"My thoughts about that evening ran something like this:
'At last, something’s happening here!'
'Aha – so they use water cannons in the East, too!'
'I hope I don’t get whacked in the face.'
'Stalinists unplugged – the final stand…'
The demonstration protesting against the electoral fraud in the local elections of May 1989 was held – as on the seventh of every month – at Alexanderplatz. On this particular Saturday, it spontaneously evolved into a much larger demonstration, which made its way towards the Palast der Republik, where the heads of government of the Eastern Bloc countries had gathered for the official celebration of the 40th anniversary of the GDR. Then, near the River Spree, the demonstrators were encircled by the police. Later they were allowed to proceed towards Karl-Liebknecht-Straße. The demonstration finally ended at Gethsemane Church.
Initially, the mood was euphoric. There was a sense of change in the air. That evening, people witnessed fighting between peaceful demonstrators on the one side, and members of the VoPo, Stasi, FDJ commandos and task forces on the other. And when the first water cannons and crowd-control vehicles (I’d never heard of them before: they were rather like snow-ploughs designed for use against crowds) ever seen in the East appeared, I began to fear that things could take a very nasty turn.
I had witnessed state violence before, in 1983, for example, at Udo Lindenberg’s concert at the Palast der Republic. Until then, I would have never believed this possible in a 'Socialist Workers’ and Peasants’ State'. Now, however, I knew that the SED regime was quite capable of acting very brutally to secure its position in power. Consequently, I tried to capture as much of the evening as possible on film. These photos were taken in Karl-Liebknecht-Straße in front of the ADN (the SED’s press agency) building and in Dimitroffstraße, now Danziger Straße."
Nikolaus Becker (East Berlin, born 1961)
