have envelope entire towns this is one of the worst bushfire seasons australia has experienced and it's still only spring amid a prolonged drought residents say they dread to think of what's to come and the summer months. well coming up next is the documentary about the body and will all family and a more news anytime of the day head to our website d w dot com i got home free but. after the fall of the berlin wall t.w. . geophones dear antone you know there's a scene in the when your mother was born in 1969 the world was already 8 years old and you know my grandchildren were born after the wall fell born in a real unified germany 3 generations one family on

a journey through recent german history to make the berlin wall our family and us next on d w. showing up today don't miss our highlights building program online w dot com highlights. the . good thing about the stars in the sky is you can gaze at them whether you're behind a wall or not.

much i want to score my grandmother had a telescope we'd often look at saturn or jupiter and its moons it was silk knowledge about a type. of you know i was born in january 1901 a year after the wall fell. and. then because it's incredible to think that my parents who seem so ordinary to me grew up in a dictatorship a place where tanks would sometimes roll through the streets that are just often when it's a good movie covered in my wall that used to be a wall i knew that it had been built and that my mother and my grandparents were trapped behind and that was the reality i grew up with guns my mother birth.

order. brother and sister fans and then tony ahead and and their grandfather he grew up here in bend i washed asset which mounts the border between east and west germany the men dessen early age how cruel that boredom was it can we go in and after my own see it i remember you telling us that you once looked out of the window onto

the cemetery and saw someone attempting to escape that yeah yeah that's right. but that was long before the wall was built it was 1953 during the east german uprising. we saw a man crawling on all fours between the gravestones he was approaching the church grounds and our house was already quite close but we can see also that he was surrounded by armed guards and i was 13 it was a terrible thing to see he was a lost cause and there was nothing we could do we couldn't warn him we hid under the bed clothes pulled the blankets over our heads and then we heard the gunfire with can i have it couldn't you have yelled from the window and now you have you have no and then what. he'd already been spotted what have you and there was no point in warning him on his back and then. if he had been

a movie you'd have distracted the guards imitated birds or something forced him immediately like. your kid to plant lived in the eastern half of the city his home and the church where his father. pasto demolished when the bell and wall was built then i watched asa 2 was also demolished where the love of his life grew up she became a hugely popular politician in the pastry unification years. which was grandma's window this one those 2 on the left of the left window the left one year of. it looked on the pavement so if she stuck her head out of the window she always said her head was in the western or backside it was in the east her backside in the east bank side i'm quoting her if you haven't yet and you'd knock on the window and knock on the window on my way to choir practice. but it was

a bit it's funny to think that was right here the floor was probably here and this is where grandma would show on her bed around her desk right here you know you. are again and years ahead of time when married for 35 years until her death since 1001961 the balun wool was built literally on the doorstep also a few stars about the washed cars i went out the door on her brown hours transfer to buy a newspaper does it with you and i saw that barbed wire had been laid out on the east side of the street when for the stop and there were police armed with machine guns. it didn't mean much to the rest of the world but it meant everything to a married couple who lived on one side and wanted to have breakfast with their parents on the other side 1st avoidant i knew their grandparents who lived in the

west and wanted to take their grandchild for a walk and home both kind parker and all of a sudden you couldn't go from one street to another from one side to the other that's unusual. the wall divided burnin and germany for 28 years. the wall is now in memory the city one again. studies humanities and works part time in the planetarium antonius studies physics they live just a stone's throw from the war memorial site and from where their grandparents once lived. i know where it's vices i know it's where my grandparents lived and nowadays you see tourists milling around here all the time and i love it but of course it's also just where france lives and where i go to celebrate new year's or watch a football match or whatever but what i will breathing in history sounds a bit over the top but it's everywhere when you go out partying and you cross back

and forth any number of times without thinking anything of it. regain ahead and have no doubt have enjoyed that's how grandchildren live so new to way she grew up she joined the social democratic party in 1909 gaining a reputation for plain speaking the successful reunification of the 2 geminis was always one of her key concerns just exactly that's why i say we need to participate in whatever way we can get involved you vote for for i was aware from the outset that the moment she entered politics greg you know would never let go and politics would never let her go she gave it her all. and not just for self but for the people she'd suddenly been granted responsibility for pretty sure i'm closing the sign off of the book i would have loved to have spent a few days with her as the person i am now discussing ideas with wondering. 30

years after the fall of the berlin wall antonia and france feel the differences between east and west in germany still linger there not sure if germany has growing together or apart. with sending them on a journey across eastern germany to find out visiting places where people are venting their dissatisfaction and disappointment. come on let's have a song. i. just. caught. fish. all right. no network. there's not exactly reliable internet around here but.

