From a picnic to the Berlin Wall: my 1989 summer of revolution

It should have been a normal family chat in late midsummer in Berlin. Kerstin Falkner, 22, and her new partner, Andreas, eight years her elder, were sitting in the back of Metzer Eck, the corner bar run by her mother, Bärbel, discussing where they might go for their holidays.

Only one thing was out of key: instead of joining in, Bärbel was sitting in the corner next to me, trying to keep back her tears. She simultaneously feared and hoped for the same thing: that they might not be coming home.

It was the summer of malcontents on the wrong side of the Berlin Wall. The first half of 1989 had been marked by change to communist regimes in eastern Europe. In Poland, after a decade of rebellion quashed by martial law, the government and the free trade union Solidarity had to differ, and then to agree. There had been a partly free election in June, after which Solidarity members entered parliament. In Hungary “goulash