Our country 1989

The final episode of the WDR series "Our country in the 80s" tells the story of a year that made history. Even in the West, people quickly realized that we were right in the middle of it. Perestroika and glasnost reached Dortmund when Soviet General Secretary Michael Gorbachev spoke in front of enthusiastic Hoeschians.

A strong-willed farmer in the Warburger Börde put an end to the British military maneuvers in his village in a determined Westphalian way: he simply parked his tractor to block the tanks rolling in - until a British general promised that tanks would never again drive along the main road in Borgentreich.

1989 was also a year of sporting triumphs: the young, relatively unknown table tennis doubles team of Jörg Roßkopf and Steffen Fetzner unexpectedly became world champions in the sold-out Westfalenhalle in Dortmund, sparking a table tennis boom in Germany that continues to this day. The German women's national soccer team became European champions - in their own country. And the DFB offered a very special prize: a coffee service.

A state of emergency prevailed at the Cologne publishing house Kiepenheuer und Witsch: the Iranian revolutionary leader Ayatollah Khomeini had called on all Muslims to kill the British author Salman Rushdie because of his book "The Satanic Verses" - as well as all those who worked on the publication of the book. German editor Bärbel Flad recalls in the film: "There were people who crawled under the desk, and there were also people who stood on the balcony and demonstrated for freedom of the press."

But the images after the opening of the German-German border in 1989 are particularly etched in people's memories. GDR citizens came to NRW - and brought their Trabants with them. A lively market for the cute East German cars soon developed in Bielefeld, and in the Rhineland a resourceful petrol station attendant collected money for the new citizens by offering Trabi excursions to Westerners.

A particularly touching family reunion took place these days in the shadow of Cologne Cathedral: A pair of twins from Cologne and East Berlin were reunited after 16 years apart. A moving moment that Rolf and Ulrich Guttmann remember fondly in the film.

The film is narrated by Caroline Peters, who grew up in Cologne and came of age in 1989.

First broadcast: Friday, October 12, 2018, 8.15 p.m., WDR