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- Wisconsin has always been a beacon of German culture.
[traffic]
Now, it is undergoing a renaissance
at the University of Wisconsin- Oshkosh.
- Monika: Schlafen, wach, es war noch weniger.
Es war vielleicht zwei Minuten. - Heike: Zwei Minuten, na, gut.
- Professors Heike Alberts and Monika Hohbein-Deegen
both started on campus in 2003--
on the very same day.
- Monika: I noticed that somebody from Germany was there, ja.
- Heike: Which is a strange coincidence
because there's not many Germans here.
- A ?strange coincidence? because while both are German,
their paths to Oshkosh are very different.
Heike grew-up in West Berlin,
completely surrounded by communist East Germany.
- And I always thought that all cities had Walls.
So, this here is a satellite map of Berlin.
So, it was zigzagging around the neighborhood like this.
It was absolutely normal for me.
Yeah, I did not know life without a Wall.
- On the other hand,
Monika grew up in southwestern East Germany.
- In my hometown.
It's called Gro?Br?echter.
This was my childhood home.
So, I did not live in Berlin,
but I lived relatively close to the inner German border.
- 2019 marked the 30th anniversary
of the peaceful revolution that toppled the Berlin Wall.
- The anniversary is a chance to share what life was like
growing up on opposite sides of the "Cold War."
[announcement in German]
- Sometimes, I tell my students to try and to understand
what this life was like.
Yes, on one hand side, we were very restricted.
On the other hand side, it was a normal upbringing.
This is a little bit difficult to, to balance that
because you don't want to paint it too black or too rosy.
It was something in between.
- The fall of the Berlin Wall,
a topic that is dear to both Professor Alberts and me,
because as most of you know, we come from Germany.
If you don't know, you hear it by our accents.
[students laugh]
- At this campus event, students hear a unique perspective
from these eyewitnesses to history.
- Heike: So, this is one of my memories of childhood,
that it was never dark at night
because, of course, the Berlin Wall completely surrounded us,
and we lived really close to the death strip.
And so, they always had these floodlights.
Something that I didn't know until a couple of years ago,
that there were three escape tunnels right in my neighborhood.
Right, nobody had told me.
Right there.
- This is October 9th, 1989, in Leipzig,
exactly a month before the Wall would eventually fall.
- Monika lived only kilometers from the inner German border...
and was restricted from going anywhere near it.
On a visit to Berlin in the 1970s,
she saw the Wall from distance for the very first time.
- Monika: That was in front of the Brandenburg Gate.
That's actually me.
Back there, that white, is the Berlin Wall.
And so, that's the closest we could get to the Wall
was right there.
- On the other side, Heike could get
a much closer view of the Wall and glimpse into the East.
- The service train was just elevated enough
that you could look into the death strip.
So, that is what you would have seen.
And if you're honest, that's a little scary.
[class bell rings]
- Good morning, everyone, welcome back and happy Tuesday.
- Both professors now teach about a wall
they themselves were never taught about in school.
- So, it was pretty crazy to grow up with the Berlin Wall,
to say the least.
- Monika: I usually teach them
about post-World War II German history,
but focusing on the Cold War and East German History.
- Student: St?cke-ID.
- Monika: Ja, St?cke oder Teile, ja.
- Their study abroad programs
teach these Oshkosh students on the streets of Berlin.
- When we are in Berlin, of course, we don't learn out of a book.
We go to the sites.
- Heike: There is Checkpoint Charlie.
This is a famous checkpoint
where the Allied Forces would have crossed.
This is at Bernauer Stra?e,
the famous memorial where you can actually look
into how the death zone would have been.
I really want them to take off their American hats
and see things through the eyes of other people.
- Monika: But with the ultimate goal,
what do you learn from that history?
[jackhammering]
- Back in 1989, the East German people took to the streets.
The world witnessed the fall of the Wall.
[excited cheers]
- Monika: If you were in Berlin that night,
it was probably the biggest party you could have imagined.
- The days that followed became an adventure
for these future Wisconsinites.
- After the Wall had fallen, I went out with one of my friends.
This is one of the very few photos of me being,
like, 17-years-old.
I really like this one here because this one actually has
a date, 1989, written in the gap.
And then, this is the photo that my dad is sort of proud on.
My dad and I really wanted to get pieces off the Wall
for ourselves, too.
This is one of my most prized possessions in here because
these are original pieces of the Berlin Wall.
- Heike's high school band marked the occasion
by marching into East Germany.
- I was always in the first row.
They had just cleared the death zone
of all the nasty equipment.
But this was also the first time
I really set foot on the death zone...
...that had killed so many people before that.
- Monika's experience going east to west is a bit different.
- I never forget when I actually came to America
the very first time.
- She came to the United States on a Fulbright scholarship.
- It was rather amazing because I was thinking,
"Okay, this was the enemy country I was taught about,
and now I'm here."
- Heike: Gute Zukunft.
- Monika: Was machst du Weihnachten?
- Heike and Monika both feel at home here in Wisconsin...
following in the footsteps of other German immigrants.
- A lot of students say, "Oh, 'the German,'" right.
"I had a class with 'the German.'"
So I think, if anything, my German identity
has become much stronger by not being in Germany.
Now, it's in demand
that I speak about those kinds of things.
- Monika: It's cool that you can talk about personal stories.
[crowd murmuring]
You never know what history turns out to be.
[cheers and applause]
[fireworks booming]