Volume 1, Issue No. 13
OPINION/COMMENTARY
/ News That Fears None, Views That Favor Nobody /
. . . . . A community service of The Filipino Web Channel (TheFilipinoWebChannel@gmail. com) and the Philippine Village Voice (PhilVoiceNews@gmail.com) for the information and understanding of Filipinos and the diverse communities in North America . . . . . .
Our latest as of Saturday, November 23, 2019
~ As a journalist I had to learn some basic information about Germany, the east and west then, and the reunified Germany now, since working for years with the major media network based in Hamburg. When I first visited in 1984, the Cold War was still on between the Soviet Union and its satellites, on the one hand, and the United States and its western allies, on the other. The tension began to weaken five years later, in 1989, with the fall of the much-reviled Berlin Wall. Berlin was one of the cities I toured and included Munich, Cologne, Frankfurt, Bonn, and of course, Hamburg.
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30 YEARS SINCE THE FALL
Nostalgic About the Berlin Wall
By ROMEO P. MARQUEZ
Editor, The Filipino Web Channel
“It teaches us: No wall that keeps people out and restricts freedom is so high or so wide that it can’t be broken down.” - German Chancellor Angela Merkel
TORONTO - The nostalgic memories of Germany, in particular, Berlin, came flooding in as I was reading the news and watching film footage about the Berlin Wall, the concrete barrier that had physically separated the east and the west, essentially two competing ideologies, and the people caught in the maelstrom. On November 9, 1989, the wall came down.
It's been 30 years since. On that date this year, over 100,000 people joined the festivities celebrating the fall, according to wire reports. Having been to Berlin, first in 1984, and then in September 2012, the joyous celebration was personally meaningful for me. (Videos at: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V1-sxiCtSOA and https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=15KpuuYvqsI).
Following the defeat of Nazi Germany in the Second World War, the Allied powers - the United States, the United Kingdom, France, and the Soviet Union - occupied and divided Germany into four blocs. Berlin, the capital, happened to be in the Soviet bloc.
As the seat of the governing body of the Four Powers was in Berlin, the city was subdivided into four. The part held by the Soviet Union became East Berlin and made capital of East Germany. The remaining three-fourths (the US, UK and France) evolved into West Berlin.
Five years prior, I had the rare chance to be in Berlin as a visiting journalist from the Philippines. I was among the dozen Asian journalists who were guests of Deutsche Welle or DW, the German state-owned public international broadcaster. Later. I left the group for Hamburg for the major phase of my visit.
The West German government through DW arranged our tour of Berlin. We boarded a bus and from the western sector, we crossed into East Berlin at the now-famous Checkpoint Charlie.
My trip was part of the on-the-job training at Deutsche Presse-Agentur, the German news agency based in Hamburg, that hired me as its foreign correspondent in Manila right after Senator Benigno Aquino was assassinated upon arrival from Taipei on August 21, 1983.
I was actually pirated from the Asahi Shimbun, the second-largest Japanese daily, where I found employment a few years after the declaration of martial law in September 1972.
I journeyed to other parts of Germany then - to Hamburg, Munich, Frankfurt, Cologne, and Bonn (then the capital of West Germany) - within a span of four weeks, all-expenses-paid by DPA. (Video at: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ik0AXXyPXaE).
At the English desk in Hamburg, I was covering the trial of General Fabian Ver and other military personalities linked to the Aquino assassination, and writing news analysis of what might result from the proceedings presided by Judge Corazon Agrava.
When I came to Berlin in October 1984, nobody foresaw the collapse of the Berlin Wall. It had been erected in 1961 and became the physical symbol of the "Iron Curtain" during the Cold War. Its demolition paved the way for the reunification of East and West Germany.
Though I knew the historical significance of that visit, I wasn't really prepared to record it because I did not have the means. The only device I had was a cheap Instamatic camera, a bulky tape recorder, a notebook, and a pen.
I distinctly remember being brought by our guides to the iconic Brandenburg Gate (video at: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d9EvFeMDY7c). It is majestic even then as the 12-feet high and barbed-wire topped wall in front of it provided a terrifying background. (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brandenburg_Gate).
My memory of Berlin and Hamburg remains to this day, more than three decades since I boarded a Lufthansa plane for Germany via Bangkok, Bombay (Mumbai), and Frankfurt.
I left Manila on a borrowed luggage and dressed in summer clothes, a linen suit actually, unaware of the weather conditions in Germany in October, which was actually the middle of autumn.
When I arrived in Hamburg (from Frankfurt), the first thing a friend in DPA did was to buy a fleece jacket and an overcoat for me. He said I would not be able to stand the cold, and he was correct. From Hamburg (where I stayed and worked), I took the plane to Berlin.
My lasting images of Germany were of the Berlin Wall, the Reichstag, Brandenburg Gate, the DPA head office in Hamburg, the Olympic village in Munich, the Cathedral Church of St. Peter in Cologne, the Berlin Tempelhof Airport, and a few landmark places I don't remember now.
But it's the Berlin Wall, and its eventual collapse, that continues to live for its very symbolism with freedom. (Copyright 2019. All Rights Reserved).
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