The end of the ugly border

The observation tower near Lauenburg was one of the last GDR border posts in northern Germany. It was demolished on February 5, 1991 - the Wall had already been open for 452 days, and the GDR had been history for 125 days. "When the tower was torn down, a recovery tank then drove over the remaining pieces, and so these barriers finally disappeared in the garbage," remembers Dieter Schmidt, who filmed the demolition. "Many people in the former border strip were still afraid of stepping on a mine in 1991, but fortunately they had already been removed by that time." For the customs operations inspector it was a moment of liberation. He had worked on this border for 25 years, which he knew from both sides:At the age of ten he fled the GDR with his family, simply taking the S-Bahn from Berlin to the Federal Republic in 1955, when the Wall did not yet exist.

Border opening:Better late than never

Three days after the fall of the Berlin Wall, the border fell in Mustin. The first additional border crossing point in northern Germany was opened here during the reunification. Dieter Schmidt, customs inspector, filmmaker and former refugee in personal union, followed the events around Lauenburg with his camera. He had almost slept through the actual fall of the Berlin Wall on November 9th:He was reading on the sofa, the phone was turned down. It wasn't until the next morning that he found out about the turning point from the newspaper:"We North Germans are a bit slower, and on November 12, 1989 the border was opened near Ratzeburg," he says. "I had tears in my eyes that day, but I didn't notice them either. But of course I wasn't sad that the border fell, during the shooting I found out that my father had died".

To good neighbors

A New Year's surprise is the opening of the border between Schlagsdorf (then East Germany) and Wietingsbek, municipality of Ziethen:In the lake-rich and hilly area in the Duchy of Lauenburg, the mayors from East and West toasted each other on December 31, 1989 and opened the border fence. Karl-Horst Salzsäuler and Willi Tönnigs still swap memories over beer to this day:until the end, the two weren't sure whether the incomprehensible, the opening of the border, could even work:"For me, the most moving moment was when we went over there, we were standing at a border, the border was impassable," remembers Karl-Horst Salzsäuler, who is still the mayor today. "And suddenly someone puts the key in the lock, unlocks it, and one can go left and the other right - for me that was actually the greatest moment of my life".

Document about the documenter

Dieter Schmidt, who now works at the Hamburg Customs Museum, bought his first Super 8 camera back in 1968 - to document and record his time. He was also present when the border was opened on New Year's Eve 1989. He has kept the Lübecker Nachrichten from back then to this day:"After almost 20 years, the article has yellowed a bit, you can see the mayors toasting each other in a photo, and I'm in the background with my camera to see who then also recorded it." His camera also captured a young blonde woman who keeps appearing in his recordings of the border openings in Mustin and Wietingsbek. Suddenly Mayor Salzsäuler exclaims:"Look, that's Helga Fabinski! - Yes, that's her!"

Dance for joy

And indeed, almost 20 years later, Helga Fabinski, the blonde woman from Dieter Schmidt's recordings, remembers exactly that day:"We danced in the street, we just danced for joy. You could hear the music from afar, and then In the distance you could see people coming towards us. They hugged each other, which was pretty intense for me. Joy and past sorrow actually together". Even decades later, the emotions from back then are still surging. The Ratzeburg native welcomes the Melchin couple. "That was the happiest thing in my life," says Gerda Melchin from Groß Molzahn. "Before we weren't allowed to look over and suddenly we can go over".

Even her husband is still incredulous when he thinks back to that day:"We raise the wire at the front so that they can get through," says Horst Melchin. "That can't be true. That can't be true, I thought." But it was true, as the recordings by hobby filmmaker Dieter Schmidt prove.