november 9th, the personal take with anecdotal memories old and new

the basic fact in the beginning: i was seven years old when the wall came down. my family did not ride to berlin in a frenzy. my primary memories are mainly childhood images.

among the strongest of them connected to the fall of the wall is that with the concrete also saturday fell away as a school day. i attended the beginning of second grade, after having suffered on saturdays during the first whole grade. now i could watch one of my favorite television shows that ran in the morning called "achim und kunibert" [achim and kunibert, a show with a big clown and a miniature somewhat crumpy clown] and another one i remember quite clearly called "mach mit, mach's nach, mach's besser" [losely translates into "participate, copy, exceed", a show, in which two teams of kids competed in a race involving an obstacle course in a gym].

then there are handed down memories from my parents, about herr zimmermann, the man in our apartment building who was said to be working for the stasi, short for staatssicherheit, the secret police to "secure the state". herr zimmerman was busy with observing neighbors. as a child i had a notion that he is suspicious and to be avoided. in hindsight the pulling down of the dark brown roller blind made sense; watching western channels on television was forbidden, neighbors such as herr zimmermann might tell on the dissident viewers.

street names changed, school names changed. gone was the wilhelm-pieck-straße, where we lived. new heroes more fitting with the new ideology moved in such as dietrich bonhoeffer. once the pride of new tenants, the whole apartment building from the late 1970s has vanished. gone was also otto-grotewohl, the street where my kindergarten was located, i don´t even remember the new name. gone was also the big metal bust of lenin at the nearest high school.

favorite products vanished as well. some for good, some for a while until they had a come back in a smaller production line. my favorite example: knusperflocken [crunchy flakes, a chocolate candy]. they are pretty much known and enjoyed by people in the west and east. but i think only people in the east, i think, really appreciate their survival.

especially people in small town of zeitz, where the knusperflocken are produced by the zetti company. it is one of the few companies that survived die wende [wend, the whole process of political and economic change in east germany] in zeitz, which i should disclose is my home town. the reappearance of products most importantly secured some jobs in a region notorious for high unemployment ever since the wall came down. knusperflocken is where my grandmother worked. knusperflocken are probably the product i care most about to have shipped to me in the united states whenever there is a chance.

so it's childhood memories, parents`talk, and sweets. dr. peter pfeiffer, a professor of german at the georgetown university in washington, dc, said that while most people under 30 years of age do still carry memories of east germany they were not traumatized by them as my parents' generation.

only in the early nineties, dr. pfeiffer, said he noticed differences between exchange students coming from east or west germany in terms of clothing and language. he said one example was the expression fakt ist, [fact is] which east germans used in contrast to west german students and has become pretty common. just as typical ossi words [the sometimes derogative term of people in east germany, ost meaning east] such as "broiler" and "roster" are no secret language any more. at least since german book author else buschheuer wrote her book "ruf!mich!an!" [call!me!] in which the neurotic female main character refers to her hated east german house mates maik and mandy as "broiler"-neighbors.

another professor at ohio university, dr. joseph bernt in the journalism department, said to me once that he remembered the earlier exchange students from leipzig (which is located in east germany). they, he said, about a decade ago came with a sense of despair and hopelessness, a sort of no future confusion. a contrast to the students coming from leipzig these days, he says, they are so enthusiastic with the world open before them.

no matter where you were, in the united states, west germany, east germany or timbuktu --
what are your memories, anecdotes, and associations of the times when, before, and after the wall fell? go ahead and post them in the comment section!

here's a more analytical approach to the day, my favorite article of the day and the reasons why