Welcome back to the home of the oxymoron. Evil genius. He asked the newspaper to print his obituary early so he'd enjoy it. That's like hiding at your own funeral. Yeah, a big, great gig. I'm Russell Kane. Join me to weigh in on whether the biggest players in history are more evil or genius. Becoming that rich, I'd say that is some level of genius. It also helps that it's a long time ago, right?

It's like the podcast version of telling your kids the ice cream van plays music when it's out of ice cream.

Listen to Evil Genius on BBC Sounds.

Fourth of September, 1989, the demonstrations begin against the East German regime, not in Berlin, but in the city of

Leipzig, the hometown of the Gvandhaus Orchestra, who are performing tonight's Beethoven-Prom.

The demands of a crowd who wanted a freer way of life became louder and more widespread,

leading eventually to the world-changing events of November 1989 and the fall of

the Berlin Wall. More than a quarter of a century later, this still counts as one of the great

moments of modern history. But what lay behind it? What did those crowds in Leipzig and Berlin really

want? And how have things worked out since then? Few want to go back to the days of barbed wire

and Stasi spying, but there is a sense of nostalgia, nostalgia for the old socialist certainties

amongst at least a minority in Germany today. Are there really people who want to say not

goodbye Lenin, but Hello Honkah. Well, to tell us,

I have two guests who definitely know their zeitgeist from their succunft. They are Karen Lieder,

professor of modern German literature at the University of Oxford, and Philip Kerr, author of the

Bernie Gunter novels, which are set in a noir, sinister imagining of Berlin.

Thank you. which are set in a noir, sinister imagining of Berlin. Karen, let's start in Leipzig in September 1989.

Now, I was an undergraduate here in Britain at that time, and I remember reading news stories about what was happening in Germany, but what was going on in the ground in Leipzig during those exciting days?

Well, I think there had been demonstrations in Leipzig for many years, actually, starting from the beginning of the 1980s. But during that period of unrest, there was a build-up in the demonstrations. There were weekly prayer meetings

every Monday in the Nikolai Kirche, the Central Lutheran Church. And the church in East Germany

was a place, a kind of niche where the state really didn't have a hold.

It was officially illegal to be religious, but in fact the church became a place where the opposition gathered.

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