Merit Schambach Berlin, Schönhauser Allee

They photos were taken in the night of 07 to 08  October 1989. The spontaneous demonstration that had occurred on Alexanderplatz that evening headed off towards Prenzlauer Berg and was contained by the police there. I was outside of the encircled people to begin with, then on the inside. I took pictures with a small Minox. The flash was treacherous, because the state had no intention of allowing its actions here to be documented. However, the people around me protected me: we all assumed an innocent expression and looked towards another area in search of the camera.

The encirclement was peaceful, and remained so, as did the police. Suddenly, army trucks arrived, the people were gathered up and loaded onto the back. For a moment I was undecided as to whether I should “go along for the ride” in order to see what happened. That was the first time that I was afraid, because no-one KNEW what would happen. It was such a strange situation, there was no context of normality to fall back on – the people could just as well have been driven away to be shot.

I therefore walked into a side street, but in front of me came the combat troops walking around the corner. I walked into the hallway of a building and wanted to head up to the attic, but made it no further than the first landing. Some sort of block warden came in the other direction and shooed me back down the stairs. And then it was like being in a film – a matter of seconds: I stood in front of the stairway, uncertain where to go. An apartment door opened and a hand pulled me inside. There were already several people in the apartment, I did not know if they, too, had been rescued, or whether they all knew one another. Strange, I know nothing about the people, the apartment owners seemed to be something to do with the church. The first thing I did was to load a new film, because – as we know from the cinema – the film in the camera is always confiscated straight away. The church people had to placate the combat troops at the door (and fortunately managed to do so). We were then able to observe how the rubbish bins in the courtyard were searched, with dog teams combing through the most unfeasible potential hiding places.

It was only later, when things appeared calmer, that I went home. Those are the events that I associate with the fall of the Wall. I was 18 at the time and I am glad that I was old enough to know what was going on and yet still young enough to approach certain situations fearlessly.