Word: ehrmann
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...interview, broadcast on April 16 in Germany, Ehrmann said: "The question concerning the travel law: that was no coincidence." He had received a "mysterious phone call," he said, from the "submarine" - a reference to the conference room of the East German state news agency ADN. Although Ehrmann in the interview didn't reveal the identity of the caller, he has since been identified as Gunter Potschke, general director of the ADN and a personal friend of Ehrmann...
...Gunter Schabowski, meantime, insists that his announcement at the press conference was spontaneous and called Ehrmann's new version of the story "completely absurd...
...tells TIME that he had "already wondered about that 15 years ago." Hertle cites the fact that an American reporter present at the press conference, when attempting to speak, was cut short by Schabowski, who then allowed the Italian journalist to ask his question first, as an indication that Ehrmann's question had been prompted by the party. But neither Ehrmann, Potschke nor Schabowski confirmed Hertle's suspicion back then...
...Riccardo Ehrmann a puppet of the GDR regime? And did the SED have more control over the situation than previously thought? Contemporary historian Manfred Wilke doesn't think so. "This is just more proof how advanced the inner disintegration of the SED already was at that point," he says. "The SED wanted to ease the pressure and show that it was serious about the reforms it had promised." The GDR government at that point was already under enormous pressure not only from inside of the country, where cries to lift travel restriction were becoming louder and louder, but also from...
...Wilke says the new information is an interesting twist in the events that led to the fall of the Wall. But he doesn't believe that Germany's past needs to be re-written completely. "That Ehrmann asked the question is what matters," he says. The rest is history...