1959: Life in POSTWAR BERLIN before the WALL | Panorama | Iconic News Stories | BBC Archive

[@pinedelgado4743]

I'm just glad the reporter, Mr. Kee, wasn't run over by any passing Berlin motorists as he stood in the street boundary between East and West during his opener.

[@MarkEliasGrant]

He's literally standing in the middle of the road? How inappropriate.

[@mikerisbridger8095]

As a family way back. Wee knew Robert Kee. Years later I read his WW11 memoir A Crowd is Not Company. It's very good.

[@mikerisbridger8095]

@@MarkEliasGrant Perhaps this behaviour was the kee to his journalistic prowess!

[@mikerisbridger8095]

So Robert Kee's Berlin documentary filmed in 1959. From August 1961 the Berlin Wall was begun. And only by 1989. Taken down! Kee, by the way was a bomber pilot during the War.

[@iaw7406]

5:33 "much of the new building is exciting and imaginative" *is literally just a box*

[@theswede5402]

Indeed inhumane soulless concrete, compare that to the magnificent Germania which was originally planned.

[@danieleperini3565]

Yeah but it was 1959, those were pretty revolutionary designs back then

[@MrRemi6464]

@@theswede5402 they just copied classical architecture and somehow managed to make it just as ugly and souless as concrete boxes

[@theswede5402]

@@MrRemi6464 Then you havent seen the model of Germania or the buildings they actually built, neo classic marble and medieval germanic villages.

[@flusi2214]

It was in 1959

[@charleskramer7062]

Spent a year in West Berlin between 1979-1980 as an exchange student. Studied in Bonn a couple of years later. I loved my time there despite the ever-present oppressive nature of the wall. Have gone back several times since the reunification, and it’s a much more pleasant feel.

[@tomduggan51]

Archive, Thanks for this very interesting piece on Berlin before the Wall was built. Excellent English spoken by so many inhabitants!

[@JohnSmith-zq9mo]

He should still have brought an interpreter, it must have restricted who he could talk to a lot.

[@marcellocolona4980]

Fascinating contrast with post-wall Berlin. I remember visiting Berlin when I was a US naval officer in the 1980s and the contrast with the Soviet Zone was stark. As an Allied military officer I could cross over to the East, it was a drab, grim affair, a total surveillance state. A Royal Navy travelling buddy speculated that we got a taste of how it must have been living in Nazi Germany.

[@cmartin_ok]

1959: Life in postwar Berlin in the year I was born.Absolutely fascinating. It's only in the past 4 or 5 years I have found out about the situation in Berlin since the end of WW2 and have visited the city. Thanks for uploading this video, I find it extremely interesting.... and to think of what has happened there in my lifetime

[@NomadicDmitry]

What a great piece of documentary. Thank you!

[@iamthelazerviking23]

I love you, Berlin 🖤

[@1969FordF1OO]

I once read a book from 1922 and in a Chapter it talks about Berlin, interesting to understand it pre and post war

[@robadr13]

Remarkably prescient presentation and commentary, and excellent interviews. The passing of time confirms what high-quality journalism this was.

[@Neil-Aspinall]

Even in those days as today so many Germans could and can speak English. I always tell people wanting to spend time in the larger cities that you'll have no problem with communication. Germans on the whole are nice people but their directness can be confronting.

[@jean6872]

A few were selected.

[@Mark-yy2py]

I agree. I lived there for 12 years.

[@yanislee1085]

Because English originates from German.

[@simonh6371]

That was in West Berlin, it was different in West Germany proper (as West Berlin technically wasn't part of West Germany). West Berlin was always more international than West Germany, with the exception perhaps of Hamburg.

[@marcellocolona4980]

I’m a fluent German speaker but my accent gives me away. Many times I would initiate an exchange in German, but the German chap would respond in English!

[@boink800]

It was very interesting to see how all of Berlin functioned before the wall was put up on August 13, 1961. The 1950's must have been a nice decade for all of Berlin.

