Newspaper head in pink: The new Berliner Zeitung between 1989 and 1996

"Berlin is reviving!" This was the headline of the Berliner Zeitung on May 21, 1945. It was the first edition of the Berliner Zeitung to be published between the destruction and the awakening in East Berlin. Today, the Berliner Zeitung celebrates its 80th birthday. To mark the occasion, there will be exclusive reports in the coming days, and on May 24, a special edition of the Berliner Zeitung dedicated to the awakening will be published. Here you can read a greeting from Hans Eggert, former editor-in-chief of the Berliner Zeitung.

How does it feel when a (daily) newspaper turns 80? I dare say it takes a commemorative publication to make its advanced age clear to its esteemed readers. After all, the daily newspaper (what a platitude) celebrates its birthday almost every day of the week. Year after year. Even if it should have been reinvented every now and then, and indeed had to be. But please – here, too, merciful memory lapses work. Who remembers what the Berliner Zeitung looked like 35 years ago, for example?

The only thing that comes to mind at first is that, at some point in those rather wild times after 1989/90, we printed the newspaper's headline in pink and briefly highlighted selected headlines with pink stripes. Pink! In our defense, we didn't have a color consultant back then. We didn't have any consultant at all back then, at least not one who could have told us how to run it after we took over the old Berliner newspaper on our own.

Newspaper of the East Berliners

The "old" Berliner. It was a widely read newspaper among East Berliners , but one that looked like all the other GDR newspapers, and not just after party conferences. And sometimes, from the perspective of those in power, it nevertheless gave rise to criticism. For example, because the initiative of the general director of a combine was discussed in a slightly ironic tone: to remedy the shortage of women's underwear, which was the responsibility of socialist retailers and lamented by the women in the combine, by buying it wholesale from the class enemy. To write about it and to be quoted in the newspapers from beyond the Wall – that indicated weaknesses in revolutionary vigilance and called for self-criticism.

Well, now the Wall was gone, and a new kind of vigilance was required: We were suddenly competing with the newspapers from beyond the Wall. Some even felt that this, our East German newspaper, should actually disappear like the East. It may sound pathetic, but a fight for survival was called for. Mostly one in small, tiny steps.

The six daily pages initially became twelve, on Saturdays even 16, and soon twenty and more. Our investigative stories, critical reports, and background reports made waves; countless readers wanted to read their letters in print in Berliner. The new parties and associations received their own dedicated pages in the first months of 1990. More space was also needed in the local section – West Berlin was no longer a matter for foreign policy.

And: Soon, something appeared in the good old Berliner that had previously only been known to the readers of its competitors – the large-format advertisement. The first one was submitted to the editor-in-chief by a manager of the Quelle department store in Charlottenburg in early November 1989. Other retailers quickly followed suit – and we suddenly had a completely new source of income, vital income, by the way: Newsprint was becoming increasingly scarce – and was sometimes only available for "West"...

In short: Even before the GDR had disappeared, the old Berliner Zeitung had disappeared. And we were challenged to invent a new Berliner. Which, I think, at least partially succeeded, and which later led me to be graciously indulgent when, on the occasion of some new start-ups in the management, there was talk of the newspaper finally being reinvented. Please note: Tages-Zeitung celebrates its birthday every day anyway. Except on Sundays.

Congratulations on your 80th birthday!