The Promise never kept - East German journalism 20 years ago. (DER SPIEGEL)

How a Newspaper Tried to Prevent East Germany from Collapsing

By Alexander Osang (DER SPIEGEL 10/16/2009)

Berliner Zeitung was the main newspaper in East Berlin. It reported on the progress of communism even as East Germany was collapsing around it.

It was just one single word that Berliner Zeitung editor-in-chief Fritz Wengler inserted into my story. For me, it was betrayal. For him, it was an attempt to put the brakes on history.

The poplars stand like a green wall around the tall, gray apartment block on Fischerinsel, the neighborhood in former East Berlin that is home to Fritz Wengler -- a man who 20 years ago made a promise he couldn't keep. The trees rustle in the fall wind, and it seems to me as if they used to lose their leaves much earlier than they do today.

Wengler has lived in an apartment on the second floor for the past 40 years. And in that time nature has gradually enveloped the building like Sleeping Beauty's castle. Standing in front of the entrance, I again wonder if I should leave him alone. The temptation is great. After all, it would mean leaving me alone -- and this newspaper, whose history we are a part of.

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Any resemblance with today's news/press? Bueller? Bueller?