[@TryThinkingAboutIt]

Have a look at what happened in 1953 in the East sector - not nice for many ....

[@clavichord]

I shouldn't think post 1945 Berlin was that pleasant for quite some time

[@ellebelle8515]

Most, except the children born after WWII, would have lived with the aftershocks of the devastation for many years.

[@thesteelrodent1796]

there was a lot of unpleasantries in the 1950s Germany, not just Berlin. All of East Germany was already on a fast train to become a craphole long before the walls were put up, which was incidentally why the walls were built

[@SmudgysCoasters]

I love the way he said “Yet”, as if he was fully expecting West Germany to soon legalise exile to Siberia 😭

[@11Kralle]

Stalin was proposing a united, neutral (...) Germany and if you look at east-german propaganda-photos from the early 1950s, you'll often see the slogan "Für ein einiges Deutschland" (for a united Germany) displayed at large banners. This doctrine was interpreted as aggressive position of the Soviet-Union towards the west and the stationing of large tank-armies and other conventional forces left a deep impression on the mindset of the leading heads of Nato. Sudden invasion and conquest of continental Europe up to the Atlantic was actually expected back in these days - that's what Mr. Kee was referring to.

[@meropealcyone]

I think it was more out of concern at the prospect of a Soviet invasion.

[@radioandtvmemories6178]

No, not at all. He meant (and it was very possible at the time) that the Western powers could leave West Berlin

[@edmondscott7444]

Marvellous documentary. Robert Kee was great.

[@mikerisbridger8095]

I wish I'd got to Kee better. Alas in 1971, I fell out with his son Alexander. Bummer!!

[@avus-kw2f213]

0:28 someone should build something like a wall to make sure people don’t accidentally cross

[@acousticshadow4032]

My father was a "lifer" in the USAF. We moved to West Berlin in early December of 1961, less than four months after the city was divided, and barely two months after the great Soviet/US tank standoff. The Wall wasn't much of an actual wall when we arrived; not yet. It was mostly mine-laden fields and barbed-wire. Checkpoint Charlie was a dangerous area to be hanging out, as it was heavily fortified with many soldiers from both sides. There were guards too at the Brandenburg Gate, but it wasn't such an intense place, so became a common destination in the family car. We all piled into the '55 Buick and went there after supper, like Americans would go to the Dairy Queen back in the States. The USAF brought me to many different places during my father's long career, but none made as deep an impression upon my memory as West Berlin.

[@JohnSmith-zq9mo]

Imagine telling a west Berlin resident in 1941 that in 18 years their would be American and British soldiers were they lived, and that people would be worried they would leave.

[@xiangyusi3160]

Extraordinary economic analytic video

[@MacG8585]

"and heyah I am standing on the main roadway, obstructing the local traffic"

[@simonh6371]

Yes but it's Germany where people don't drive like it gives them power over pedestrians. That's a UK thing. As you can see they all manage to drive around him no problem at all.

[@natty258]

I just snorted tea down my nose with that… 😂😂

[@radioandtvmemories6178]

A glorious journalistic career almost prematurely cut short by Berlin traffic

[@alumycrick2911]

Nineteen forty-eight to nineteen sixty-one was a time of foreboding lull in Berlin: after the breaking of the blockade, but before the building of the Wall. Berliners seemed resigned to the prevailing circumstances, with their life-chances and choices resting largely in the hands of others. The Wall literally made concrete the division that the geopolitical situation dictated. But a generation later, when the geopolitical concrete abruptly fractured, Berliners' own hands determinedly grasped the sudden opportunity to change forever the hitherto fixed reality of their lives as well the lives of their fellow Germans and fellow Europeans.

[@thomasburke2683]

Just eleven years after the blockade and the airlift, the populace are remarkably unperturbed about the risk to West Berlin. It's also amazing to see a young Robert Kee, his voice was familiar from the beginning, after a few moments, I found myself wondering was this him. Sure enough, it was.

