“Write to us! Wherever you are, whatever is on your mind! Letters without signature.“ Over 20 years, during the height of The Cold War, BBC Producer Austin Harrison broadcast his German Language programme to his listeners in communist ruled east Germany. “This is Radio London” "Letters Without Signature" had a simple format – Harrison read out and commented on letters sent to him by listeners on the other side of The Berlin Wall. (unknown writers) "Dear Radio London" "We place our hopes in you" "Help us" "I trust you" Thousands of east Germans wrote in with their accounts of everyday life under their repressive regime. “This broadcast is a place for all those heartfeld sighs that often cannot be expressed in the GDR.“
However, what the letter writers didn’t know, was that this simple radio progamme would end up at the heart of the Cold War propaganda battle between East and West. (Susanne Schädlich) "For the Stasi, I think, Austin Harrison was the number one enemy of the state. And so they had to bring him down." Using never before seen secret British Foreign Office documents and East German Secret Police surveillance footage … "Regarding: Harrison" … this film reveals the extent that the Stasi commander of department 20, Lieutenant Colonel Paul Kienberg, went to both discredit Harrison and hunt down and punish the letter writers. "Look, if you think you can undermine this state, you don‘t stand a chance." "When they declared that I would go to jail for two years, my mother fainted." But this film will also ask some uncomfortable questions about Harrison and the BBC’s own motivation in broadcasting this radio programme. Was there more to Harrison than just a radio reporter? "Harrison went to East Germany and then he would come back, report precious little about what he had done and you thought “well what does he actually do there”?" This story of state subterfuge, spies and individual acts of bravery highlights a complicated tit for tat propaganda war between the BBC and the Secret Police Service in East Germany - played out over the airwaves. DW History Stories Special Lodndon Calling - Cold War Letters The BBC External Services began speaking to the world in 1938. (BBC Radio Host) "This is London Calling. Govorit London … America central i Mexico … Salam aleikum …" While the BBC Home Service was funded through the licence fee, the external services were funded by the Foreign Office. The German service came to prominence during the second world war. The story of the BBC German Service has been researched intensively by historian Emily Oliver. (Emily Oliver) "In the immediate post-war period, as the 1940s continue, they notice at the BBC that they’re getting more and more letters from the eastern zone of Germany, from the soviet occupied zone. And that’s the point at which the BBC German service decides its going to start making a separate programme for the eastern zone and its going to, as part of this programme, use the letters it's getting from the eastern zone and start transmitting a programme called ‘letters without signature’, a letterbox programme." (BBC Radio) "If they had a free press and free radio there, we could probably discontinue this program, and we certainly wouldn‘t have to call it „Letters without signature“." The programme’s appeal was two fold - it broadcast unbiased news reports and gave East German listeners the freedom to air their views of the state. For the governing communist regime this was treason. (Bill Jones - Former BBC Berlin Correspondent) "The point was, the notion that people could write letters to a Western radio station and say what they really felt about their lives in East Germany, and that these would be broadcast back into East Germany, was a nightmare, and it just meant that the East German’s regime hold on their own country was weakened because people would hear that, and think “Yeah, well I agree with that.”" Susanne Schädlich grew up in communist East Germany but had to move to the West overnight when her father was denounced as a dissident. She’s written extensively about state surveillance by the Stasi - and how it monitored the BBC. She discovered the original letters stored here, in the BBC’s own Archives. (Susanne Schädlich) "I knew there was 20 years’ worth of material. And when I first saw it I thought: Oh my god, that‘s a lot, and there‘s a lot more back there in storage." Tens of thousands of letters are stored here, written between the 50s and the 70s. (Susanne Schädlich) "These letters are, I think, unique historical documents because they are personal. People wrote anonymously of course. And they wrote about their lives, their desires, their hopes, their despair, everything, even about repressive measures, about their fears." When the Berlin Wall went up and the Iron Curtain came down in August 1961, the programme’s listeners were totally cut off from the West. (Susanne Schädlich) "There is also a noticeable change of tone in the letters. They become passionately political, much more political than in the years in-between. They really get involved then, they’re making demands; they’re appealing to Western politicians, to Kennedy for instance: „Save us.