1959: Life in POSTWAR BERLIN before the WALL | Panorama | Iconic News Stories | BBC Archive
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- čas přidán 2. 02. 2022
- Robert Kee reports from Berlin on what daily life is like for people in the east and west of the city. He speaks to Germans living on both sides of the then invisible boundary.
This report is from Panorama, originally broadcast 11 May 1959.
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I'm just glad the reporter, Mr. Kee, wasn't run over by any passing Berlin motorists as he stood in the street boundary between East and West during his opener.
5:33 "much of the new building is exciting and imaginative"
*is literally just a box*
Indeed inhumane soulless concrete, compare that to the magnificent Germania which was originally planned.
Yeah but it was 1959, those were pretty revolutionary designs back then
@@theswede5402 they just copied classical architecture and somehow managed to make it just as ugly and souless as concrete boxes
@@MrRemi6464 Then you havent seen the model of Germania or the buildings they actually built, neo classic marble and medieval germanic villages.
It was in 1959
1959: Life in postwar Berlin in the year I was born.Absolutely fascinating. It's only in the past 4 or 5 years I have found out about the situation in Berlin since the end of WW2 and have visited the city. Thanks for uploading this video, I find it extremely interesting.... and to think of what has happened there in my lifetime
Archive,
Thanks for this very interesting piece on Berlin before the Wall was built. Excellent English spoken by so many inhabitants!
What a great piece of documentary. Thank you!
Fascinating contrast with post-wall Berlin. I remember visiting Berlin when I was a US naval officer in the 1980s and the contrast with the Soviet Zone was stark. As an Allied military officer I could cross over to the East, it was a drab, grim affair, a total surveillance state. A Royal Navy travelling buddy speculated that we got a taste of how it must have been living in Nazi Germany.
I love the way he said “Yet”, as if he was fully expecting West Germany to soon legalise exile to Siberia 😭
Stalin was proposing a united, neutral (...) Germany and if you look at east-german propaganda-photos from the early 1950s, you'll often see the slogan "Für ein einiges Deutschland" (for a united Germany) displayed at large banners. This doctrine was interpreted as aggressive position of the Soviet-Union towards the west and the stationing of large tank-armies and other conventional forces left a deep impression on the mindset of the leading heads of Nato. Sudden invasion and conquest of continental Europe up to the Atlantic was actually expected back in these days - that's what Mr. Kee was referring to.
I think it was more out of concern at the prospect of a Soviet invasion.
I once read a book from 1922 and in a Chapter it talks about Berlin, interesting to understand it pre and post war
It was very interesting to see how all of Berlin functioned before the wall was put up on August 13, 1961. The 1950's must have been a nice decade for all of Berlin.
Have a look at what happened in 1953 in the East sector - not nice for many ....
I shouldn't think post 1945 Berlin was that pleasant for quite some time
Most, except the children born after WWII, would have lived with the aftershocks of the devastation for many years.
Remarkably prescient presentation and commentary, and excellent interviews. The passing of time confirms what high-quality journalism this was.
Marvellous documentary. Robert Kee was great.
Even in those days as today so many Germans could and can speak English. I always tell people wanting to spend time in the larger cities that you'll have no problem with communication. Germans on the whole are nice people but their directness can be confronting.
A few were selected.
I agree. I lived there for 12 years.
Because English originates from German.
That was in West Berlin, it was different in West Germany proper (as West Berlin technically wasn't part of West Germany). West Berlin was always more international than West Germany, with the exception perhaps of Hamburg.
I’m a fluent German speaker but my accent gives me away. Many times I would initiate an exchange in German, but the German chap would respond in English!
Extraordinary economic analytic video
"and heyah I am standing on the main roadway, obstructing the local traffic"
Yes but it's Germany where people don't drive like it gives them power over pedestrians. That's a UK thing. As you can see they all manage to drive around him no problem at all.