much of the former east germany is struggling in the communist era the country was rundown and on the verge of bankruptcy since 1909 nearly 25 percent of the population has moved away. wow. there's little industry left here. antonia and funds are critical of coal mining like many young people today they're worried about the environment but in eastern germany coal is still important like knights or brown coal mining is a major employer and an integrity part of the region's identity zuko but slough has spent her entire working life in a coal mine i feel as safe as i'm about to start up the excavator 1st i'll give

a warning and then also the excavator in motion. if i can dig all that up you see the cable it's connected to the mast and the mast lifts the arm it's perfectly safe which is wobbles of it all right so i'll sit down. wow. is it has been operating an excavator for 35 years shifting up to 3 and a half 1000 tonnes of lignite per hour but germany is aiming to shut down all of its coal fired power plants by 2038 reunification hit this part of eastern germany hard now it's facing yet another copy for. action. but or is it just a dish but how do you feel knowing that it won't be long before these coal mines are closed down. the plane is that is too much. it's

a very emotional issue for us when. we feel we're being vilified. we're made out to be the bad guys we're destroying the environment and we're responsible for climate change the fact that it's my involvement in my opinion that's just rubbish. that's what the mining industry does a lot to protect the environment but nobody talks about that of course coal mining has an environmental impact but the industry makes up for it in the total look again i can forgive me but can't you understand people's concerns why they're making these demands. of course they don't think miners are terrible people they think they're perfectly normal nice people who are doing their job as best they can but they want to protect the environment and bring about change. i've got nothing against environmental protection but not in this radical well. 8000 people work in the lignite strip mines here the coal industry is by far the

biggest employer in the region wide scale unemployment is looming physical puts off it brings back painful memories of what happened after 9 $189.00 after reunification. it's a very difficult subject for me i've had to say goodbye to friends to colleagues who are also friends it's a very emotional thing you've lost your job i've kept mine it's hard for both sides . this is for because it in place and so were you just lucky. whatever your job safe because it skilled. no one's job was safe one. you must have been afraid too of course. how much transformation can reach and withstand.

a few kilometers from the mine moped enthusiastic gathered in the village of tower this is where the simpson s 51 and the pads were manufactured back him up was then communist east germany. with us which ones yours. when they were younger france and antonia also rode my pads like bees. you have to cling to the noise the smell it's all still there 30 years after the fall of the war zone mopeds is still a really big thing here again it's young kids today like my son 14 or 15 year olds and the think tank are with them all the time it's great to talk about it it's unfortunate want to still sort of come through this although it's a symbol of values the good old days great stuff the colors all.

right let's take this one for a spin so you can sit on it while you push. by and you can i think of all the men is glad to see the village taking pride in its heritage but in recent decades many locals left to find work in the west the area has rebounded somewhat but when the last mines closed they could be another exodus this notion of you know it but there's talk again about structural change once the older generation don't feel affected they think they don't have long left anyway. but what about the young generation. in this nation they'll move away if the regional. government and berlin don't manage to attract industry here. in the but i'd say it's almost too late for that in my own field to speak.

with. dr i thought this was you. and tony and franz a visiting kath and kim. is a retired lawyer. yet how old were you when the wall fell to the manor i was born in 47. so early forty's projects and i was 36 when i started studying. for the wall fell yes and in 1990 i ended my studies which were under the east german system. a lot it was as if my entire world had collapsed. ok so then what oh i see you've been studying a completely different legal system and wow that's crazy how infuriating so you had

just finished your studies and the wall fell so it had all been a waste of time a total waste of time every weekend a colleague and i went to google to university in berlin to attend and listen ours on west german law those were hard times of the a muslim heart obviously it must have felt very unfair your all what do you think now i mean as a lawyer when you look back on what happened then. it was unfair a new system was basically imposed on us we had to relearn everything and not everybody was able to adjust. for any it it must have been really tough being in your mid forty's having built yourself a whole life and then having to start all over from scratch i can't imagine what that must have felt like if i just. didn't give up she went on to found a successful legal practice in front of my spare time. i was really shocked to learn how few east germans there are in executive positions it's

a good feeling for going through and yes out of 121 heads of federal ministries only 3 of them are from the former east of us it's good now and it's like that across the board why is that do you think many people in the east lacked confidence and we were looked down on during reunification everything to do with the east was discarded. there are 16000000 east germans but few of them hold top positions across academia politics business media and you know.