“" (unknown writers) "We place our hopes in you!" "Help us!" "Don’t wait too long!" "Dear London Radio!" "This is the Wall of Shame!" "Code word: Teenager in East Germany!" "I am still a child but I understand what goes on in the GDR. At school they teach us to hate the capitalist countries." "Dear BBC! I am 13 years old and now in the 8th grade." "You surely can answer my questions soon!? Please do! I trust you!" Karl - Heinz Borchardt was one of those teenage letter writers. He’s lived here in the town of Greifswald for much of his life. It’s a small town in the north of East Germany. (Karl - Heinz Borchardt) "I would say that I was probably quite an average GDR teenager. I was in the Young Pioneers organization, and most of the time I held some sort of position in my form group, usually as deputy council president. It was only in the seventh or eighth grade that I started to become critical of development in the GDR. At that point Western radio stations also began to play a role." Borchardt began to write to Harrison in 1968, aged just 16. # That was the year that Soviet troops invaded Chezoslovakia - and immediately halted the democratic reforms of the socialist government in Prague. This lead to expressions of outrage from people in East Germany - such as Karl Heinz Borchardt. (letter of Borchardt) "Dear employees of London Radio’s German Service. I like your programme very much. Because it shows the views of citizens who not represented in our press. I‘m 16 years old and would like to write to you about the reactions among young people to the incidents in Prague. I don’t think the West has opposed this intervention strongly enough. Does a country that has fought so hard for little bit of freedom have to march on forever down the well-trodden path of domination by Moscow? Kind Regards from a letter-writing schoolboy." Another letter writer to the BBC was Rolf-Joachim Erler. Now he’s a retired cleric, he grew up under the communist regime in East Germany. He’s been a pacifist all his life and was an outspoken supporter of democracy and Western ideals. This made him an outsider and at odds with the communist state. Erler had an unusual childhood. He and his mother lived on one side of the Wall, his father, a US soldier, on the other. The only way the family could be together was when his father made secret trips over to the East. (Rolf-Joachim Erler) "It was very dangerous, of course, for one thing because the Americans absolutely wouldn’t allow my father to travel to the Soviet occupation zone, and equally it was dangerous for him to show up inside the Soviet occupation zone in Dresden as an American. So he had to wear civilian clothes." But then, on one of these trips, disaster hit the family. (Erler) "And then someone noticed: wait a minute, that’s an American, he’s speaking English, and they informed on him. And the result was that my mother had to flee overnight. And she had to leave me with my grandparents, where I was safe and secure." Erler grew up with his grandparents in the East and from his earliest days in school was left in no doubt of his outsider status. (Erler) "I used to be called up to the teacher‘s desk: “Rolf, come up here to the front”, and was paraded in front of the class. “Here, take a good look at Rolf, his mother has betrayed our Republic, his father is an enemy of the state, his grandparents and great-grandparents – all capitalists. Right, Rolf, now go back to your seat and better yourself.” So I was always an outsider as a child." The radio was his one source of solace, his link to the outside world. (Erler) "This was my childhood bedroom. Everything was pretty basic back then, of course. My bed was right in front here, so I could listen to the radio in bed in the evening. Listeners to the programme felt they were safe to write in. The BBC had a strategy in place which allowed letter writers complete anonymity. (Günter Burkart "Letters without Signature" Producer) "If people wanting to write to the BBC had addressed their letters directly to “BBC London”, they would have been intercepted straight away." (Radio Broadcast)"And now once again our Berlin addresses where your letters can reach us: Horst Krüger, 1 Berlin 12, Niebuhrstraße 7, I repeat: Horst Krüger …" The BBC developed a system of cover addresses in West Berlin. Günter Burkart was a producer with „Letters without signature” in London at the time. (Burkart) "The cover addresses were the addresses to which people in Berlin were supposed to write. They were never real addresses but former bomb sites or houses where other people lived." (Radio Broadcast) "Oscar Maser, 1 Berlin, 52, Max Köpke." This meant that the letters