[@phillipecook3227]

Everybody was young once.

[@AngloAm]

Worrying and fretting doesn't do much - Berliners since the war always were able to make a life.

[@ProleCenter]

There was a greater threat to East Berlin. Remember that Berlin was deep inside East German territory.

[@None-zc5vg]

The presenter was Robert Kee (d. 2013) who spent 3 years in Germany as a wartime P.O.W.

[@PeterRStewart]

My friend and l , a couple of squaddies , went to that place we were told that if the ladies liked you the phone would ring. The telephone never did ring.

[@PassiveAgressive319]

Fascinating

[@mikerisbridger8095]

Robert was born in 1919. is WW11 POW memoir A Crowd is Not Company is worth reading.

[@xiangyusi3160]

Saw three kids boxing this afternoon, a quite wise judge, two friendly players

[@xiangyusi3160]

But eagerly fierce

[@mick2d2]

Good luck to any journalist back then, trying to speak to people in the Uk in German!

[@mbrady2329]

Any German journalist would be hard pressed to do that here now, unless they were talking to German ex-pats in London!

[@mick2d2]

@@mbrady2329 Yes, a lot of Brits look at you as if you were from another planet, if you can speak another language! (Being a Brit)

[@ThatBulgarian]

5:35 "much of the new building is exciting and imaginative" pans up to the most generic building ever

[@tonyclifton265]

the gentleman at 11:11 is cool. his english is excellent. wonder what he did in the war

[@mikerisbridger8095]

Read his book A Crowd is Not Company. Kee was a bomber pilot in WW11. And shot down. He spent 3 years as a POW before escaping.

[@pipe_currency]

Anyone know the name of the gentleman editor at 11:00?

[@dameaustel]

I've been trying to research him too

[@user-yz4rw7mb6s]

Karl Silex

[@heythisisminenotyours]

Wearing a tie at the weekend going to the park.

[@Tin_Man1923]

14:03 Poor guy. Germany was not reunited until the walk came down in 1989. This guy would had to have been 102 at that time, so theoretically he could have been alive, but probably wasn't. I'm sure he was sad about that when he died

[@dameaustel]

Anyone know who the Editor talking at 11:11 was?

[@thesteelrodent1796]

well the reporter says "Berlin's most important morning paper", which the interwebs says is the Berliner Morgenpost, and in 1959 the chief editor for that paper was Helmut Meyer-Dietrich. Not been able to find a photo of what he looked like in 1959, but there is a 1951 photo of him with a pipe that sort of looks like the fella in this video, so I'd say there's a good chance it is him

[@mrpeel3239]

Ps Kee spent three years in a German POW camp, after his RAF plane hit by flak.

[@PassiveAgressive319]

Wow, that is fascinating

[@mikerisbridger8095]

Yes his memoir A Crowd is Not Company is a superb POW ripping yarn!

[@Drew791]

1:23 little did they know…

[@juniperpansy]

@2:59 Winston Churchill!

[@AngloAm]

Imagine the pressure on East Germans at that time - so easy to move to the West, I wonder what kept them in the East.

[@directscientific4550]

I've asked that. Some owned property, businesses, farms, had family ties. Not all farms and businesses were stolen by the government yet. East Berliners liked to work in the West for hard currency, and live above average in the much cheaper East.

[@tonybarrett8543]

​@directscientific4550 Standards in East Berlin were not far off West either. East Germany was also being redeveloped, and a lot of the problems that would come to haunt the socialist block were still not prevalent. Many younger people were also ideologically socialist. It was considered a work in progress.

[@OlafProt]

You can see how Germany created a rather dry way of living, things like schlager music, the way the gentleman at 9:10 almost drops his voice when saying Berlin was so good before the war, all from the fear of appearing in any way sympathetic to the Nazis, that shame. One only has to read any of Le Carre's later Smiley books to see that the West/East situation suited both sides, it was self perpetuating.

