Alexanderplatz

Next day, already, a distant rumbling could be heard.

People said it was from Alexanderplatz, but we couldn't see who was fighting.

Day by day, the press of people swelled on the Frankfurter Allee, that great eastern boulevard.

On Wednesday, I tried to push through to Alexanderplatz from Lichtenberg, but the throng was considerable.

People shouted in groups, debated, the mood almost unanimous against the government.

These were the typical middling and labor people of the district.

Yeah, I mean, clearly that is really, really quite different, isn't it? And what would you say was one of your favourite parts of the entire trip?

I really loved the Alexanderplatz, the big TV tower.

It was really cool to see what Berlin looked like from a high, and you could see all of the buildings that we had visited.

And I thought that was really cool to see what we can't see on the ground, but what you can see up high.

A lot of the spy films that I enjoy, such as the Le Carre adaptations and The Lies of Others, take this kind of like, not so much underground, but unseen history.

So the historical events, I mean, I think one obvious example that shoots out to me would be Goodbye Lenin, right? Where they have literally the protests at Alexanderplatz in the weeks leading up to the fall of the wall.

So then it's bang right there.

And there's the very funny scene where the, He's trying to shield his mother in the hospital from seeing the Lennon statue being brought around the building.

The protest that they have, though, when people, when they call this general strike is way bigger than anything they've ever seen.

I don't know Berlin, but Bruet writes that it was basically across the whole city from Sea Gesale to the Alexanderplatz.

German listeners can... probably say what this means.

Eichhorn says at the demonstration, I got my job from the revolution and I shall give it up only to the revolution.

That can also be seen.

So if you go, for example, uh, that's like a, um, main public square in the middle of the city called Alex- Alexanderplatz, Alexander Square.

Um, that's where the TV tower is.

That's very close by, uh, the former border between East Berlin and West Berlin.

That's the, the garden that's right in front of the Protestant Cathedral in Berlin.

And, um, Sasse was the pastor of St. Mary's Church, uh, in, um, in the Alexanderplatz, uh, in Berlin.

If, uh, you've been to Berlin, that big, um, that big, uh, TV tower that the East Germans built, right below that is St. Mary's Church.

And, uh, it's connected historically, uh, with Paul Gerhardt, the Lutheran hymn writer.

He joined the Sturmabteilung in 1926, and he made quite a positive impression on a young Joseph Goebbels.

By 1929, Wessel was living in Berlin and serving as the street cell leader of the Alexanderplatz unit of the Sturmabteilung.

As stormfuhrer, Wessel led a gang of young Nazis that got into violent altercations with communists around Berlin.

In 1930, one of them shot and killed him.

And then he responded finally when I said something like, "Oh, look, and there's lots of police cars." [chuckles] Uh, and that of course, you know, got his attention, and he turned around and looked down and, and saw that this wasn't just police cars, but those were actually armed police, uh, military police.

Um, and he realized that they were there because there was a large protest, uh, gathering, um, on Alexanderplatz, which is the square beneath the TV tower.

Um, and it turned out that there were basically lots of young people protesting against, um, the Day of the Republic, uh, itself and against the GDR, and they were using the opportunity, of course, to, you know, to really make a point.

But there was no way of knowing how the, uh, authorities would respond because they'd dangled this, uh, threat of what they called a Chinese solution, meaning Tiananmen Square.