were able to pass through the Berlin Wall - the most closely watched border in the world - and reach the West. (Emily Oliver) "And then the West Berlin postal service would know to forward these letters to the BBC’s Berlin office and from there they would be sent by diplomatic mail bag to London. And in London they were treated very securely, they were kept in a safe overnight so there was very restricted access as to who got to see these letters because of the risks to East Germans writing to the BBC." (Radio Broadcast) "We confirm receipt of the following letters: „Emergency call 2“; „Golden Wedding“; „A faithful old female listener“…" (Burkart) "And every letter was given a codeword. People had either chosen one themselves, or we gave them one, ideally relating to the content of the letter, so that when they were listening, the letter writers would know, aha, that’s my letter coming up." (Radio Broadcast) "„Codeword Heart;“ „More next time;“ “Per aspera ad astra”; “In confidence”; “Freedom for Poles and Czechs”; „A defenceless woman;“ „A hundred Rentenmark“." (Erler) "And then one time – I’ll never forget this – I heard my own letter being read out. And I quickly called my grandmother who was standing nearby, and she was horrified when she heard the letter being read out. And of course she got scared, and started berating me: how could I be so reckless to write to such a station? We could all end up in jail because of that." Despite the fact that the Communist Government had banned listening to the BBC, Karl Heinz Borchardt didn’t think that writing to the Corporation was illegal. (Borchardt) "I knew there was some sort of law against subversive agitation, but I couldn‘t imagine that the Stasi would mobilize all of their resources to identify those letter writers. That was beyond my imagination." For the many listeners in East Germany, the programme was the highlight of their week. Austin Harrison’s voice was a lifeline. (Erler) "First of all, this German English was striking. He spoke German quite well, and he was an excellent commentator. A portion of the letter was read out, and then he immediately gave his views on it. That was fascinating to me even as a teenager, it was like watching a play. I just wanted to listen to that all the time." (Radio Broadcast Letter) "Keyword „Passion“ writes: "Russian socialism really has precious little to do with democracy. For it is the rule of the proletariat and an absolute dictatorship. For we live in bondage: we cannot travel, cannot have an opinion of our own, cannot read the books we want to read, we are deprived of autonomy, there‘s no doubt about that." (Harrisons reply) "You are quite right in saying that Soviet socialism has precious little to do with democracy. But I don‘t agree with you that it constitutes the rule of the proletariat. The proletariat simply has to do as it is told." The BBC producer and presenter of the programme, Austin Harrison was an almost mythical figure for his audience and also for his staff. (Oliver) "He becomes the Berlin representative for the BBC german service in 1950 and he stays in Berlin in 1955 at which point he returns to London and he takes over "Letters without signature" and he works on that programme for the next 20 years. But we know very little about Austin Harrison. He seems to have been a bit of a mystery, even to the people who worked with him it seems." Harrison was an enigmatic figure amongst his colleagues. He cultivated a very English gentleman persona. His house and garden in Colchester helped to emphasize this. (Burkart) "It was a beautiful old house with a big garden where he grew roses. He almost always wore a little rose as a buttonhole." Harrison also had a very unusual and commercially successful sideline. He owned and managed a large cemetery. (Burkart) "He once told me he had inherited this cemetery from an uncle. It was a private cemetery with a crematorium in the north of London." (Peter Sahla - Former BBC German Service Presenter) "He let everybody know that he owned a cemetery which was of course for Germans I don’t know how it is in other countries, quite amazing that a private person could have a cemetery and actually turn it into a business." (Jones) "And he was very keen that people who worked for the German Service made use of its services when they died. And he used to quote a slightly perverse version of Goethe which ran (and I have to say it in German) which means ‘The greatest reward for your life will be a grave at Harrison Cemetery’." (Burkart) "And he actually said, Günter, if ever something happens in your family, ten percent off and music for free and all that, funny." Austin Harrison was deputy head of the German Service. He and the majority of his staff were from the generation who had been directly involved in the Second World War. Amongst them were many Jewish and anti-communist emigres who had fled Germany. But from the