[@cooltrades7469]

Bull,Shitus Maximus.

[@PeterRStewart]

Is that Robert Kee?

[@mikerisbridger8095]

Yes that's the late Robert Kee. He was 40 years old during this docu

[@PeterRStewart]

@ thanks

[@PS987654321PS]

Aaaahhhh, the good old days.

[@robertbarrett2494]

This was before Kruschev ordered a wall to be built , ostensibly " to keep fascism out " .

[@mathisnotforthefaintofheart]

0:45 This guy is almost overrun by that truck....Even then West Berlin was safer🤣

[@christinecarter6836]

😅😂😅😂😅

[@PassiveAgressive319]

What strikes me is everyone speaks English in Berlin

[@jayveebloggs9057]

just been. Chatted to an Australian waiter who can't speak German. He said it wasn't needed!

[@ProleCenter]

Suspicious, huh?

[@han3wmanwukong125]

I think he asked specifically. It's just limited footage for these specific people because they answered "yes".

[@hectorleach-clay2271]

Amazing that many average Germans at this time had very good English! Could still be said of Germans today but the reverse could not be said of the English!

[@davidroberts1187]

Most people know more English because it's the language of Hollywood and popular music, even back in 59 , it's not generally English ignorance.

[@bradford_shaun_murray]

9:51 ...only in Europe. Suspicions of being a Soviet spy aside, you'd need binoculars to see the table numbers from across the room. 10:25 spying wife calls from other table...busted.

[@walesruels]

Gosh! It's remarkable to be confronted with content from the BBC that was... good! How far the once-great Beeb has fallen! 😢

[@robertbarrett2494]

How did Potsdam compare despite Soviet occupation ?

[@iaw7406]

5:33 "much of the new building is excisting and imaginative" *is literally just a box*

[@davecooper3238]

I left school in 1959. At that time those buildings were the thing. My Grandparents still an outside toilet & no bathroom.

[@Thorscauldron]

Don't you just love the british superiority accent. Today absolutely nothing.

[@theswede5402]

"You cant over here Yet.." True words with todays crackdown on free speech and thought crimes in the west.

[@Dynastone]

Spy X Family in real life

[@luisreyes1963]

Most likely living in Westen Berlint.

[@panic0077]

All the germans that were intervjuad spoke pretty damn good English. I wonder if thats the case in today Berlin

[@Czechbound]

I guess most of the women, probably 30 years and older that you see in East Berlin ( here, 14 years after the Soviets arrived ) would have been raped by a Soviet soldier. Are there statistics about that ? I remember reading that barely a female 14 years and older ( to even very old age ) escaped being raped by at least on soldier. For all of those pictures in West Berlin, I wonder how many benefitted from acquisition of Jewish people's possessions either free or at a knock down price when the Jews were transported away ...

[@JonasWEBnorge]

9:24 😂

[@sergromanenkov]

Два года до стены..

[@COBBETT1215]

I was particularly struck by the young mother who wanted to leave Communist East Germany because of the political pressure in her children's school and the hostility to religion, (presumably Christianity). That was under Communist dictatorship in East Germany in 1959. How appalling that 64 years later, that young mother could now make exactly the same complaint about schools in Woke,(eg; Marxist) Britain. So who really won the cold war in the end?

[@orgith54]

Makes the wonder huh

[@teslaandhumanity7383]

I lived in Germany for a year in 1980 , it was an experience , I worked and lived alone age 17 , till I was raped by a Yugoslavian , in so much fear of police with guns , being influenced by so many war films, I couldn’t report it . I met a friends grandparents who didn’t like me and were proud to show me their black iron cross from hitler for having so many children.

[@johnsmith-mq4eq]

The mothers cross was not black this sounds like fiction

[@theswede5402]

If it was an Iron Cross it would have been given to a soldier in the family for bravery.

[@simonh6371]

@@theswede5402 Yes but the Mother's Cross was awarded for having many children, not the Iron Cross. The story sounds like fiction, anti-German fiction.

