By Gary Glancy
gary.glancy@shj.com
Spartanburg Herald-Journal
Published: Monday, October 12, 2009

CAPTION/PHOTO BY Mike Bonner/Spartanburg Herald-Journal: Paul Foerster, 80, stands beside two sections of the former Berlin Wall at Menzel in Spartanburg. It has been 20 years since the wall fell. “I’m not very often moved to tears, but at that very moment I was,” he said of the historic event.

Paul Foerster was sitting in Hartsfield-Jackson Atlanta International Airport on Nov. 9, 1989, waiting for a connecting flight to Spartanburg during a return trip from Frankfurt in his native Germany.

Holding a small pocket radio to his ear, Doerster listened intently as a BBC broadcast announced one of the most significant events in 20th century world history -- the fall of the Berlin Wall.

"I couldn't believe it," the 80-year-old said in a thick German accent. "I'm not very often moved to tears, but at that very moment I was."

Foerster was among those who filled the Olin Teaching Theater at Wofford College last week to hear Barbara Gugold, director of the IES Berlin study-abroad program, speak of her experiences living in East Berlin before the wall came down and living in a reunified Berlin today. It was the first of several events in Wofford's 20th Anniversary Fall of the Berlin Wall Forum that runs through Nov. 9 -- the date Foerster and the rest of Spartanburg's large German population won't ever forget.

Foerster came to Spartanburg 42 years ago to work for a subsidiary of a German company that manufactured polyester and sold its product to the American textile industry. He has been here ever since. He lived in East Berlin until 1956 -- his last residence was within walking distance of the American sector in West Berlin -- and he was in Bavaria in the southern part of the country when the wall was erected five years later.

"That was quite a shock for us," Foerster said, "and it was quite an emotional experience when the wall came down."

Dancing on the wall

Kirsten Krick-Aigner, a German professor and coordinator of Wofford's German studies program who organized the college's month-long event with German professor Elisa Pollack, was a graduate student at the University of Salzburg in Austria when news broke of the wall's demise as she ate breakfast at the home of her host mother.

"I was so excited I cried," Krick-Aigner said. "I was just so overjoyed."

Krick-Aigner later took a 12-hour train ride to Berlin to visit her best friend, Western North Carolina-based journalist Constance Richards, who was living there at the time. They wanted to be part of what Krick-Aigner called a "very uplifting and beautiful, harmonious time."

"(Richards) was at the whole thing," Krick-Aigner said.

"She was even on the wall, dancing with people and drinking champagne. She actually invited a (former East German) family to stay with her in her apartment for the week, showering them with dinners. When I stayed with her, we were just in the middle of the euphoria. It was a wonderful experience, and it's still very fresh in my mind."

A short time later Krick-Aigner returned to Berlin with her mother and sister. Using a hammer and chisel that they obtained from one of many young opportunistic boys renting them on the street, they carved out two silver dollar-size pieces of the wall.

The wall's fall also gave Krick-Aigner the opportunity to reunite with a cousin who lived in the former East Germany.

"It was just a wonderful experience to meet a part of my family who we had no contact with other than the occasional letter," Krick-Aigner said.

Reuniting family

Jennifer Palmer also got the chance to connect with her roots.

Palmer, 16, was one of 10 Oakbrook Preparatory School students that German teacher Kathryn MacDonald took on a study-abroad trip to Germany in March. The group visited an apartment/retail building Palmer's grandfather owned in the former East Germany, and they ate dinner in a restaurant housed inside the building. Palmer said the family lost the building to the Communist-controlled regime, but they got it back after Germany's reunification.

Palmer, who also met with German relatives during the trip, said the 20th anniversary of the fall of the wall reminds her of how closely it hits home for her.

"Even though I wasn't alive when it happened," she said, "we've seen videos in German class, and it's still really emotional thinking how people were separated like that but then they came back together, and it was amazing to watch these videos and see how happy people were in general, and it was sort of infectious. Even though I hadn't really known much about it before, I was really touched by everything that happened."

MacDonald also took her German class to Gugold's talk last week at Wofford, and she said such events help complement the German videos she uses about the wall in bringing history to life for her students.

"It's history that will change their lives," MacDonald said. "It's easier to bring that to life than something from, say, the 18th century. It's not that long ago."

For many of MacDonald's 29 German students, there's also a personal component.

"A fairly large percentage of my student population has a grandmother or an aunt or a somebody in their history that made them choose German over Spanish," MacDonald said. "There's some heritage."

German students

Wofford, meanwhile, has about 50 students enrolled in four German classes, with 11 declared German majors. Krick-Aigner hopes that number will rise, "because I'd like Wofford to reflect the large German population in Spartanburg."

Krick-Aigner said she knows of a few other universities in the East commemorating the fall of the wall -- including Duke and Georgetown -- and she wanted to honor the occasion.

"One thing that I think is especially interesting is that half of the students at Wofford today were born before the wall came down and the other half were born after," Krick-Aigner said. "But none of these students really remember it in their own memory, and I just feel it was a very important event in 20th century history and I wanted to share it with my German students but also with the campus and the Spartanburg community."

While Berlin will be immersed in a huge three-day celebration next month to mark the 20th anniversary, much of Gugold's lecture centered around the economic disparity, regional stereotypes and social discord that continue between the former East and West Germany. Her wish is that by the next generation, a true unification on all fronts will exist.

Still, the events of 20 years ago gave hope and promise to many.

Gugold's current building manager was captain of a boat on the Spree River at the time the wall fell. He told Gugold that back then, there was a large billboard that warned people how tough it was to cross the Wall between 1961 and 1989. It read, in German: "It's easier to get to the moon."

"The next weekend," Gugold said the man told her, "he flew to the moon."

(NOTE: For full information on Wofford's "Fall of the Berlin Wall" series, go to the Wofford Newsroom.)