The man who smuggled punk rock across the Berlin Wall

Witness History

BBC

History, Personal Journals, Society & Culture

4.4 • 1.6K Ratings

🗓️ 29 July 2024

⏱️ 10 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

In 1983, punk rock was strictly forbidden in East Berlin. However, that didn’t stop young music obsessive Mark Reeder, from Manchester in the UK, smuggling cassettes, and then a punk band across the Berlin Wall.

Mark shares how he arranged for the West German band, Die Toten Hosen, to perform illegally at a secret concert in a church. This episode was produced by Paul Hanford and Rosalie Delaney. A Munck Studios production for the BBC World Service.

(Photo: Members of the band Die Toten Hosen and friends in East Berlin in 1983. Credit: Mark Reeder)

Transcript

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0:00.0	This was in a impregnable fortress. The only way you get out was in a wooden box.
0:05.0	The controversial maximum security prison impossible to escape from.
0:09.0	One of the duties of a political prisoner is the escape.
0:12.0	The IRA inmates who found a way.
0:14.4	I'm Carlo Gableer, and I'll be navigating a path through the disturbing inside story
0:21.5	of the biggest jailbreak in British and Irish history.
0:25.0	The narrative that they want is that this is a big achievement by them.
0:28.5	Escape from the maze, listen first on BBC sounds.
0:33.0	Hello.
0:35.0	Hello,
0:40.0	Welcome to the Witness History Podcast
0:42.0	from the BBC World Service with me Paul Hanford.
0:46.4	I'm taking you back to 1983 and into Berlin, a city at the forefront of the Cold War,
0:57.0	divided by the Berlin Wall, keeping apart conflicting worlds. In West Germany, the free market, Coca-Cola, Reaganomics and MTV,
1:01.6	and in East Germany, the Communist rule of the GDR, the German Democratic
1:06.6	Republic, or the DDR as it's called in German.
1:10.6	Daily life in the East was heavily restricted.
1:14.0	Anyone at any time could be under observation by the Stasi.
1:18.0	And right in the middle of this, about to cross a heavily guarded checkpoint,
1:22.0	a smuggler is about to execute his most daring mission
1:25.6	yet.
1:26.6	I knew that it was not going to be an easy task to take a bunch of punks into each
	...

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