Berlin Wall
Erdmute Greis-Behrendt
Wednesday 31 August 2011
Erdmute’s great contribution will be long held in the archives, I hope. She was one of our stars when we made the video “When the Wall came down”. Her joy in re-enacting for the camera how she rushed up the stairs to send her first “snap” from the press conference announcing the end of the Wall, was a delight. “Imagine, I had never sent a snap before,” she told us of her excitement and nervousness.
And it was also a major scoop to mark her dedication! Annette told us that snap was the first news the West German government received, as well as a first round the world. As the video remarked “We were first with the Wall going up and first with it going down,” thanks to her as well as the expat correspondents. The next step was to tell her family, who left for the wall. But she added that even when telling them she could hardly believe it and she stayed at her post. Her role in the video encapsulated not only what was best of Reuter staff in these circumstances but the reaction of so many of the East Germans at regaining their freedom of movement.
Colin Bickler
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And it was also a major scoop to mark her dedication! Annette told us that snap was the first news the West German government received, as well as a first round the world. As the video remarked “We were first with the Wall going up and first with it going down,” thanks to her as well as the expat correspondents. The next step was to tell her family, who left for the wall. But she added that even when telling them she could hardly believe it and she stayed at her post. Her role in the video encapsulated not only what was best of Reuter staff in these circumstances but the reaction of so many of the East Germans at regaining their freedom of movement.
Colin Bickler
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Erdmute Greis-Behrendt
Wednesday 24 August 2011
During the Cold War, with Berlin divided by the Wall and Germany split by Communist barbed wire fences, land mines, and armed border guards in watch towers, East Germans very rarely had a chance to visit the West. Reuters, the only Western news organisation with a resident correspondent based in East Berlin, managed to extract permission from the GDR authorities for Miss B to travel to London for a short visit to HQ in Fleet Street. Not once, but twice. Erdmute much appreciated the gesture as it reflected the high regard in which she was held by Editorial, borne out by the tributes already paid by former correspondents who worked with her in the cramped, bugged quarters of an office flat in Schoenhauser Allee (see Peter Millar's book on the downfall of the Wall ● 1989 The Berlin Wall: My Part in its Downfall).
Manfred Pagel
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Manfred Pagel
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Fall of the Berlin Wall
Friday 06 November 2009
I remember Ian Macdowall alone in the West Berlin bureau on Fasananstrasse early one morning, perhaps 7 am. He was swearing blue as he pounded the keys of the terminal. "Sit down and type what I dictate," he yelled as soon as he saw me. He was scowling and mumbling about a photographer at Brandenburg Gate.
The chief news editor had just filed a snap about the Wall opening at this historic site. And it was wrong. He was wrong. The photographer had mistaken a TV crane on the West Berlin side of the Wall for a construction crane, phoned in the newest gap in the Wall and left Macdowall with egg on his craggy face.
That same week he argued with Mark Wood to put a Berlin dateline on the story I filed from the opening of the Wall at Potsdammerplatz on Sunday morning, the 12th. Martin Nesirky had been assiduously filing stories from either East Berlin or West Berlin, but Macdowall prevailed on Wood to let that story run on a Berlin dateline for the first time in decades.
An amazing time with wonderful colleagues.
Paul Mindus
The chief news editor had just filed a snap about the Wall opening at this historic site. And it was wrong. He was wrong. The photographer had mistaken a TV crane on the West Berlin side of the Wall for a construction crane, phoned in the newest gap in the Wall and left Macdowall with egg on his craggy face.
That same week he argued with Mark Wood to put a Berlin dateline on the story I filed from the opening of the Wall at Potsdammerplatz on Sunday morning, the 12th. Martin Nesirky had been assiduously filing stories from either East Berlin or West Berlin, but Macdowall prevailed on Wood to let that story run on a Berlin dateline for the first time in decades.
An amazing time with wonderful colleagues.
Paul Mindus
Book launch
Wednesday 23 September 2009
This is a last ditch attempt to trace a load of old Reuters hacks from the late 70s through the mid 80s to invite them (and others) to the launch party for my new book - 1989: The Berlin Wall (My Part in its Downfall) - to be held at the Frontline Club near Paddington on Thursday 1 October.
Chapter 2 is dedicated to my Reuters training bringing back such great names as George Short - and citing the Short Lunches - and later chapters to my time for the Baron in East Berlin and Moscow.
Peter Millar
Chapter 2 is dedicated to my Reuters training bringing back such great names as George Short - and citing the Short Lunches - and later chapters to my time for the Baron in East Berlin and Moscow.
Peter Millar