whether someone is from he still west germany is a question that still matters to antonia even though she was born after the fall of the wall so was her boyfriend nicholas. he grew up in western germany not far from the danish border. by the nazis when history happens on your doorstep a wall falls and 2 different systems collide then obviously it's something that's going to interest you. then. ok but it wasn't obvious that the 2 systems were that different understood because the state was the. east germany was poor ok yeah but the simple fact that a wall was built to keep people in is a huge difference. sure but my impression is that in the west we realized that in the east people had fewer material things of the fewer products

things like coffee bananas bluejeans and so on and have kind of been a kind of so they were disadvantaged in that time to go on so you knew that part and of course that you weren't allowed to travel or not to just. buy a live report and you have western germans failed to grasp meant to east germans to adapt to an entirely new system to switch from socialism and a planned economy to democracy and to free market economy all the rules had changed at work and in private knife to. antonina has given me a different perspective and made me think about it all much more. efficient back but when i'm with antonio's family i still notice how much they talk about it. the fall of the wall the east west issue is not a good solid enough in my family it's never mentioned we never or hardly ever

discussed the east west question it for people in the west like my parents it didn't make much of an impact nothing much changed and that. i for one half of gemini little changed i said the other half the world's turned upside down on november the 9th 1900 was open and i was like what do you want about sure right it's open now it'll be open tomorrow and i didn't take it seriously but beginning when different there and then of course the party was over. and mine 8 of us piled into my little 5 seater our car and drove to bornholmer strasse are there born on a bridge on a fork of the crossing we heard was open to his i. i i. i. he hid them and i can still remember the particular quality of the

light in the stony expressions of the border police who had no idea what was going on either and we crossed over and there we were in west berlin it's this for. instance a curfew was deeply moving were drove back after midnight then again i wanted to go to the brandenburg gate. i. was funded as a teenager it seemed so exciting. you were trapped behind a wall you couldn't cross and then at some point you could run but when i saw the film footage i just thought it uncool they're wearing those crappy clothes those

horrible bright colors as a teenager i just thought man who wears that sort of thing and they're hopping around on a wall of ice you know having to type but by my mid twenty's i found most clothes totally cool on the street someone you know. i i'm. pleased that. sunday morning chance is helping his friend james band get ready to perform in the the park next to the former wall this famous for its weekly fee market however they want to be there to snag a prime spot. but it's pretty crazy as musicians that you're kind of able to do this like put on like a proper show in the streets. you know and even the police walks by and it's like

yeah keep going you know that's awesome to tens of thousands of people descend on the park every sunday and readymade woody ends up and coming back. to bury. everything. the bigger crowd. was screaming. what's now one of the most free spirited places in berlin was once aboard the death strip when east german guards were under order to shoot to kill if they saw anyone

trying to escape. and then tony is youngest sister said celia has just moved to berlin the siblings often come to the park together. but how would you describe it to someone who's never been here you see the history you may know them our park and say you're describing it to friends from out of town what would you say. this but this is a fake but i'd say imagine this was once the debt strip here was the wall and there was the wall and now we can just walk along it and dance and play music. on monday you can see that that's the west over there you can see that the buildings on the one side are different from the buildings on the other and i tell them how wonderful it is that all these people gather here and party together that's what i'd say. almost 30 years it was

a no man's land between east and west berlin. today the maui park is a major tourist attraction. each time i love to dance in the park for me it's life. i love the atmosphere of the place the music the people everything about it i really hope. you know you have a it's kind of. really open and no bird there's no boundary kind of made it clear. if you want to do it you would think and if you want to be a hero or a feudal shoulda done that ok i like it very much it's freedom and that's very good as. actually.

