, Current Affairs, Events, Germany, History, news, Politics, Weather Tagged: Australia, Berlin, Berlin Wall, East Berlin, East German, East German Border Guard, Germany, West Berlin

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