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 youre behind a wall or not. Much i want to score my grandmother had a telescope wed 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 its 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 its 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 thats 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 couldnt warn him. We hid under the bed clothes pulled the blankets over our heads and then we heard the gunfire. About it couldnt you have yelled from the window you know you have or you have no and then what. Hed already been spotted. There was no point in warning him welcome he. Had been a movie youd 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 grandmas 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 im quoting her do you ever hear of it and youd knock on the window and knock on the window on my way to choir practice. Because of that its 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 didnt 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 couldnt 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 stones throw from the war memorial sites and from where their grandparents once lived. I know where it by says i know its where my grandparents lived and nowadays you see tourists Milling Around here all the time a little bit but of course its also just where france lives and where i go to celebrate new years or watch a football match or whatever but what i will even in history sounds a bit over the top but its 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 thats 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 shed 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 lets have a song. To. Sing. Just fish. Caught. Fish. All right. No network. Theres 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. Theres little industry left here. Antonia and funds are critical of coal mining like many young people today theyre 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 regions identity zuko but slough has spent her entire working life in a coal mine i feel as safe as im about to start up the excavator 1st ill give a warning and then ill 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 its perfectly safe which is wobbles and it is all right ill 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 its facing yet another copy for. Action. But ordered. The dish but how do you feel knowing that it wont be long before these coal mines are closed down. The plane is that this is. Its a very emotional issue for us when. We feel were being vilified. Were made out to be the bad guys were destroying the environment and were responsible for Climate Change the fact that its my involvement in my opinion thats just rubbish. Thats 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 cant but cant you understand peoples concerns why theyre making these demands. Of course they dont think miners are terrible people they think theyre 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 ive 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. Its a very difficult subject for me ive had to say goodbye to friends to colleagues who are also friends its a very emotional thing youve lost your job ive kept mine its hard for both sides. This is for but it is in place and so were you just lucky. Whatever your job safe because its killed. No ones 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 its all still there 30 years after the fall of the wall zim thats a really big thing here again its young kids today like my son 14 or 15 year olds and a tanker with them all the time on its great to talk about it isnt forced on Postal Service because youre so now its a symbol of our use of the good old days great stuff you told us all. Right lets 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 theres talk again about structural change once the older generation dont feel affected they think they dont have long left anyway. But what about the young generation. In this nation when the bill move away if the regional gov. Lynn dont manage to attract industry here. I say its 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 fortys 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 youve been studying a completely different legal system and wow thats 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 fortys having built yourself a whole life and then having to start all over from scratch i cant imagine what that must have felt like if i just. Didnt 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 its 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 its 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 its something thats going to interest you. Ok but it wasnt 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 werent 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 im with antonios 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 its never mentioned we never or hardly ever discussed the east west question with for people in the west like my parents it didnt make much of an impact nothing much changed at the end that. One half of gemini little changed. To the other half the worlds 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 sons 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 its open now itll be open tomorrow and i didnt 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 theyre 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 thats 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 couldnt 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 theyre hopping around on a wall of ice you know how does a typhoon but im i made twentys i found those clothes totally cool on the street someone you know if you think you. Were i im. 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 its pretty crazy as musicians that youre 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 its like yeah keep going you know thats 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. Whats 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 antonias 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 whos never been here you see the history you may know them our park so youre describing it to friends from out of town what would you say. This but if. They could id 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 thats 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 thats what id say. Almost 30 years it was a no mans land between east and west berlin. Today the maui park is a major tourist attraction. I love to dance in the park for me its life. I love the atmosphere of the place the music the people everything about it i really thought. You know you have a its kind of. Really open and no bird theres 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 its freedom and thats very good as. Actually. Id. Love to the wall was built in 1961 youre 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 its 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 wasnt always easy to accept. To plant is france and then tony as mother she finished High School Just before the wall fell shed always railed against the restrictions of life in east germany. Does the food minister its basically stimulus i felt like it wasnt 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 didnt 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 wouldnt 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 didnt know when i would ever see my daughter again this is the she wouldnt