Actress Lisa Bitter remembers the fall of the Berlin Wall

As a five-year-old, actress Lisa Bitter was deeply impressed by the fall of the Berlin Wall 35 years ago, on November 9, 1989. "My parents cried in front of the TV back then. As a child, I didn't immediately understand that it was emotional," Bitter told the German Press Agency. "It was definitely something I remembered as a child." Bitter grew up in Franconia, and the inner-German border with Thuringia at the time was not that far away.

"I always asked myself: "How can such a separation be possible?" As a child, I didn't understand at all how people let it get this far," said the 40-year-old. Relatively soon after reunification, she went with her parents to visit friends in Jena. "The facades there were darker than I knew. We drove Trabants, which was kind of spectacular." She chose her later place of study in Leipzig on purpose. "I was interested in the so-called East."

Bitter plays the investigator Johanna Stern in the Ludwigshafen "Tatort" and studied cultural studies and journalism in Leipzig from 2005. "Even 15 years after reunification, those were exciting times," she said. "There was still a lot of empty space that was used for creative projects." Friends created temporary stories, exhibitions and concerts in empty apartments. "I didn't know this freedom to create in the city from Franconia. This social upheaval was extremely exciting at the time."