i. most of the wall was built in 1961 and regain ahead of it and made a conscious decision to stay in the east they were critical of the communist system but they believed in change from within. i think about we were walled in. we did feel like we were trapped. but we did what we could to broaden our horizons and also to show our children that it's inner freedom that matters the most and that with that inner freedom you could do all sorts of things and achieve all sorts of things so much so given. that children that wasn't always easy to accept. the plant is france and then tony as mother she finished high school just before the wall fell she'd always railed

against the restrictions of life in east germany. does the food minister is this interesting limit as i felt like it wasn't real life or that we were somehow frozen in time and the world beyond was turning without you that was the dominant feeling for me my i longed for openness discussion all i can say is i didn't find any of that there was and that was what i heard for and that and you knew that there was this other world i imagined the west was something completely different we often went to the church of reconciliation and looked across the lawn just think we could actually see this other world you could see the double decker buses and the people in the street living lives that somehow seemed more colorful more vibrant more full of life it sounds ridiculous but when i was 12 i stood in front of the mirror and swore to myself that i wouldn't stay that i would leave. as

and as expect. sure enough in august 1909 falcon head of land fled to west germany via hungary and austria like tens of thousands of others that summer no one family included had the slightest suspicion that the war would fold just 3 months later. i didn't know when i would ever see my daughter again this is the she wouldn't have been allowed back and we weren't allowed to go to the west and it was just awful for us better it's what we never expected she'd be back for christmas the same year but she was there you go by with talking. oh.

but if. you. go for a coffee good little fool i. will hire you with your head accountant her family live in a village outside but when there's almost always a full house. and politics is a favorite topic at the dinner table the family is alarmed by the rise of the far right in eastern germany. i keep telling people go and vote otherwise nothing will ever change that and almost 25 percent of the people in the state of brandenburg support the right wing populist party the a.f.d.c. with their political activism they hit upon a keeping reggae in a spirit a life even today she's remembered fondly in eastern germany read widely.

followed him for fun. i've just been so amazed in the last few days by how much people remember grandma. when you were traveling. yes she's like a superhero they really idolize her. to be honest i was almost shocked shocked because the excavator operator said that meeting at regina hildebrand's grandchildren was like hitting the jackpot a lot of why our. yeah there's a lot to live up to. nowadays many in eastern germany failed as no one on the political stage who represents that interests as asked most for my clout as admission for a start it wasn't a reunification team one system simply imposed itself on the other as i'm west germany didn't bother to even consider if there was anything in the east german system they could have been useful fixed

a problem was boosted cohesion they didn't think what aspects of east germany should we take a closer look at maybe keep they only cared about things that related to reckoning to a market economy and that was a mistake but. how her head of land often spoke to her children about the full of the war about the joy every unification and the mistakes made in itself to mask. my struggle maybe if we adjusted downward. keep going. where's the man in the moon.

trance and then tony i go back on the red and this time they're on their way to saxony the part of the country where the shift to the farm. right is make stick street they want to find out why. dresden is famous for its cultural landmarks but also as the cradle of the notorious piggy diminishment which is nationalist anti islam and far right i. i i. i support his regularly demonstrate against chancellor angle america's refugee policy against the idea of a multicultural germany 50 times and antonia their extreme politics right now so

much. thank you when the bigoted demonstrations began in 2014 they struck an a at their peak they drew 10000 people today any a small step in course still take to the streets every week antonia and funds the meeting to be a savant if he's put on sunglasses as a journalist he's and a thing but well compare. view of how often have you been here. over a 100 times really that's quite something after you get asked to give it was founded in october 24th team so they see a marks its 5th anniversary. there's a lot of dedication going into this system it's amazing how much time and energy is invested in something so pointless. it depends most people here don't think demonstrating is pointless. quite

a few draw parallels with communist east germany they felt silenced then and claim to feel silenced today even though they're unafraid to spread water often overtly racist slogans the following after 7 i was at the demonstrations in 1009. prison and the mood now is similar. you can't dismiss these people as nazis that's just rubbish there are thousands of people have grievances and they just want to express them bring with them then they give them didn't since this is our way of telling the governments that a lot is wrong with this country should all issues closer personally i don't want to see islam take over germany if that's what you want fine but i don't and neither do most germans you know i was only down that in fact the majority of people in dresden including to be a sloth don't sympathize with the piggy to support as he says they've crossed too many lines with that inflammatory and racist rhetoric on the scene from a full on image to me these people are lost causes you can't get through to them