midsixties a new generation of younger journalists from West Germany joined the team. Peter Sahla was employed as a young presenter of a new BBC music programme. (Sahla) The East German programmes were called Soviet Union programme. They were purely political. And they were there to show how a) how beautiful life was in the west to how awful life is in the east. Harrison made regular business trips to the GDR, which staff knew about, but which were never discussed in programme meetings. (Sahla) "Harrison went to East Germany for the Leipzig Fair, and various other events like that, and then he would come back, report precious little about what he had done, what he had seen, what conclusions, and you thought “well what does he actually do there?”" However in East-Berlin one organization knew everything about these trips. The notorious East German Secret Police, The Stasi, kept Harrison under close surveillance. Susanne Schädlich has found files which reveal the Stasi‘s war against the BBC – in an operation called „Thrower“, Austin Harrison is named as a key figure. The BBC is declared to be a place of psychological warfare. And Harrison is suspected to be a British spy. (Schädlich) "I think for the Stasi, Austin Harrison was the number one enemy of the state, or certainly one of the key enemies of the state. Because he presented ‘Letters without Signatures’, which was regarded as anti-communist propaganda aiming to discredit the GDR and possibly overthrow it. And so they had to bring him down." For several years, Austin Harrison travelled to the GDR for the annual Leipzig Trade Fair. It was one of the rare occasions when foreign journalists were allowed access and Harrison took full advantage of this. But the Stasi files show that they had him under 24 hours surveillance. (Schädlich) "In 1958, they had even decided that Harrison was supposed to be arrested as soon as he entered the GDR. To them, he was a dangerous secret agent working for MI6. And there’s a very simple reason he wasn’t arrested: he didn‘t enter the country at that time." His next visit wasn’t until the Autumn of 1961, which was a very delicate time politically. (Schädlich) "There were renewed discussions about arresting him. But the Stasi decided not to do that, because they thought: We’ve just built the wall, if we now go and arrest a BBC journalist now, that won‘t come across too well." And so the Stasi stuck to the plan of keeping Harrison under observation … even searching his hotel while he was out. The Stasi’s final report almost sounds disappointed: No secret compartments in the suitcase, just untidy clothes. Harrison likes to drink alcohol and then drives home – but quite safely. He seems to like women – but no relationships can be detected in Leipzig. The Stasi fail to find anything that would compromise Harrison. (Sahla) "I think he was aware of his superiority. I am far better than you, I represent a far better society than you represent. Yeah, I think it was that side that made him into this hated figure that the stasi so constructed. “I am Austin Harrison” you know, “I am financially independent, I come from a country that has a Queen” and so on and so forth." (Schädlich) "He was someone who wasn’t afraid to take a risk and wanted to find out what people felt, what was going on inside them. After all, he wrote all the commentaries about the letters in the programme himself. And he could only do that credibly if he had actually gone there and talked to people." (Radio Broadcast) "And now, Austin Harrison comments on „Letters without signature“." (Quote from letter) "Listening… to your recent broadcasts can almost make you sick. What are you hoping to achieve by broadcasting those stupid rants by a few total crackpots?" (Harrison) "No one gives me instructions for replying to the letters! I give you my personal opinion on them. I don‘t know why people keep looking for some big secret behind this programme." But a very different view was taken in East Berlin. All Harrison’s programmes were closely monitored and recorded by the Stasi - the only reason any recordings have survived as the BBC destroyed all tapes of the programme. The Stasi’s other priority was to track down the East German letter writers. Their starting point was to locate all the cover addresses, broadcast by the programme. (Jones) "So obviously the Stasi would hear this but it was extremely difficult for them to get round to all the post offices in East Germany and say have you got any letters going to this address, and pick them up, it was just a very big job to do." (Schädlich) "Postal surveillance evolved over the years, of course, until it got to the point where a whole department within the Stasi was responsible for monitoring the programme „Letters without Signature“." The man leading the investigations against the BBC was Lieutenant Colonel Paul Kienberg. His office - Department 20, took note of all the cover