Huddersfield woman Marianne Takacs remembers the day her native Berlin was divided

Nov 10 2009 By Barry Gibson

MARIANNE Takacs raised a glass last night to toast the 20th anniversary of her city’s reunification.

The 67-year-old from Salendine Nook grew up in Berlin and remembers looking on in horror as a wall was built through the heart of her city.

"The wall was built almost overnight, the trains were stopped, there was total chaos," she said.

"I was horrified when I first saw the wall."

Marianne grew up in Wilmersdorf in the American sector of Berlin, just 10 minutes’ walk from the communist East of the city.

Her earliest memory is of US planes flying desperately-needed food into West Berlin during the Soviet blockade of 1948-49.

Marianne said: "As the planes came into land with food and supplies, they would drop sweets on tiny parachutes.

"As kids of course, we loved getting them."

But she said life in post-war Berlin was harsh: "There were ruins everywhere, my brother Michael and I used to play in the rubble piles."

She remembers the 1950s, when residents crossed freely between the two sides of the city.

She added: "We used to go shopping in the East because things were much cheaper there."

When the Berlin Wall was built in 1961, Marianne was working for a plastics company which employed people from both sides of the city.

She said: "There were 50 people in the factory, half of them from the East.

"They couldn’t come across to work anymore.

"I was working on reception so I took their calls, they needed to get the money they were owed.

"We sent them parcels of coffee and tea and sweets for their children for a good year afterwards."

Marianne decided to leave Berlin a few months after the wall was built, saying she couldn’t see the situation getting any better."

She moved to England, working as an au pair in Kirkburton, looking after Bob and Pat Bletcher’s children Vivienne and Nigel.