Tomorrow Belongs to Me: Life in Germany Revealed as a Soap Opera

by Peter Millar

Even people with grudges against Germany were moved to tears the night the Berlin Wall came down. Peter Millar was in the middle of it, literally, stuck in Checkpoint Charlies amidst confused border guards, delirious waitresses and beer-swilling squatters. It was the night that redefined German history - the apotheosis of the long trek out of the Nazi pit, through a communist tunnel, into a brave new world where they had woken up. Alex Margan, East Berlin barman, amateur angler, wit and raconteur, stayed home in a huff. He had had a row with his wife. While the children took a walk on the wild side, Alex poured another beer and muttered, "I told you so". As a child in distant Danzig, Alex had been co-opted into the Hitler Youth; as a trainee hairdresser he had survived Stalinism; in middle age he had become middle class under Communism. This is his story, and the stories of his Manne, the overweight smuggler; Hans, the conscientious Communist; and Barbel, the dynastic landlady of a magical corner bar in a run-down district of East Berlin. Europe's most misunderstood nation is re-examined in these pages through the extraordinary lives of ordinary people, set against the author's vivid eyewitness reportage of events that changed the world. In "Tomorrow Belongs to Me", Peter Millar puts the politicians in the back seat and lets the little man take the steering-wheel of history. Peter Millar is a columnist on "The European" and the "Sunday Times" and a former foreign correspondent for the "Sunday Telegraph". His coverage of events in East Germany and Berlin in 1989 won him the Foreign Correspondent of the Year Award from BBC 2's "What the Papers Say", of which he is also an occasional presenter.

Genres: History, Nonfiction, Germany

224 pages, Hardcover

First published February 6, 1992

About the author

Peter Millar is an award-winning British journalist, author and translator, and has been a correspondent for Reuters, Sunday Times and Sunday Telegraph. He was named Foreign Correspondent of the Year for his reporting on the dying stages of the Cold War, his account of which – 1989: The Berlin Wall, My Part in its Downfall – was named ‘best read’ by The Economist. An inveterate wanderer since his youth, Peter Millar grew up in Northern Ireland and studied at Magdalen College, Oxford. Before and during his university years, he hitchhiked and travelled by train throughout most of Europe, including behind the Iron Curtain to Moscow and Leningrad, as well as hitchhiking barefoot from Dubrovnik to Belfast after being robbed in the former Yugoslavia. He has had his eyelashes frozen in the coldest inhabited place on Earth - Oymyakon, eastern Siberia, where temperatures reach minus 71ºC, was fried at 48ºC in Turkmenistan, dipped his toes in the Mississippi, the Mekong and the Nile, the Dniepr and the Danube, the Rhine and the Rhone, the Seine and the Spree. He crisscrossed the USA by rail for his book All Gone To Look for America and rattled down the spine of Cuba for Slow Train to Guantanamo. He has lived and worked in Paris, Brussels, Berlin, Warsaw and Moscow, attended the funerals of two Soviet leaders, been blessed six times by Pope John Paul II (which would have his staunch Protestant ancestors spinning in their graves), and he has survived multiple visits to the Munich Oktoberfest and the enduring agony of supporting Charlton Athletic. Peter speaks French, German, Russian and Spanish, and is married with two grown-up sons. He splits his time between Oxfordshire and London, and anywhere else that will have him.

Reviews

[Gisela Hafezparast · Rating 4 out of 5]

Excellent account of ordinary lives in East Germany and how the fall of the Berlin wall affected their future. Despite the heavy historical facts, not a heavy read. Highly recommend it to anybody who is interested in this period of Germany's history.