35 years after the fall of the Berlin Wall, Sabine remembers this day when she “was able to say what she wanted”

35 years ago, the Berlin Wall fell. On November 9, 2024, the German capital celebrates the end of the separation between East and West. This historic moment remains engraved in the memory of the Berliners who experienced it, particularly among the inhabitants of East Berlin, deprived of contact for 28 years with the western part of the city.

This November 9, 1989, Sabine Hammer, now 82 years old, is in front of her television when the press conference of the East German authorities begins. At 6:57 p.m., the spokesperson announced the opening of the border. “We couldn't believe it. I thought I was in a movie when there was this announcement and they said the wall was open… This cement wall was two meters from where I worked, in a children's home, with the soldiers , their guns and the dogs. And it was all finally over!“

With her son, Sabine Hammer gets into her Trabant – the symbol of the former GDR – and heads towards West Berlin. The mother marvels at the musicians who play in the streets, the jeans, which cannot be found in the East, and the store fronts.

“I was wide-eyed when I discovered everything there was in the stores: fruits, vegetables…”

Sabine Hammer

at franceinfo

“We were given 100 marks at the time and I bought biscuits, real biscuits! Because the ones we had in the East were cardboard… And then also a mountain of chocolate, because back home, there wasn't any at all.”she remembers.

In the months that followed, Sabine went on a trip across Europe and took advantage of her newfound freedom. “We could say what we wanted, we regained freedom of expression. In the border area, there were always these people in trench coats, these informers who came and went and listened to everything. There, we could have contact with everyone, with foreigners too. In the GDR, there were only Vietnamese, who had been brought in to work…“

With the fall of the wall, full employment and cheap housing, which the East Germans enjoyed, disappeared. For some, the transition is brutal. But Sabine never regretted the GDR. “I'm not nostalgic for East Germany. Really not. You know, in the GDR, I lived near the Stasi prison. For the slightest wrong word, people were locked up in very small cells and for a long time, it was horrible. I'm glad we closed this chapter.”

According to statistics, 3.5 million Germans left the former GDR to work in the West. But Sabine chose to stay in the East, in the house where her family has always lived.