addresses broadcast on the BBC. They then forwarded them to all main post offices in the GDR. By this stage, every major post office in East Germany had its own secret Stasi office, where they checked all the letters mailed to the BBC’s cover addresses. The Stasi put huge resources into trying to shut down the BBC programme. Endless Stasi lists show the enormous number of cover addresses used over the years by the BBC. But despite the Stasi’s scrutiny, in some years, up to 3000 letters got through to Harrison’s radio programme in London. The BBC were well aware of the Stasi’s efforts to intercept the mail and they themselves took measures to counter them. (Burkart) "I think that‘s the reason the programme was moved to the Friday night slot, because the Stasi had to communicate the addresses to the 14 district post offices, which couldn‘t receive them until Monday if they didn’t work on Saturdays, and then it took a while for the people doing the checks to internalise the new address, as it were." (Borchardt) "I was still convinced that this route through the cover addresses was safe one. From today’s perspective you could definitely say that was naïve of me." (Erler) "As I remember it, of course I knew right away that others would be listening to that, too. So the Stasi would be listening in as well, and consequently I enlisted everyone I knew and all my relatives in order to send the letter to Austin Harrison through another Western address first, asking them to put it in another envelope with this cover address. That way the letters actually reached Austin Harrison." But the Stasi developed ever more refined methods and machines to intercept suspicious letters, without leaving a trace. (Schädlich) "At some point they introduced handwriting comparisons, they started analyzing the ink in different biros, they took saliva samples from the adhesives on the envelopes, which were then compared with blood samples of the people they were targeting. They built up a file of handwriting samples in order to be able to make comparisons against a vast store of samples later on. They went to incredible lengths to expose the letterwriters." Susanne Schädlich has looked in detail at the for Karl- Heinz Borchardts Stasi files. A naive schoolboy when he wrote to the BBC, he made some very basic errors. He posted the letters from his own town and described himself as a 16 year old high school student. This gave the Stasi - who had by now intercepted his letters – plenty of detail to go on. Because there was only one high school in Greifswald. This is the first time Karl Heinz has been back to it in 50 years. He was in class one day when the Stasi arrived to carry out handwriting checks on every student over the age of 16. (Borchardt) "I remember our form tutor coming in and telling us that the essay we had to write would be used for comparisons by the Ministry of State Security. They told us that … and I still didn‘t suspect anything." The Stasi net was closing in. Borchardt’s application for identity cards and other samples were sent to a special department in Berlin for closer analysis. The result was clear. Karl-Heinz Borchardt was the letterwriter. On August 31, 1970, Karl-Heinz Borchardt had just turned 18 when the Stasi knocked at the door of his family’s apartment. (Borchardt) "There were two cars parked in front of the house, and I realised that in the one I was supposed to get into you couldn‘t open the door from the inside, so these cars were specially designed for making arrests. They sent seven officers from the Ministry of State Security who arrested me early in the morning." In the Stasi’s view, they had to – quote – “remove him as an enemy of our state … he is a persistent threat and risks the political and ideological education of the students”. (Schädlich) "I’m always shocked by the language, because it’s dehumanising. If, by contrast, you then read Borchardt‘s letters, which were written by a schoolboy, by a human being, and you compare them with the Stasi’s language, there’s a glaring difference of course. It’s brutal language they’re using here. I always get the feeling that they’re actually using Gestapo language." After seven months on remand, the court reached its verdict. (Borchardt) "When they declared that I would go to jail for two years, my mother fainted and had to be taken to hospital. And of course it was obvious, or it’s obvious to me now, that they wanted to make an example out of me." Back in London Austin Harrison and his team were completely unaware that a 16 year old writer had been arrested by the Stasi. But an emboldened Harrison was by now taking greater risks to cultivate his contacts behind the iron curtain. Bill Treharne Jones was the newly appointed BBC’s radio correspondent to Berlin in 1970. This role afforded him special privileges. (Bill Jones)
