Berlin Wall, 20 years later

A car pauses as it crosses the intra-German border near Hof, West Germany as a woman hands a flower to a West German police officer at the border.

Nov. 9, 1989 6:53 p.m.

“Therefore…um…we have decided today…um…to implement a regulation that allows every citizen of the German Democratic Republic…um…to…um…leave East Germany through any of the border crossings . . . That comes into effect…according to my information . . . immediately, without delay.”

– East German Politburo member Guenter Schabowski, who inadverently announced
at the end of an otherwise dull hour-long news conference
that East Germans would be allowed to travel directly to the West from now on.

As the story broke as I watched the German News in the basement of my parents house, I fell off the couch.

From there I ran upstairs screaming the Wall and borders were opening.

The next few weeks were a blur for many people in West and East Germany. I was a 22-year-old staff photographer at the European Stars & Stripes, so I about to experience the biggest story of my life and career.

I packed up all of my gear – not knowing what to expect, I had every thing with me – 2 Nikon F4s bodies, a Nikon FE2, Nikon FM2, lenses ranging from a Nikon 24 to a Nikon 300 mm, on camera strobes, a couple hundred rolls of film (black and white along with Fujichrome). After packing clothes as well, I met up with a fellow photojournalist – Mannie Garcia – at the Darmstadt headquarters of Stripes about and hour north of my house. Two other staff photographers were already on their way to Berlin from Darmstadt as were several reporters from both the main office and a couple of our other offices in northern West Germany, so I went to the intra-German border.

Mind you this is in the day of no laptops, or cell phones, so talking to the office often wasn’t going to happen

The first night we headed to Helmstedt, which was a main autobahn (highway) crossing used to get to Berlin from the west.

To say the crossing was a zoo, is an understatement. Cars, trucks, motorcycles were pouring in from the East. People were waving West German flags, spraying champagne on cars as they hit the border, singing, crying and some, well they had decided to stay.

Connie and Robbie embrace after they crossed the intra-German border near Helmstedt.

Including a couple – Connie and Robbie – I met after I photographed them getting out of their Trabi and embracing. They were a couple about my age and lived in Magdeburg, just a short drive from the border, but never thought they would ever see the Western side. They had nothing – some clothes, and a few belongings. They left in a hurry to cross just incase the East German government changed its mind. Mannie and I treated the couple to a sandwich and a beer at the café near the border crossing as I interviewed them to write something short about them to go with my photos.

The partying continued well into the night at the crossing near Helmstedt, but we left to get back to the Stripes office were I developed my film and printed several images from the border.

Now it seems like the stone ages – no digital cameras, no laptops and WiFi to transmit back to the paper from. Shortly after finishing my prints, we headed toward Hof, which was near the area were the West and East German borders met with Czechoslovakian border.

The sun was coming up on a very cool crisp morning as we closed in on the border crossing. We parked near the guard stations and walked down the Autobahn about 500 yards to the actual border of the West and East Germany. Standing just on the Western side of the foot thick white painted line on the road were two German Police officers greeting cars as they crossed the border.

As I stood making photos of cars, trucks and motorcycles coming across the border, one car slowed as it near the black, red and gold cement pole marking the border. As it crossed the line into the West, the driver slowed the car enough for a woman to hand a flower to one of the police officers. She was laughing and crying he was smiling, flash went off to fill the shadows and I was able to make one of my favorite photos of my now 20-plus year career. To me the, I was able to sum up everything in the frame, the border, East and West Germans coming together in a moment of joy.

As with the night before, the photos here were beginning to look the same, but as we walked back to my car, I turned and snapped a few frames from a bridge of the stream of cars coming west. Every car was full, some only went a little further up the road, turned around and head east to start the process of crossing the border again, just because they could.

As we began following people who had pulled into the rest area just over the border we heard of a make-shift crossing a few miles away, a road that had been closed off when the fence between the two Germanies was erected.

We headed to the area and found the makeshift crossing – a large piece of the fence had been cut away and the road reopened. My biggest problem came after making photos of the new crossing. Since I worked at Stars and Stripes, I had a military ID card and USA plates on my car. At the time, there was a rule that said any one with an ID card could not be within one kilometer of the intra-German border with out the proper papers. Obviously, I didn’t have the papers, you-know-what hit the fan less than 24 hours earlier on a Friday night to boot.

So I we approached my car, which was surrounded by U.S. Army border patrol, I knew what was in my future. Four plus hours later I finally got sprung and off I was to pick up my traveling mates at the train station in Hof. I was PISSED, but 20 years later, I just laugh.

Soliders from the East German Army (NVA) during ceremony marking the 40th anniversary of East Germany.

I would get to Berlin a few days later and then several times over the next couple of months. I also spent nearly two weeks during the early part February in East Germany doing stories with one of our reporters. Visiting places such as Leipzig, Dresden and a small village named Molbis. The air was so dirty in Molbis from the emissions of chemical and brown coal burning plants that drivers sometimes turn on their headlights during the day. Neighbors cannot see each other’s houses, and visitors often vomit after a night of breathing the air. What I remember about the town was how my eyes burned. It was if some one had hit me with pepper spray. While traveling we are also allowed to visit an East German Army base to report on how one of the once might Soviet Bloc Armies was falling apart behind desertions and a general lack of discipline. It also marked the first time and American journalist was allowed on an East German base to make photographs.

As I look back now on the 20^th anniversary of the fall of the Berlin Wall, the eventual reunification of the two Germanies and the fall of the Eastern Bloc, I still find myself emotional over the events of weekend of November 9-11, 1989 as if it were yesterday.