The Foreign Service Journal, November 2019

46 NOVEMBER 2019 | THE FOREIGN SERVICE JOURNAL How I Became a Mauerspechte Edwina “Eddie” Sagitto Heidelberg, Federal Republic of Germany I n November 1989 I was living in Heidelberg, working as a management analyst for U.S. Army Europe (USAREUR). On Nov. 9, while visiting the German family of my partner in the Bavarian city of Neu Ulm, we heard the news that the Berlin Wall had fallen. I was ecstatic, but my German hosts didn’t seem impressed. I wanted to experience the change firsthand, so the following weekend I went to Berlin. The mood was euphoric, but the huge crowds were gone. It was easy to access the Berlin Wall and soak in the atmosphere. There was a lively trade going on in pieces of the wall chipped off by enterprising kids known as mauerspechte , a slang word meaning “wall peckers.” Some were spray-painting parts of the wall before breaking off pieces to make themmore saleable. I decided to chop off my own. It was not too difficult because the wall was made of porous concrete, and I amassed a whole bag full of chunks. Things seemed to change quickly in the weeks and months that followed. Less than a year later, on Oct. 3, 1990, West and East Germany reunited. Some of the early enthusiasm in the west diminished as the costs of reunification became clearer. The U.S. military presence also changed, as the number of U.S. military personnel stationed in Germany (and the German and U.S. civilians working with them) dropped drastically. For me, the fall of the Berlin Wall also opened up the possibil- ity of travel to Eastern Europe. In 1991, after quite a bit of prepa- ration, I went to Romania in hope of adopting a child. I traveled with a colleague and friend who also wanted to adopt. With the help of a translator and advice from others who had successfully adopted, we were both able to adopt, I a daughter and she a son. In 1995 I joined the Foreign Service and had assignments in Slovakia, Croatia, Bosnia and Herzegovina, and Romania. The events of November 1989 not only had a profound effect on Germany and Europe, but on the direction my own career and life have taken. Edwina “Eddie” Sagitto joined the Foreign Service in 1995, serving until 2013 as a public diplomacy officer. Since retiring, she has taken WAE assignments in Africa and elsewhere, and divides her time between Munich, Germany, and Phoenix, Arizona. View from the Velvet Revolution Thomas N. Hull Prague, Czechoslovakia w hen I left Washington in August 1989 to be a public affairs officer in Prague, conventional wisdom was that communism would collapse in Czechoslovakia before East Germany. Ambassador Shirley Temple Black arrived a week later, fully prepared to maintain our strategy of encourag- ing dissidents, promoting human rights and opposing commu- nism, as had generations of American diplomats before us. Within a month, a seismic upheaval began when East German COURTESYOFEDDIESAGITTO Eddie Sagitto at the Berlin Wall. Two young mauerspechte sell pieces of the wall. COURTESYOFEDDIESAGITTO