After the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989, I visited the city in December of the same year. I photographed the wall woodpeckers, visited the famous places Checkpoint Charlie, Tiergarten, Olympic Stadium and Alexanderplatz. With the Hasselblad 500 C and a Metz electronic flash and a short flash sync time of 1/500sec (thanks to the central shutter), I blocked out the surroundings in some places and focused on the actors. The atmosphere was peaceful and joyful.

A year later, I visited Berlin again on December 2 for the first all-Berlin election (federal elections were also held). The voter turnout was 80.8%.

The mood felt different for me that weekend. I visited relatives of my girlfriend at the time, whom I accompanied to the polling station and watched the first projections on TV in the evening.

The day before I was out and about in the center of Berlin, where there were insults to former East German police officers and a former GDR choir played songs from the old days.

There was a spirit of optimism among my relatives and they proudly showed me their first West German car - a VW Derby. The youngsters collected election campaign stickers and decorated the inside of their jackets with them, most of them from the PDS under Gregor Gysi, the successor party to the SED.