"BBC representative for the German service in West Berlin, had military status, which meant I had a military ID card, and I could cross into East Berlin anytime I wanted. I used to drive to Checkpoint Charlie, the East German border guards recognized my registration. They were not allowed to open the door, were not allowed to ask me to wind the window down, I just had to hold up my ID card, press it against the glass, and they would wave me through." Harrison decided to utilize Jones’ near-diplomatic status for a special task. (Jones) "I had a call from Harrison saying ‘I want you to go and talk to a very important contact of mine. He’s written some article for a West German newspaper called “Die Zeit”. So I want you to go and see him and get this article, but you must do nothing to annoy him, this man is a key contact and if you mess things up or upset him, you’ll be in deep trouble.’" Jones went to meet Harrison’s contact in a fish restaurant in East-Berlin... the contact was Rudolf Harnisch, a journalist and writer. (Jones) "Well, he only had one leg. He lost the other leg fighting during the war, on the Russian Front. So he was quite tall, he was polite, but I never got a real sense of his character in the way that I did with some of the other people I saw. The Harnisch I was dealing with was not the real Harnisch, as in, just a side of him." Austin Harrison himself met Harnish many times. He had big plans for his new contact, grooming him to be a new star dissident writer of the East. But Harnish too had an agenda that he was hiding from Harrison. (Rudolf Harnisch recording) "My impression is that Harrison hopes to turn me into a sort of GDR Solzhenitsyn. And that he expects a manuscript from me one day telling the truth about developments in the GDR in literary form." In fact Rudolf Harnisch was a secret informer, an agent of the Stasi. A former war-time tank officer, he had also worked for the KGB undercover in West Germany. Now the Stasi had set him on Austin Harrison. (Recorded tape) "Regarding Harrison." Harnisch - under his cover name „Carolus Winter“ - reported to his case officers about his meetings with Harrison. (Harnisch) "On the Saturday I met up with Harrison in Leipzig, as agreed. He drove ahead in his car, a Volkswagen, which he had apparently hired in West Berlin." The Stasi monitored Harrison through Harnish for 6 years. The files reveal that the unsuspecting Briton was very open with his GDR contact and that Harnish became a highly valued Stasi agent. (Jones) "Having Harrison, he had reason in his own eyes to be very proud that he had the biggest enemy of the German Democratic Republic was telling him all sorts of things he shouldn’t." But why did the Stasi see Harrison - and the BBC - as such a threat? Maybe the answer lies here... Whitehall, home to the Foreign Office and MI6 and also the sole funder of the BBC World Service. (Sahla) "We were basically of course not paid for by the people who paid for the BBC. We were paid for by the foreign office so we already had a different master and we were in some ways silver servants which was somehow a strange thing to get used to because you’re working for the BBC a very independent broadcaster yet at the same time you have a very very important boss sitting somewhere in white hall." Emily Oliver has been researching the relationship between the BBC and the Foreign Office. She’s found some astonishing documents in the National Archives about a secret propaganda branch of the Service, called the IRD - the “Information Research Department”. (Oliver) "The IRD was based in the Foreign Office, up to 300 people were working there in the 50s. They basically spread anti-communist propaganda and they would feed this information to journalists, to trade-unionists, to politicians, but also to institutions including, very importantly the BBC external services and thus the German service. And it lasted until 1977, when it was shut down. And the activities of the IRD only became known to the public in 1978. No-one had actually known that this department existed." The IRD was especially close with the BBC German Service, led by Richard O’Rorke and Austin Harrison, both of whom were ex-military. Documents show the frequent exchanges between the propaganda specialists of the Foreign Office and the senior BBC journalists. Harrison reported nothing back to his BBC programme on his frequent trips to East Germany, over the years. But he delivered detailed reports on them to the IRD. Harrison also sent these reports to the West German Government. Documents from a Berlin state archive reveal how much this confidential help was welcomed. (Sahla) "I have never heard of this, but I am not surprised, it really fits into what I often asked myself, there is more to it than what I’m presented here. The feeling that there is more to it than we think, that we’re- we the staff - basically very naive going about our business and thinking we’re working for the BBC whereas we were actually working for the foreign