I just snorted tea down my nose with that… 😂😂
Nineteen forty-eight to nineteen sixty-one was a time of foreboding lull in Berlin: after the breaking of the blockade, but before the building of the Wall. Berliners seemed resigned to the prevailing circumstances, with their life-chances and choices resting largely in the hands of others. The Wall literally made concrete the division that the geopolitical situation dictated. But a generation later, when the geopolitical concrete abruptly fractured, Berliners' own hands determinedly grasped the sudden opportunity to change forever the hitherto fixed reality of their lives as well the lives of their fellow Germans and fellow Europeans.
Just eleven years after the blockade and the airlift, the populace are remarkably unperturbed about the risk to West Berlin.
It's also amazing to see a young Robert Kee, his voice was familiar from the beginning, after a few moments, I found myself wondering was this him. Sure enough, it was.
Everybody was young once.
Worrying and fretting doesn't do much - Berliners since the war always were able to make a life.
There was a greater threat to East Berlin. Remember that Berlin was deep inside East German territory.
The presenter was Robert Kee (d. 2013) who spent 3 years in Germany as a wartime P.O.W.
Good luck to any journalist back then, trying to speak to people in the Uk in German!
Any German journalist would be hard pressed to do that here now, unless they were talking to German ex-pats in London!
@@mbrady2329 Yes, a lot of Brits look at you as if you were from another planet, if you can speak another language! (Being a Brit)
Saw three kids boxing this afternoon, a quite wise judge, two friendly players
But eagerly fierce
Ps Kee spent three years in a German POW camp, after his RAF plane hit by flak.
the gentleman at 11:11 is cool. his english is excellent. wonder what he did in the war
0:28 someone should build something like a wall to make sure people don’t accidentally cross
5:35 "much of the new building is exciting and imaginative"
pans up to the most generic building ever
1:23 little did they know…
Anyone know who the Editor talking at 11:11 was?
Aaaahhhh, the good old days.
Imagine the pressure on East Germans at that time - so easy to move to the West, I wonder what kept them in the East.
I've asked that. Some owned property, businesses, farms, had family ties. Not all farms and businesses were stolen by the government yet. East Berliners liked to work in the West for hard currency, and live above average in the much cheaper East.
@directscientific4550 Standards in East Berlin were not far off West either. East Germany was also being redeveloped, and a lot of the problems that would come to haunt the socialist block were still not prevalent. Many younger people were also ideologically socialist. It was considered a work in progress.
Wearing a tie at the weekend going to the park.
Anyone know the name of the gentleman editor at 11:00?
I've been trying to research him too
Karl Silex
Do the waitresses at the Kranzler still wear those cute Maids' outfits?! 😮
Think very many of the people in this video are 80 plus now.
Amazing that many average Germans at this time had very good English! Could still be said of Germans today but the reverse could not be said of the English!
Most people know more English because it's the language of Hollywood and popular music, even back in 59 , it's not generally English ignorance.
0:45 This guy is almost overrun by that truck....Even then West Berlin was safer🤣
😅😂😅😂😅
Sad
Spy X Family in real life
Most likely living in Westen Berlint.
Sad.
Gosh! It's remarkable to be confronted with content from the BBC that was... good! How far the once-great Beeb has fallen! 😢
"You cant over here Yet.." True words with todays crackdown on free speech and thought crimes in the west.
Don't you just love the british superiority accent. Today absolutely nothing.
9:51 ...only in Europe. Suspicions of being a Soviet spy aside, you'd need binoculars to see the table numbers from across the room.
10:25 spying wife calls from other table...busted.
5:33 "much of the new building is excisting and imaginative"
*is literally just a box*
I left school in 1959. At that time those buildings were the thing. My Grandparents still an outside toilet & no bathroom.
I lived in Germany for a year in 1980 , it was an experience , I worked and lived alone age 17 , till I was raped by a Yugoslavian , in so much fear of police with guns , being influenced by so many war films, I couldn’t report it . I met a friends grandparents who didn’t like me and were proud to show me their black iron cross from hitler for having so many children.
