1969 West Berlin, Berlin Wall, DDR

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1969 West Berlin, Berlin Wall, DDR

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Күн бұрын

July 28, 1969 - West Berlin, Berlin Wall, Leipziger Platz, Brandenburg Gate, Fernsehturm (TV Tower) in East Berlin seen through the Brandenburg Gate (otherwise known as Walter Ulbricht's warning finger to the capitalists to keep their greedy hands off our socialist utopia), and the Russian Soldiers' Monument in part of West Berlin administered by the Russians under 4-powers agreement, and the ruins of the Reichstag. (Part 2 of 17 of 1969 Trip.)

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@cmoudyrybicka 3 жыл бұрын

I remember, when I was standing on the East side of Berlin and was looking through Brandenburg Gate to the West, that suddenly I recognized that I am the red slave and prisoner of the Red criminals. And that I am to young to be a subject of their insane experiment. And five years after that I escaped with my young family to the freedom. Lost everything. Just to be free.

@richardwoodell5772 7 ай бұрын

You and your family were incredibly fortunate.

@ronaldwhittemore1526 6 жыл бұрын

I was stationed in West Berlin (287th MP Co.) from 1969 to 1971. This is a very good video and brings back a lot of memories. Thank you for putting this on You Tube.

@WilliamNoack 6 жыл бұрын

I was also living in West Berlin the Spring of '71, going to college, and use to go to the American PX all the time for groceries and news magazines. Also went to a few movies at one of the bases, where I remember seeing Patton. I think I have a few short videos from that period which I'll upload eventually - a minute or two here and there.

@j.byb.5702 6 жыл бұрын

I too was stationed in West Berlin from 1969 to 1971. McNair Barracks. Very good video. Thanks.

@ronaldwhittemore1526 6 жыл бұрын

My wife and I lived in an apartment in Zehlendorf. Videos brought back memories...thanks for posting. Would love to see more!

@ronaldwhittemore1526 6 жыл бұрын

My unit was at Andrews Barracks, although I was at McNair for a short period of time. We loved our time there.

@ordjay 13 жыл бұрын

thanx for posting this. i have just been to Germany for the first time; going to Berlin for 3 days. I liked the undramatic tone of your film; just showing things how they are/were. Vielen dank.

@WilliamNoack 13 жыл бұрын

I think I remember a big controversy when it was reinstalled facing the other way in the DDR during the 60's or 70's, to "send a message" to the West, just like Ulbricht's warning finger (Fernsehturm) not to meddle with us. I have decades of old DDR publications, so I'll check some of the photos after it was reinstalled the first time and see which way it was facing and if my memory is correct on that.

@alanstrong55 8 ай бұрын

The leftover rubble in East Germany had to break any man's heart. Old Man Russ made no effort to even fix that.

@SilverWave64 3 жыл бұрын

Back when you saw mostly Germans in Berlin...

@Cesarc2 6 жыл бұрын

I was in there in 1969, when I was very young, but only in West Berlin.

@Zooboo1 13 жыл бұрын

Was there 67 to 69. The Russian memorial with the guards was very impressive. Loved the way the 40th Armor ripped up the streets on the monthly alerts --always seemed to be at 5AM. Any one know for sure if the following is true? I was told that the chariot on top of the Brandenburg gate was turned 180* so that the West would see the rear of the rider and horses.

@derekjolly3680 8 ай бұрын

This all looks like 8mm footage to me. Home movies.

@WilliamNoack 8 ай бұрын

We had two new Super 8 cameras we took into East Germany in '69 - so Super 8 was slightly larger film and more detailed than standard 8mm film.

@DerekTJ 13 жыл бұрын

@WilliamNoack It was always facing east. It was the Angel of Peace bringing peace to the city from outside the city limits. The Brandenburg Gate was (one of) the city limits for the Prussians.

@erwinculemeyer7396 10 жыл бұрын

Great historical document. At 0:35 we see the Brandenburg Gate and behind the wall there is on the right side a white tribune for east german visitors (sure they were only military visitors) www.flickr.com/photos/22084572@N07/2220646188/in/photostream/ --- Later you were taking scenes at the Potsdamer Platz, at 3:15 we see Haus Vaterland, that belonged after a slight border correction 1972 fully to West Berlin. But nevertheless it was pulled down by the authority of West-Berlin in 1976 www.haus-vaterland-berlin.de/content/aussen/abbruch01_gross.html --- Today the buildings look different and they are not placed at exact the old position of the previous buildings. Also the streets at Potsdamer Platz have been reshaped in 1989 regarding width. Just the entrances of the underground are in some cases identical like in 1961 (also S-Bahn). Haus Vaterland in the next picture next to us at the right side. www.panoramio.com/photo/108389045

@marcelosedy4703 7 жыл бұрын

Nice photos!