office. This is what a lot of my colleagues never really grasped." But the most controversial reports to the IRD concern the letters sent by the naive East German letter writers to Harrison’s programme. Documents from the National Archives further show that the chiefs of the German Service provided IRD with analysis and selected letters from their East German post bag. This material was then secretly shared with the West German Government. (Oliver) "Every two weeks, as a matter of course, these reports, on listener research, which contain extracts of letters, are passed on to the Information Research Department at the Foreign Office. The letters from East Germany and these listener research reports, even though they’re anecdotal information, they provide information that the British Foreign Office and the West German Foreign Office wouldn’t have had access to otherwise. We don’t know exactly what they did with it, but it was clearly valuable to them." Letters Without Signature had become crucial trading goods in the Cold War propaganda battle - but for its listeners, this was all unknown. (Oliver) "I think if it had, it would probably have stopped most people from writing to the BBC, and it gives credence to the Stasi allegations which say that well, these people are corresponding with Western Government agencies and they are providing material to anti-communist functionaries and so they are harming our state." While Harrison was sharing the contents of the letters with both the British and West German Foreign Services, Karl-Heinz Borchardt was serving his sentence at the bleak Dessau prison for youth offenders. For Borchardt, the young student forced to leave his family and home, this was a life- changing traumatic experience. (Borchardt) "One key experience was this young lieutenant who talked to me at the entrance and then he ended the conversation by saying, „You’re lucky to be living in the GDR today. Under the Nazis, we’d have sent you up the chimney long ago." At the Dessau youth prison, communal punishment and constant threats were everyday occurrences. The young people were kept under close guard even when playing in the courtyard. (Borchardt) "One time, the ball landed on the lawn directly below the prison wall. Someone ran after the ball, and from the guard tower they immediately opened fire on this boy. They fired several shots with a machine gun. I can only assume that it was a good marksman and that he missed deliberately. But after that we couldn‘t play football anymore." There are no official numbers about how many letter-writers were either arrested or convicted for writing to the BBC. However, an internal Stasi report from 1973 shows that in that year alone, up to 15 investigations were launched into so called “subversive actions against the state” or writing letters to the BBC. Rolf Erler is also making a journey into his past. Luckily for him his letters to the BBC were never intercepted. But as a student he faced another threat: conscription into the army. As a Christian pacifist this would have been unthinkable. But refusing would mean risking a prison sentence. In 1973 he feels his only option is to flee the country and he met with a west German people smuggler. (Erler) "The driver told me: As soon as we get to the bridge across the Elbe I will stop for a moment, and then you have to jump into the boot quickly, so we don‘t draw attention to ourselves. And then we continued the journey, with me inside the boot." Two hours later, they reached Marienborn, a large border crossing between the two German states. (Erler) "So I arrived in a garage like this one still in the car boot. And I was pretty clueless, hoping there would only be a short delay. And then suddenly the boot was opened, and they shone a torch in my face. They told me to get out, and someone said: “If you do a runner here, you‘ll get a bullet through your lung.”" Rolf was subjected to hours of interrogation. They asked him whether he has committed any other “subversive” acts. (Erler) "Oh, please don‘t let them ask me about the BBC! I tried to avoid that topic of course, because I knew that if we started talking about “Letters without Signatures”, they’d ask me: “Well? Did you write in as well?” Of course I didn’t know at the time what had and hadn’t got through. And if they had intercepted just one letter, I would certainly have faced a much higher sentence than what they kept threatening me with." His correspondence with the BBC remained undetected, but even so the sentence was severe: 5 years in prison for “attempted desertion of the Republic“. While Rolf Erler was in prison, the overall political situation changed. From 1972 on the relationship between the two German states relaxed, and they signed treaties making it easier for West Germans to visit their relatives in the East. (Schädlich) "That was the de facto recognition of the GDR. And that basically cemented the