The mothers cross was not black this sounds like fiction
If it was an Iron Cross it would have been given to a soldier in the family for bravery.
@@theswede5402 Yes but the Mother's Cross was awarded for having many children, not the Iron Cross. The story sounds like fiction, anti-German fiction.
@@simonh6371 She said the family had the Iron Cross for having children which would be impossible since it was a military award.
On another video you said you were 6 in 1967 so how could you be 17 in 1980?
I guess most of the women, probably 30 years and older that you see in East Berlin ( here, 14 years after the Soviets arrived ) would have been raped by a Soviet soldier. Are there statistics about that ? I remember reading that barely a female 14 years and older ( to even very old age ) escaped being raped by at least on soldier. For all of those pictures in West Berlin, I wonder how many benefitted from acquisition of Jewish people's possessions either free or at a knock down price when the Jews were transported away ...
How did they find so many people who could speak English in Berlin???
There were British and American sectors in Berlin- and the basics of English are pretty much German.
@@anonUK
Yes that’s true, English and German are pretty similar but I am from Germany and I can say that hardly any person above the age of 40 can speak English here.
@@Tobi-ln9xr Similar only in the germanic roots of the english language. Above age of 40 hardly any person can spek english? You are living deep in the soviet sector?
@@axelosito
Do you mean in former East Germany?
No, I am from southern Germany.
@@Tobi-ln9xr Then english language should by own experience not be a problem.
You can see how Germany created a rather dry way of living, things like schlager music, the way the gentleman at 9:10 almost drops his voice when saying Berlin was so good before the war, all from the fear of appearing in any way sympathetic to the Nazis, that shame. One only has to read any of Le Carre's later Smiley books to see that the West/East situation suited both sides, it was self perpetuating.
Bull,Shitus Maximus.
The invisible boundary 🤔 So gullible, these 1959 people 😅
Well in all fairness it was pretty unexpected after 16 years to suddenly wake up and find there was a wall being built.
@@simonh6371 It wasn‘t. Two months prior Ulbricht was asked in a press conference if these are his intentions and he said „nobody has the intention to build a wall“. A blatant lie, but the rumors were already there.
I feel like this is kind of propaganda. I’m not great with identifying it honestly but I feel like the people where told the right things to say her
True, some of it is simple lifestyle propaganda for the continuing western political vision 1950s style.
But this guy at 13:38 was not propaganda, as you probably know this was a prediction that evolved true over the next 30 years to when the wall came down.
I don't think it's that surprising for west berliners to be hostile to the USSR considering what happened 19 years previously
Insight to different times. And teenagers think they have it hard 😂
OK boomer
9:29 ... the gay part would definitely confuse some teenagers today
It’s all perspective. Just because people had it worse in other time periods doesn’t mean people today can’t be unhappy.
@@anusername8350 lol
@@bradford_shaun_murray teenagers are confused about everything these days, they can’t even decide what gender they are 😂
Did the war memorial really need guarding ?.......
sickness
I was particularly struck by the young mother who wanted to leave Communist East Germany because of the political pressure in her children's school and the hostility to religion, (presumably Christianity). That was under Communist dictatorship in East Germany in 1959. How appalling that 64 years later, that young mother could now make exactly the same complaint about schools in Woke,(eg; Marxist) Britain. So who really won the cold war in the end?
Makes the wonder huh
More «respactable name» - what, communist names !
It’s like living in London under khan 😂 only the wealthy csn travel into London
1:44 KARL MARX BUCHHANDLUNG. Obviously a purveyor/dealer in East Berlin of communist literature.
Noticed that as well
very biased commentary anti german as normal.
I think it is more anti-Soviet than anti-German. This is just 14 years after the end of World War 2. Everyone alive in Europe then had a close connection to the war either personally or through their parents and siblings.
🇬🇧 -so called democratic .. country 😱😂😂😂
The DDR had some really good social policies but their paranoia undid what could have been a Socialist beacon to the world