on that night well i have to confess that i went to bed early because i was planning to get up at 5 o'clock the next morning so i didn't actually hear the fateful announcement that the border was open until my telephone jangled and i went on to the telephone and a friend said go come we'll go to the war and i went to the wall and stood on it and the rest is history thank you so much and eric thomas spared the berlin wall morial and thank you for watching. 30 years after the fall of the berlin wall on d w. 2 your france dear antonio here's a scene when your mother was born in 1969 the world was already 8 years old you know my grandchildren were born after the war fell born in a renewed find germany 3 generations one family on a journey through recent german history. the berlin wall our family and

us next on d w. flatow we were there when we were. the 1st americans or someplace in our lives will experience hardship listen up. and last that matters top. 4 times. the 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 and jupiter and its moons it was so cold and so much a type. of you know i was born in january 1901 a year after the wall fell. and a man with a few friends and 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 awesome you know when it's a. movie discover if you can well there used to be a wall i knew that had been built and that my mother and my grandparents were trapped behind it that was the reality i grew up with guns my mother birth.

form. brother and sister fans and antonia his death and and their grandfather he grew up here in bend i washed asset which mounts the border between east and west germany he learned this an early age how cruel that border was this country 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. about it couldn't you have yelled from the window you know you have or you have no and then what. he'd already been spotted. there was no point in warning him welcome he. had been a movie you'd have distracted the guards imitated birds or something for.

your kid to plant he lived in the eastern half of the city his home and the church where his father was pasto were demolished when the berlin wall was built then i watched the 2 was also demolished by 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 side of the left window the left one. looked on the pavement so if she stuck her hand out of the window she always said her head was in the western or backside was in the east her backside in the east bronx side i'm quoting her do you ever hear of it and you'd knock on the window and knock on the window on my way to choir practice. because of that it's funny to think that was right here the floor was probably here and this is where grandma would show on her bed about her desk right here you know you.

are again and years ahead of kind were married for 35 years until her death in 2001961 the ballon will was built literally on their doorstep. also a few strands about in the wash cars i went out the door on to burn our transfer to buy a newspaper does it with you and i saw that barbed wire. there had been laid out on the east side of the street when for the stop of hawk there were police armed with machine guns or. your mother might suffer if 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 avoid grandparents who lived in the west and wanted

to take their grandchild for a walk in humboldt park and all the sudden you couldn't go from one street to another from one side to the other with. the wool divided but on 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 sites and from where their grandparents once lived. i know where it by says i know it's where my grandparents lived and nowadays you see tourists milling around here all the time a little bit 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 even 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. regina had to plan

to it no doubt have enjoyed that her grandchildren live so new to where 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. i not just for self but for the people she'd suddenly been granted responsibility for. the 2nd half of the book i would have loved to have spent a few days with her as the person i am now discussing ideas with my growing. 30 years after the fall of the berlin wall antonia in france feel that 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. to . sing. just fish. 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 knight 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 i'll set the excavator in motion. i can

dig all that up you see the cable is connected to the mast and the mast lifts the arm it's perfectly safe which is wobbles and it is all right i'll sit down. wow. is it could but snuff 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 ordered. the dish but how do you feel knowing that it won't be long before these coal mines are closed down. the plane is that this is. 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't 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 so i look i've got nothing against environmental protection but not in this radical well. 8000 people work in the lignite strip mines here the cull industry is by far the biggest employer in the region wide scale unemployment is

a looming physical good stuff it brings back painful memories of what happened after 1909 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 but it is in place and so were you just lucky. whatever your job safe because it's killed. no one's job was safe one. you must have been afraid too of course. how much transformation can a region withstand. a few kilometers from the mine moped enthusiastic have 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 wall zim that's a really big thing here again it's young kids today like my son 14 or 15 year olds and a tanker with them all the time on it's great to talk about it isn't forced on postal service because you're so now it's a symbol of our use of the good old days great stuff you told us all. right let's take this one for a spin so you can sit on it while you push. while and you can i pick up

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 house rebounded somewhat but when the last mines closed they could be another exodus the culture 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 when the bill move away if the regional gov. lynn don't manage to attract industry here. i say it's almost too late for that i might be able to speak.

with. dr kay 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 math 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 horrible to university in berlin to attend and listen ours on westerman law those were hard times the the a muslim heart obviously it must have felt very unfair your form 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 anything 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 is it good now 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. ok but it wasn't obvious that the 2 systems were that different industries because the same as 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 viewer products things like coffee bananas bluejeans and so on and have kind of been on

kind of so they were disadvantaged in that time they go on so you knew that part and of course that you weren't allowed to travel or not to just money buy a live report and you have western germans failed to grasp it 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. they made me think about it all much more i thought since this is 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 same article was enough in my family it's never mentioned we never or hardly ever discussed the east west question with for people in the west like my parents it didn't make much of an

impact nothing much changed at the end that. one half of gemini little changed. to the other half the world's turned upside down on november the 9th 1989 when the wall found. was in the into november 9th and now in the us the 9th of november 989 was my son's 18th birthday. he came of age in communist east germany so we had thrown him his 1st big party balls of fire and then come out on wolf then we got a call from a friend. telling us how the border was open so i was like what do you want about it sure right it's open now it'll be open tomorrow and i didn't take it seriously but again it got wind of it there and then of course the party was over.

in 958 of us piled into my little 5 seater our car and drove to borrow much tighter they're born on a bridge on a fork of the crossing we heard was open to his eye. i . shared 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 that's the spirit. as it were and sake of it was deeply moving were drove back after midnight and then again i wanted to go to the brandenburg gate.