division of Germany, which was what many letter writers had argued against. And Britain sent its first ambassador to the GDR, so of course it wasn‘t opportune to continue producing a radio program which was a perpetual thorn in the side of the GDR." Despite the relaxation of relations between East and West, the Stasi kept up the pressure on the letter writers. By then, there were hardly any letters from listeners in East Germany getting through. The Head of the BBC German Service informs the Foreign Office that postal surveillance by the Stasi has simply become too efficient. In 1974, after nearly 25 years, “Letters without signature“, was cancelled - with no prior warning - much to the disappointment of its listeners in East Germany. The few letters that did get through show that East German listeners refused to believe that this indeed was the end. (Schädlich - reading quotes from letters) „I have lost any desire to listen to the radio. Nowadays you turn on the radio on Fridays, only to turn it straight back off again.“ "Speaking for countless listeners who miss this program deeply, we implore Mr Harrison to present „Letters without Signature“ again, with all his helpful responses. It‘s the only way we here can vent our feelings about our country’s injustices." Loyal listeners and letter writers Rolf Erler and Karl-Heinz Borchardt are meeting for the first time – in the prison which played a crucial role in both their lives. Political prisoners were taken from this prison in the GDR to West Germany – ransomed by the West German government for at least 20,000 pounds sterling per head. For most prisoners this was the last stop on their long journey towards a new life in liberty. (Erler) "The best moment was when you got the certificate that said: you are released from citizenship of the German Democratic Republic. That’s what it said on these A4 release papers – and we always said: that’s the most beautiful certificate you could ever be awarded in the GDR." When Karl-Heinz was transferred he had no idea where he was going. He only discovered moments before that his own state, the GDR, wanted to deport him to the West. (Borchardt) "It was clear to me I was being given an option for which other people would have risked their lives. I did realise that at the time." But Karl-Heinz Borchardt refused to go to the West. He went on hunger strike and sought help elsewhere. (Borchardt) "Dear Lawyer, I have grown up in Greifswald. My parents, my gran, my sister, and my friends are all there. This proposed deportation clearly goes against my own wishes. I therefore ask you to do everything in your power to prevent it. Please inform my parents immediately that this is happening." While Rolf Erler started a new life in West Germany, studying theology and becoming a pastor, Karl-Heinz Borchardt returned to his hometown of Greifswald. Until the fall of the Berlin Wall, the authorities continued to keep him in their focus and hindered his university career. In 1989 the East German State collapsed and the Berlin Wall came down, finally uniting East and West Germany. This made the BBC’s German Service effectively redundant and it ceased broadcasting 10 years later. But how should we assess its longest lasting programme, Letters Without Signature? For much of that time it functioned as both a lifeline for news-hungry East Germans and as an instrument of anti-communist propaganda - a borderline case, in the truest sense of the word. (Oliver) "I think from today’s perspective, we would say well, the BBC external services were working hand-in-glove with a covert Foreign Office department, this is clearly state propaganda what’s being done here. Paradoxically, it’s possible to maintain this, um, reputation that the BBC has for telling the truth but still be broadcasting in the national interest and pursuing an anti-communist agenda in its other broadcasts." (Burkart) "We sometimes discussed that, what are we actually doing here? Are we creating a Cold War or are we really Cold Warriors, as some people called us?" (Borchardt) "I don‘t think I was a victim of the propaganda war between the systems, or that I was somehow abused by the editors of the programme “Letters without Signatures”." (Burkart) "I don’t know whether we influenced people, I can’t say. It was certainly our intention, or at least we had the will and the hope that we were doing some good." And what became of Austin Harrison? He retired from the BBC in 1975 and died only six years later – at the age of 65. But in death, Harrison remains as much an enigma as he was in life. His BBC file was destroyed and he had his own body cremated in his private cemetery, with no headstone. All that remain of “The Disrupter in Chief” of the East German state, are the tapes in the vaults of the former Stasi headquarters, in Berlin. (Radio Broadcast) "Write to us, where ever you are, whatever is on your mind! “Letters without signature!”"