@ROEMER09RHGOEHEIM 11 жыл бұрын

Thank you for these Film, greeting to you to the States!!!

@WilliamNoack 13 жыл бұрын

Well, apparently the Quadriga did always face East... it was only Berlin folk legends that Napoleon turned it around, and then again later Walter Ulbricht. Maybe I'm remembering the debate at the time as to whether it should be turned around to defend the DDR from the capitalists. Of course the original Quadriga was melted down after WW II apart from one original head in the Märkisches Museum.

@WilliamNoack 3 жыл бұрын

@Sebastian Guevara My film before this and the ones after this are traveling around East Germany and East Berlin. I went with my Dad, who had lived in Germany in 1938, and he loved East Germany and East Berlin and said it was more of the real Pre-War Germany, not all Americanized and capitalistic. Before the War it was socialism and the DDR had socialism. I met people in the East who were curious about the West and would like to have traveled there to see what it was like, as long as they could come back home. Later, in the 70's I lived in West Berlin and went back and forth a lot to East Berlin. My last trip to East Germany was in 1985. I didn't make it to West Germany on that trip.

@WilliamNoack 3 жыл бұрын

@Sebastian Guevara No. Very little of that happening - people "escaping" except in the beginning, 1961, when the border was created. The Stasi were specialized - like the CIA or KGB spying on people. My only interaction was with border guards crossing the border, and there is always tension crossing any international border. I even had problems crossing to Canada from the US one time.

@WilliamNoack 3 жыл бұрын

@Sebastian Guevara No, I never saw anything bad happening. I did have one person want to trade me money for DM, which I did, and got 5 times as much DDR Marks I could buy things with, so he could buy Western goods with the DM. But nothing like the Czechoslovakia where I was trading money all the time. Of course if I had been caught doing so the police would have probably bawled me out. East Germany was clean and safe to walk around any time of day or night. By the time I was there the Russians were pretty much not visible, as they were in Czechoslovakia, since it was invaded in 1968 and East Gerany way back in 1945.

@MarkusDuesseldorf 11 жыл бұрын

That was a typical reaction from visitors from the West. But East Germans did really not feel that way. A visitor from the West saw immediately the difference between the colourful West and the gray East, and that led to such feelings. But a person who lived in the East and who had maybe never seen something different for a long time, did not realize this difference. The West was too abstract and too far away for them so that they really had other problems.

@A_10_PaAng_111 3 жыл бұрын

Markus Duesseldorf They noticed. Why do you think it fell in 89? They had enough 🤷‍♂️

@urbandiscount 3 жыл бұрын

@@A_10_PaAng_111 Many then wanted to bring about a more democratic DDR. That was the core of the protests, I believe. The call for a real, functioning democracy in the DDR. Not an end of it.

@WilliamNoack 13 жыл бұрын

My understanding was that originally the Chariot was pointed East so the Teutonic Knights were defending civilization from the barbaric Slavs. The Russians didn't like that idea, so turned it around so that the heroic East was defending socialism from the greedy capitalists of the West. Not sure which way it is facing today or if it is true that originally it guar the West from the East and faced East.

@YesIamEccentric 14 жыл бұрын

Quite different to how I imagined it but still very good

@zeero62 3 жыл бұрын

Looking at the shot of the B-burg gate; there is the wall, and a few feet before that the sign saying your are leaving the American Sector, and a lot of space before that until another smaller barrier with a tourist getting his photo taken, so where was the border exactly? I could imagine the Communists building the wall a few inches inside their borders, but was there some sort of DMZ on the western side too ? Although in other places I've seen graffiti on the wall so I'm guessing there wasn't a buffer between the free people of West Berlin and the wall itself in some places....anyone ?

@WilliamNoack 3 жыл бұрын

Well, I think the actual border was the brick or mortar wall with the flower pot things on top - or whatever they are. The whole BB Tor with the DDR & Russian flags was within the DDR. So the sign on the American side to warn tourists off is on the West Berlin side as well as the fencing barricade with the tourist at the beginning. They were put there to keep anybody from approaching the actual border - the short brick wall. The DDR didn't put up a tall ugly wall the Westerners could walk up to like elsewhere so the grandeur of the Gate could be shown off - being one big prize, along with the Reichstag, that the Soviets had also captured... which makes sense that they wanted to show it off.

@erik_griswold 3 жыл бұрын

@@WilliamNoack The border was usually where the sign was, not the wall. The wall was well into the territory of the Soviet Sector (or the GDR if you recognized that East Berlin was its capital). At the Brandenburg Gate, the facing Western sector was British, not the USA’s. There were stories of people being arrested up against the wall on the “Western” side by GDR border troops who could access their side of the (usually painted) line often using the doors that were installed along the wall at intervals.