Breaking Down the Wall by Wibke Brueggemann
History finds a place in many children’s books and can be a great way for building understanding and empathy over past events. In this book, the Berlin Wall will fall and that had a huge impact across the world. Check out the blog today from Wibke Brueggemann.
Breaking Down the Wall by Wibke Brueggemann
I was thirteen when the wall came down, the same age as Greta, the hero in Breaking Down the Wall, but unlike her, I grew up in what used to be West Germany.
When I was seven or eight, I remember going on a hiking trip with my family to the Harz mountains. It was a miserable day, rainy, and the path through the cold and mossy forest was extremely unspectacular and hence boring. But then, for a couple of meters, it led us right along the border to East Germany, which was a giant fence with enormous spirals of barbed wire twisting along its top. Behind it lay a vast grassy corridor that stretched across the hillylandscape as far as the eye could see until there was another fence. My brother and I were fascinated when my father explained that this area was called ‘Niemandsland’, no-man’s-land, and that you weren’t allowed to go in it.
‘Why not if it belongs to no one?’ we wanted to know.
My father pointed to the tall concrete tower just on the other side. Two people wearing uniforms were sitting up there. ‘If you go into the Niemandsland, they’ll shoot you,’ Dad said.
I was a child of a divided Germany, and it never occurred to me that this could change. But then it did. It was sudden and unexpected and so exciting, and I could talk about it forever, which is why I was delighted when I was asked to write about it in Breaking Down the Wall.
On the evening of November 9th, 1989, people in West and East Germany were glued to the television (many East Germans had the means to illegally tune into West TV) to watch the final of the German football cup between the VfB Stuttgart and the FC Bayern Munich.
When the news came on, the West German newsreader reported: ‘Today is a historic day. East Germany has opened its borders.’.
Of course, no one could believe it.
Many East Germans who lived close to border crossings set out to see if it was true, and just like Greta’s friend Christian, many were already in their pyjamas.
They found that yes, the borders were open, and they just walked across. On the other side they were greeted by equally perplexed West Germans, and in Berlin they scaled the walltogether, some even took hammers to it, physically taking it down, and bringing about the end of the GDR and twenty-eight years of a divided Germany.
It was only after the collapse of the GDR that the rest of the world- and many East Germans- found out the gruelling details about how the state was run. In Breaking Down the Wall Greta learns the hard way how the Stasi, the Ministry for State Security, kept taps on people, and how it abused its power to frighten people into submission and remain loyal to ‘the party’.
If you wanted nice things, you had to play the game. And if, like Greta’s father, you were an outspoken critic of the regime and called for change, you could be imprisoned. But even wearing your hair in the famous eighties punk Mohican was seen as ‘anti regime’ and could get you and your family on the Stasi watchlist.
Experiencing the final year of the GDR through Greta’s eyes was an absolute privilege for me.
These young people’s drive and desire to tell the truth and do what’s right- not by what they’re conditioned to think is right, but what they know deep down is the correct human response, left me with an enormous sense of hope for our world today that’s still suffering from suppression and division.
I want readers to have a blast following Greta, Christian and Lili around Berlin, sneaking into places like Stasi Headquarters, and standing on the wall together, in Niemandsland, on one of the most memorable and spectacular nights in history that should never be forgotten.
Breaking Down the Wall by Maximilian Jones is published by Welbeck Children’s and is available now.
Views expressed do not necessarily reflect those of the Federation.