The Barometer Online

Issue date: 11/19/09 Section: News

Media Credit: Will Nichols Arndt Peltner, host of "Radio Goethe", speaks about life in Germany and the fall of the Wall.

By Rebecca Johnson

The Daily Barometer

Twenty years have passed since the fall of the Berlin Wall. Arndt Peltner, who runs a German radio station in San Francisco called "Radio Goethe," came to OSU yesterday to describe the atmosphere in Germany at the time.

Peltner described life in Germany during the division and the events that led to the dramatic reunification of the state. He explained that the country was not just divided by a wall, but by what he called the "Death Strip," a long area filled with mines and armed guards.

"We just grew up with two different countries and it was normal for us," Peltner explained.

Peltner described that once certain events started in 1989, the fall actually came faster than anyone anticipated. In January of 1989, Erich Honecker, leader of the German Democratic Republic, said the wall would remain for another fifty years.

"Of course he was wrong," Peltner said.

It was in August of 1989 that the border was opened between Hungary and Austria, allowing access of East Germans into the West.

"The Iron Curtain had a hole and people just went through," Peltner said.

The East German government was demanding that people return, but many did not want to go back to the oppressive state. There were more than a thousand people waiting at the German Embassy in Prague to see if they would have to return. Finally Hans Dietrich, the foreign minister for the Federal Republic of Germany, granted the East German citizens permission to stay. Peltner stressed that this was a pivotal moment in German history.

"It symbolizes the end of how I grew up and how Germans lived for a while. … People were very excited because they knew that things would change now," Peltner said.

East German citizens began protesting in early September of 1989 because people were seeing friends and family leaving. The people were demanding a way for GDR citizens to travel freely and were no longer letting the fears of retaliation to hold them back.

"They felt empowered by the mass of people who came out every Monday to protest the government," Peltner said. "They were saying, 'We are the people of the GDR; we demand our rights, we demand our constitutional rights.'"

Continued...

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