but it's also possible. at the very least that people who will accept the why list sloganeering in order to celebrate themselves as something better because that what judgement of us was on the us was approached and was forthcoming of their secret date puts his deputy leader in a green. is he going to kick us out. now he can't how could he. be seen as they are but he's pretending to ignore us. there he goes during his man of the people think. oh yes he has put those guys who are hanging around before and so us hasn't got on board under the shadows of the likes circling sharks you know exactly why i don't know for sure that the biggest supporters have a small but vocal minority but the fact remains the far right is gaining ground. it's good to but i think the there are right wing tendencies all over europe and

there's donald trump in the us but here it's taken on a different dimensions it's not just about job losses an industry that's being shut down which is bad enough it's like the worm food it's the fact that there's been an entirely new society to adjust to daily life. values and. what i mean to say is there is no justification whatsoever for racism and marginalizing people that's completely totally wrong. but i can understand that people feel frustrated and left behind and that they struggle to identify with our society today that's just plain enough it's you know. the far right f.t. is seizing the moment and saxony a tented the state parliament in 2014 and is currently the state's strongest party after the city. antonio in france a meeting a politician on the events it's not

a conversation any of them exactly relishes but look you know i assume you know that we don't sympathize with the f.d.a. . you don't have to we don't i think the f.d.a. is pretty creepy to be honest. upon yourself a lot of other slogan on my election poster is there must be limits to immigration . and you can start from the f.t. was founded in 2013 which is when the 1st wave of asylum seekers arrived in germany and there was no firm political intervention you could not think. and you think most of them risked their lives and get in these rubber boats just purely economic reasons for quite a majority yes that's my opinion. but to being a racist i don't know why i can't explain it i mean if you have no clue what will be interesting to know why your party which you're active in is seen as racist it's an accusation meant to make us look bad. because it's best to get there what about

the terrible speeches denying history and the diatribes against homosexuals. the of aspect of a it's a question of how the media instrumentalists is these issues in germany. people are labelled far right very quickly article young guns of what it is that i get and if i don't know it's certainly true that given our history we germans have a particular duty when it comes to the expression of far right opinions that goes without saying the habitation. transcendental spend an hour talking to and play event that they find little common ground. yourself that it's just very obvious to me that the democracy we live in can't be

taken for granted and i'm very aware that it's not an especially good shape right now. it's monday evening and france and his housemates are having a policy. just a stone's throw from where their grandmother once lived from where the but once stood from the film a fun night and if the cold war the grandchildren a celebrating with friends from around the world and if so my a america. dear friends dear antonia

celia i'm sitting on the terrace at twilight it's peaceful you're mine and my 3 grandchildren sleep untroubled in front of me are photo albums that date back to when i was younger than you are now how times have changed. as a 943 when i was 2 the same age is serious now it was wartime we were evacuated from central berlin our home to the country shortly thereafter our home was bombed we lost almost everything we owned. at antonia's age i had experienced evacuation the end of the war back in berlin i lived in makeshift lodgings with a toilet in the stairwell i started over from nothing. when i was 8 france's age germany was split into 2 and remain divided for decades. when your mother was born in 1969 the wall was already 8 years old. you my grandchildren were born after the wall fell born in a unified germany a wonderful time

a time of great joy. now i'm going to get political. it would be nice if we could get better at making our towns and cities proper communities. where rich or the sick and the healthy the young and the old the disadvantaged and the advantaged could live together and children would learn from early on how to get along together and how to take responsibility for our world i'm. going to furnish the darkness has fallen it's still peaceful mate remain so for your sakes my dear grandchildren. hair. bands.

there. who. can do it that's enough for me me 2. years after the fall of the berlin wall t.w. . today i write a long before my border between east and west berlin. i would like to see what remains of the history of the division of europe germany.

searching for traces of the berlin. 30 minutes. now live i'm sure that of us as we are. in support of. what the savior was able. to deliver. i am.

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