"At the time, it took us almost six years to leave the GDR. In 1975 we filed an application to leave on the grounds of family reunification. We both had to give up our jobs as a result of this: my husband was relocated to the TRO warehouse ('Transformatorenwerk Berlin Schöneweide', a large GDR concern) and I did secretarial work from home for the next few years. After submitting our application we had to present ourselves at the town hall in Köpenick (our residential district at the time) once a week for several years – that is, until the district accepted our request and the Ministry of the Interior also eventually gave us permission to travel. We were finally able to leave the GDR on 6 April 1981. We have kept all the documentation from back then and reading through it again today, it's a wonder we ever managed to keep going. They were difficult times but worth every bit of the struggle. My husband's mother (89 years old at the time) was delighted to have us live near by and we had a few good years with her still.
And here we were, fast approaching the moment when reunification was to finally become reality – a day which we, like many other Germans, had been waiting for a long time. What would it be like? How would we mark it? We considered travelling from Wunstorf (where we lived at the time, near Hanover) to Berlin but given that there'd be so many people flocking to the city, we had our reservations about doing so.
A friend from Cottbus called us at the end of September to say he was celebrating his birthday on 3 October (which made it all the more special). He wanted to invite us for his birthday, but also to celebrate reunification with us. We accepted the invitation.
We were supposed to set off on 3 October – and travel through the night. After listening to the traffic bulletin on the radio, which at 9 o'clock in the evening still announced a 70-km-long traffic jam, we once and for all dropped the idea of possibly driving up to Berlin. We eventually left Wunstorf at 2 o'clock in the morning. At long last we could look forward to a journey without border crossings; a near indescribable feeling. We were all uptight in the car despite knowing that everything had in effect already changed. And because there was no one on the motorway, we decided en route to head for Berlin after all – and so off we went, towards the Kurfürstendamm in the centre of town. By then it was 4 o'clock and there were people everywhere. They were cheerful, friendly and obliging. Even in the Pressecafé, just opposite Bahnhof Zoo train station, people huddled closer together so that we had enough room to have some breakfast. And the café wasn't just full of Berliners. Our table boasted a man from Hamburg, two tourists from North Rhein-Westphalia, someone from Franconia and us from Lower Saxony. Everyone had driven to Berlin during reunification night, and everyone felt optimistic. We even sent picture postcards to friends and acquaintances that night. At the Bahnhof Zoo train station, where we wanted to have the cards stamped at the post office, hundreds of young people lay peacefully on the ground together, wrapped up in sleeping bags and blankets, with their rucksacks for pillows. Foreigners lay alongside Germans, skinheads alongside rockers – the station concourse had become a gigantic dormitory.
We then drove to the Brandenburg Gate. People were beginning to look tired, reporters stood in front of the Gate, cameras primed, the cleaning crews were out working. It was dawn already and we captured the moment on film: us driving through the Brandenburg Gate for the first time in our lives. Afterwards we carried on up Unter den Linden, along Friedrich Straße and saw the new flag flying on the former head-of-state council of the GDR building. It was a great feeling for us – it had been so difficult for us to leave this country back then. Now developments showed that we had made the right decision.
Later our drive took us through Berlin and out towards the motorway. At 7.15 in the morning we arrived at our friends' house in Cottbus. Although they hadn't expected us that early, they were very happy to see us when we rang the doorbell. We had breakfast and then all went to mass. Its focus point was this historic day.
Back at our friends' house, we watched the images on TV again and celebrated reunification with a glass of sparkling wine; we sang the national anthem, discreetly. That afternoon we were invited to a birthday gathering and even here all the guests stood up with the first glass of sparkling wine and sang the national anthem. But this time we didn't have all the windows shut; rather, they were wide open and unconfining. And no one felt ashamed at needing to wipe away the odd tear.
The night in Berlin and later, the day celebrating with friends – we wouldn't have wanted to mark the day in any other way."
Hans and Ursula Senftleben
