{"id":24595,"date":"2019-11-22T16:22:19","date_gmt":"2019-11-22T16:22:19","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/ihbconline.co.uk\/newsachive\/?p=24595"},"modified":"2019-11-22T16:22:19","modified_gmt":"2019-11-22T16:22:19","slug":"ahrc-blog-on-the-fall-of-the-berlin-wall-british-residents-remember","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/newsblogs.ihbc.org.uk\/?p=24595","title":{"rendered":"AHRC blog on \u2018The Fall of the Berlin Wall: British residents remember\u2026\u2019"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"A recent Arts and Humanities Research Council<\/a> (AHRC) blog marks the 30th anniversary of the Berlin Wall as Dr Grace Huxford shares the viewpoints of those that were often overlooked during this defining moment in history, linked to her work on \u2018British Military Bases in Germany: Living with the Cold War and its Legacies, 1945-2000\u2019.<\/h3>\n

<\/p>\n

Grace Huxford, Senior Lecturer in Modern History at the University of Bristol and AHRC Leadership (Early Career) Fellow, writes:<\/p>\n

On 9th November 1989, the \u2018fall\u2019 of Berlin Wall astonished and excited many onlookers across the world. Now-famous images appeared on televisions \u2013 of people on the wall near the Brandenburg Gate, and of East Germans speeding by border guards at checkpoints, unimpeded. Such events heralded the end of the Cold War that had dominated politics since 1945 and which had for so long profoundly shaped geographies, societies and individual lives.<\/p>\n

But the fall of the wall had some particular onlookers whose presence in Berlin \u2013 and in Germany \u2013 has often been overlooked: the thousands of British service personnel, their families and many civilians who had been stationed in the country since the end of the Second World War, first as a post-war occupying force and then as a front-line against the Soviet Union.<\/p>\n

An Ordinary Day
\n<\/strong>9th November was an ordinary working day for this British community. In fact, for the teachers in schools in Berlin it was the start of a rather nervous week of inspections by Her Majesty\u2019s Inspectorate. When the news came through, many curious British residents in Berlin headed for the wall \u2013 even the inspectors excitedly called their families at home to relay the news. Children gave flowers to East Berliners and shopkeepers gave them oranges \u2013 two British teachers recalled how \u2018the whole of Berlin smelt of orange peel.\u2019 Another teacher recollected how it was a \u2018wonderful moment for the children\u2019, using the imagery of young people to emphasise the gravitas of this event and the new future it signalled.\u00a0 As in our own era<\/a>, young people were a symbol of a more hopeful future. These multi-layered, sensory memories are among the many things that spoken, rather than written sources, can uncover.\u00a0 Our project \u2013 the first academic oral history of the British community in post-war Germany<\/a> \u2013 places the stories of the British women, men and children who lived in Germany squarely at the centre of Cold War social history.<\/p>\n

Cold War Warriors?
\n<\/strong>The wall was a source of fascination for many British residents. Several of our narrators recalled visiting Berlin shortly after it first went up in 1961 \u2013 seeing the roads \u2018just stopping\u2019 by the wall was \u2018something you don\u2019t forget\u2019. Many British residents eagerly made the journey to Berlin from elsewhere in Germany, either on the famed military train through East Germany or via the \u2018corridor\u2019 for car traffic \u2013 both amid considerable security restrictions. For some, this was their closest brush with the Cold War. Others sought out other borders: several narrators remembered visiting the Harz mountains, sometimes with visitors from the UK, to peer at the inner German border.<\/p>\n

One of our project aims is to use such recollections to explore how residents responded to the Cold War \u2018threat\u2019. Did the Cold War influence everyday life for British residents in Germany? Was Berlin the exception to the rule? Were borders and divisions an integral part of life? And was this something that British residents experienced in common with their German neighbours, or did they experience the Cold War very differently?<\/p>\n

Memories of the Fall
\n<\/strong>Most narrators agreed that the wall \u2018coming down\u2019 was a surprise. One Women\u2019s Royal Air Force veteran joked that the East Germans must have seen her and her friend, who had visited Berlin the week before, and wanted to see them again. Teachers recalled how they were in the \u2018middle of history\u2019 which presented fantastic learning opportunities. Service personnel gave cups of coffee to East Germans visiting West Berlin or leaving for the West for good (in November 1989 alone, 133,429 East Germans left permanently), though most viewed such activities from the sidelines.<\/p>\n

In the following weeks, as the wall was dismantled, one British resident recalled: \u2018it was like being amongst hundreds of woodpeckers as people banged and chipped away at what had stood so solidly for so long.\u2019 They felt this spelled the end of the British community in Germany, a \u2018silent recognition of \u2018job done\u2019 that the allies didn\u2019t need to be there anymore\u2019.<\/p>\n

These descriptions, widely shared among our narrators, often evoke a sense of bittersweet nostalgia, offering a fascinating insight into communities whose whole\u00a0raison d\u2019\u00eatre\u00a0<\/em>disappeared, in their eyes, almost overnight. Oral history is thus not only one of the most powerful ways to capture the lived experience of something as monolithic as the Cold War, but it tells us something about how Germany, British military overseas communities and even wider Europe were regarded\u00a0after<\/em>\u00a01989.<\/p>\n

The British in Germany: the Longview
\n<\/strong>The fall of the wall is often invoked as a turning point in European history, though in some ways it is more of a convenient shorthand for more longer-term and complex changes. The same too can be said of British residents\u2019 responses. The events of November 1989 brought the nature and purpose of the British presence in Germany into stark relief and highlighted the deep roots that military communities felt they had made in the country since 1945. As the final British bases close this year and Britain considers its relations with Europe, oral history interviews can help us to uncover the long and varied legacies of its military presence in Germany.<\/p>\n

You can also listen to Grace talking about her research on the latest BBC\/AHRC New Thinking podcast<\/a> via the BBC Radio 3 website and BBC Sounds\u2026.<\/p>\n

Read more….<\/a><\/p>\n

AHRC blog<\/a>\u00a0and see more at ahrc.ukri.org<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

A recent Arts and Humanities Research Council (AHRC) blog marks the 30th anniversary of the Berlin Wall as Dr Grace Huxford shares the viewpoints of those that were often overlooked during this defining moment in history, linked to her work … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-24595","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-sector-newsblog"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/newsblogs.ihbc.org.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/24595","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/newsblogs.ihbc.org.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/newsblogs.ihbc.org.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/newsblogs.ihbc.org.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/newsblogs.ihbc.org.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=24595"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/newsblogs.ihbc.org.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/24595\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":24597,"href":"https:\/\/newsblogs.ihbc.org.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/24595\/revisions\/24597"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/newsblogs.ihbc.org.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=24595"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/newsblogs.ihbc.org.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=24595"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/newsblogs.ihbc.org.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=24595"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}