[@theswede5402]

@@simonh6371 She said the family had the Iron Cross for having children which would be impossible since it was a military award.

[@kamandi1362]

On another video you said you were 6 in 1967 so how could you be 17 in 1980?

[@gump5ter01]

I feel like this is kind of propaganda. I’m not great with identifying it honestly but I feel like the people where told the right things to say her

[@bradford_shaun_murray]

True, some of it is simple lifestyle propaganda for the continuing western political vision 1950s style. But this guy at 13:38 was not propaganda, as you probably know this was a prediction that evolved true over the next 30 years to when the wall came down.

[@alexgray2482]

I don't think it's that surprising for west berliners to be hostile to the USSR considering what happened 19 years previously

[@masterofx32]

The invisible boundary 🤔 So gullible, these 1959 people 😅

[@simonh6371]

Well in all fairness it was pretty unexpected after 16 years to suddenly wake up and find there was a wall being built.

[@masterofx32]

@@simonh6371 It wasn‘t. Two months prior Ulbricht was asked in a press conference if these are his intentions and he said „nobody has the intention to build a wall“. A blatant lie, but the rumors were already there.

[@pinedelgado4743]

1:44 KARL MARX BUCHHANDLUNG. Obviously a purveyor/dealer in East Berlin of communist literature.

[@orgith54]

Noticed that as well

[@film-and-music]

Yet the „Karl-Marx-Strasse” was (and is) in West Berlin. 😊

[@CarterKey6]

Sad

[@Tobi-ln9xr]

How did they find so many people who could speak English in Berlin???

[@anonUK]

There were British and American sectors in Berlin- and the basics of English are pretty much German.

[@Tobi-ln9xr]

@@anonUK Yes that’s true, English and German are pretty similar but I am from Germany and I can say that hardly any person above the age of 40 can speak English here.

[@axelosito]

@@Tobi-ln9xr Similar only in the germanic roots of the english language. Above age of 40 hardly any person can spek english? You are living deep in the soviet sector?

[@Tobi-ln9xr]

@@axelosito Do you mean in former East Germany? No, I am from southern Germany.

[@axelosito]

@@Tobi-ln9xr Then english language should by own experience not be a problem.

[@OrangeTabbyCat]

Berliners are very quiet?????

[@mrpeel3239]

Do the waitresses at the Kranzler still wear those cute Maids' outfits?! 😮

[@propagandatwo]

Sad.

[@user-ve3gh5xg9q]

🇬🇧 -so called democratic .. country 😱😂😂😂

[@JoshRbips]

Trumpets likes walls😂 in mexico & china ...

[@An4gram]

Insight to different times. And teenagers think they have it hard 😂

[@ElcoCanon]

OK boomer

[@bradford_shaun_murray]

9:29 ... the gay part would definitely confuse some teenagers today

[@anusername8350]

It’s all perspective. Just because people had it worse in other time periods doesn’t mean people today can’t be unhappy.

[@bradford_shaun_murray]

@@anusername8350 lol

[@leeriches8841]

@@bradford_shaun_murray teenagers are confused about everything these days, they can’t even decide what gender they are 😂

[@johnathandaviddunster38]

Did the war memorial really need guarding ?.......

[@nmariam123]

good example of capitalism and communism,

[@PEDERSTEENBERG-d5h]

sickness

[@MJODENG]

More «respactable name» - what, communist names !

[@johnsmith-mq4eq]

very biased commentary anti german as normal.

[@willx9352]

I think it is more anti-Soviet than anti-German. This is just 14 years after the end of World War 2. Everyone alive in Europe then had a close connection to the war either personally or through their parents and siblings.

[@NewMinority]

It’s like living in London under khan 😂 only the wealthy csn travel into London

[@andrewsmith-cm9qw]

The DDR had some really good social policies but their paranoia undid what could have been a Socialist beacon to the world

[@encoreunefois1X]

7:05 Little did she know.