i i. read the sunday 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 uncool there 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 how does a typhoon but i'm i made twenty's i found those clothes totally cool on the street someone you know if you think you. were i i'm. pleased that. sunday morning this is helping his friends family or james band get ready to

perform in the malampaya the park next to the former wall this famous for its weekly fee market told us 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 would he ends up in coming back. to bring. everything you know i. would get bigger. i was curious.

what's now one of the most free spirited places in berlin was once important the death strip when east german guards were under order to shoot to kill if they saw anyone trying to escape. kindness and antonia's youngest sister said syria 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 so you're describing it to friends from out of town what would you say. this but if. they could i'd say imagine this was once the death

strip here was the wall and there was the wall and now we can just walk along it and dance and play music but we came up 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. 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 thought. you know you have a it's kind of. really open and no bird there's no boundary kind of place

and. if you want to do it you would think that 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'd. love to the wall was built in 1961 you're going to 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 the moment we were walled in. we did feel like we were trapped for the but we did what we could to broaden our horizons and also to show our children that it's

in our freedom that matters the most and that with that inner freedom you can do all sorts of things and achieve all sorts of things so given. that children that wasn't always easy to accept. to 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 it's basically stimulus i felt like it wasn't real life or that we were somehow frozen in time and the world beyond was turning without you here 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 their homes and that was what i heard for and got and you know 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 lean. this out and does it make. sure enough in august 1909 plant fled to west germany via hungary and austria like tens of thousands of of as that summer no one family included had the slightest suspicion that the wall would fold just 3 months later issued from either of those 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 yours

but we never expected to be back for christmas the same year but she was enough to go by with talking. oh. how. it's. done. but if. you. the world cup is good i knew how awful i. know how it would go ahead different and her family live in a village outside ballin 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 the hildebrand's a keeping reggae in a spirit a life even today she's remembered fondly in eastern germany read widely. followed the often 500 years 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 regina hildebrand's grandchildren was like hitting the jackpot in that lot of why are our. yeah there's a lot to live up to. nowadays many in eastern germany feel there's no one on the

political stage who represents that interests as i 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 to fix the 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 fall of the wall about the joy if we unification and the mistakes made in itself to mass. ratio to maybe 3 in just a downward. keep

going stop there is the man in the moon. trance and then tony i go back on the red this time they're on their way to saxony the part of the country where the shift to the farm. right is make stick st 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 and. when the piggy demonstrations began in 2014 they struck a nerve at that peak they drew 10000 people today any a small step and course still take to the streets every week antonia and funds the meeting to be a savoy if he's put on sunglasses as a journalist he's and a thing but well compare. how often have you been here. over a 100 times really that's quite something. to get it was founded in

october 24th team saturday cme marks its 5th anniversary. there's a lot of dedication going into this. 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 their unafraid to spread was a rough and overtly racist slogans following after 75 years at the demonstrations in 1920 week in a 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 the given didn't says this is our way of telling the government that a lot is wrong with this country we should all issues because i 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're either so many. in fact the majority of people in dresden including to be as well if you don't sympathize with the piggy to support as he says they've crossed too many lines with that inflammatory and racist rhetoric that's informational only mentioning it to me these people are lost causes you can't get through to them which is also possible. at the very least that people who will accept the violence sloganeering in order to celebrate themselves as something better because that what judgement of us was on the us was a virgin was watching this secret deadlifts as deputy leader in the green. is he going to kick us out. now he can't how could he call it. he seen us there but he's pretending to ignore us. there he is doing his man of the people

thing. or that he has put those guys who are hanging around before him so us doesn't go there 1 and there's a sure does whatever they like circling sharks know exactly why the force is the biggest supporters of 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 and 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 to spring up for. the far right a.f.d. is seizing the moment and saxony attended the state parliament in 2014 and is currently the state's strongest party after the scene of. antonio and francis i'm eating a politician on the events it's not a conversation any of them exactly relishes. you know i assume you know that we don't sympathize with the f.d.a. and you don't have to we don't i think the f.d.a. is pretty creepy to be honest. i buy yourself a lot of the slogan on my election poster is there must be limits to immigration. and getting stuff 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 the court a majority yes that's my opinion. but used to being a racist i don't know why or not i can't explain it because 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 about speaking what about the terrible speeches denying history and the diatribes against homosexuals. that 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 a far right opinions that goes without saying the obligation.

transcendental spend an hour talking to and prevent but they find little common ground. to make 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. every damn time. 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 from knowing if the cold war the grandchildren a celebrating with friends from around the world and it's a america. dear friends dear antonia celia i'm sitting on the terrace at twilight it's peaceful. 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 it as if you're 1943 when i was 2 the same age is to 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 a makeshift lodgings with

a toilet in the stairwell i started over from nothing. when i was 8 francis age germany was split into 2 and remain divided for decades. so 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 and 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 made remain so for your sakes my dear

grandchildren. parents. ok you were that's enough for me me 2.

100 years after the fall of the berlin wall on t.w. . with the help borders. cutting lama and constant bending look to danger in the eyes it was the summer of 198930 years later they chronicled the incredible story of their state from decent germany in a political and for us it was an experience that will bind them together forever. your romance in 30 minutes on the double. in a timeless way discover the focus of the post war starts nov 14th on. cut

. this is d.w. news live from berlin marking a milestone in history 30 years on germany commemorates the fall of the berlin wall a special ceremony is held at one of the few signs where the wall is still intact chancer uncle america honors the memory of those killed trying to flee communism and also has a special message about freedom today. also on the program india's top court gives the contested holy site to buy yoga to do it's hope to move all ended decades.