Hello, everyone, and welcome to another episode of Radio GDR. This is your host Steve Minegar, and the next three episodes will truly be a humbling and eye opening experience for all of us. On the Cold War Conversations podcast, our good friend Ian Sanders interviewed Ralph Hänel, Kung Fu Master, actor and just plain wonderful guy, about the lengths he went to learn martial arts behind the Iron Curtain in East Germany. In an attempt to leave for the west, Ralph was arrested and spent several years in a Stasi prison in Cottbus known as the “red misery.” Ralph relays this incredible story over three episodes on Cold War Conversations, which I highly recommend you listen to before consuming this series of episodes - see the links below. Ralph is an amazing storyteller and approached me to relay even more of his tragic but triumphant tale. Inspired by objects he has collected that have reminded him of moments in his life, Ralph tells us in this first episode about his father’s possible involvement in the Stasi, the lawyer he may have arranged for his son to get out of prison, and the psychological torture the Stasi inflicted on him and his mother. Just wait until you hear about how Ralph got his Kung Fu certificate into East Germany, the messages he snuck into a hole in his tooth and his Stasi handcuffs (I won’t give too many spoilers away). Ralph, we appreciate these stories very much.
 You MUST listen to Ian Sanders' three part interview of Ralph before listening to these. They will absolutely set the context for these episodes, and are MUST LISTENS. 
 Episode 1 - Ralph – DJing and Kung Fu in East Germany
 Episode 2 - Ralph – Arrested and interrogated by the Stasi
 Episode 3 - Ralph – A prisoner in an East German jail
 Read Ralph's short stories using this link
 Our ability to bring you stories from behind the Berlin Wall is dependent on monthly donors like you. Visit us at  https://www.eastgermanypodcast.com/p/support-the-podcast/ to contribute. For the price of a Berliner Pilsner, you can feel good you are contributing to preserve one of the most important pieces of Cold War history.
 If you feel more comfortable leaving us a review to help us get more listeners, we appreciate it very much and encourage you to do so wherever you get your podcasts or at https://www.eastgermanypodcast.com/reviews/new/.
 For discussions about podcast episodes and GDR history, please do join our Facebook discussion group. Just search Radio GDR in Facebook.
 Vielen dank for being a listener!

Welcome to Radio GDR, an English-language podcast all about the life and times of East Germany.

Listening to Radio Berlin International, the voice of the German Democratic Republic, European Serb.

East Berlin gets dolled up for the GDR's 20th anniversary.

Hello everyone and welcome to another episode of Radio GDR.

This is your host, Steve Miniger, and the next 3 episodes will truly be a humbling and eye opening experience for all of us.

On the Cold War conversations podcast, our good friend Ian Sanders interviewed Ralph Hainel, Kung Fu master, actor and just plain wonderful guy about the lengths he went to to learn martial arts behind the Iron Curtain in East Germany.

In an attempt to leave for the West, Ralph was arrested and spent several years in a Stasi prison in Katbus, known as the Red Misery.

Ralph relays this incredible story over 3 episodes on Cold War Conversations, which I highly recommend you listen to before consuming this series of episodes.

Ralph is an amazing storyteller and approached me to relay even more of his tragic but triumphant tale.

Inspired by objects he has collected that have reminded him of moments in his life.

Ralph tells us in this first episode about his father's possible involvement in the Stasi, the lawyer he may have arranged for his son to get out of prison, and the psychological torture the Stasi inflicted on him and his mother.

Just wait until you hear about how Ralph got his Kung Fu certificate in East Germany, the messages he snuck into a hole in his tooth and his Stasi handcuffs.

Ralph, we appreciate these gripping stories very much.

If I had to express the emotions that I feel talking to you, it really is a mix of being honored and humbled.

I really echo Ian Sanders on that front from when he interviewed you 3 times for Cold War Conversations.

And I highly encourage all of you Radio GDR listeners to go out and listen to those episodes.

I'm going to put them in the show notes, but welcome to Radio GDR, Ralf.

It's almost, for a moment, I have to pause.

I hear Radio GDR and have kind of a flashback, remembering as a kid when the radio went on and it was actually Radio GDR, the real East German radio, and how we quickly changed the channel to West German radio to hear the good music.

Now your Radio GDR is a good thing, bringing so much history across to your listeners, all these different personal stories, that's even for me having so many stories, interesting to hear the others.

And when you wrote, Hey, let's talk together, that makes me so excited.

And I almost having another flashback to when I was a kid when it was bedtime and under the blanket I had my shortwave radio.

Maybe we have to insert here a little bit, what the heck is a shortwave radio for younger listeners?

And I turned then on to Radio Luxembourg, the first private radio station in Europe back then.

And the changing quality of the receiving signal, you heard all this news.

Podcasts have kind of revived this old culture of radio.

I also remember listening to crime shows and without a picture, a Sunday evening, sitting in front of the radio and then hearing from the radio studio the noises of somebody entering the room.

And there he was in a lady in a chair, didn't know.

So, having the honor to talk to you about my stories on this kind of medium that makes it even more exciting.

And how cool is it that that Voice media really has come back to be so important.

And I think about Ralph, how fortunate it is that you and I get to speak.

Because understanding your personal story, understanding that you spent time in a Stasi prison, that freedom for you was just a dream at 1 point, that if history had not taken the course that it had, you and I would not be sitting here talking today.

Or if you and I did talk, somebody would have written it down, would have recorded

that is exciting to me that we get to do this.

This almost, when, yeah, I of course do a little bit prepping because I also want to talk about some parts of my stories that I have not mentioned yet before.

And I was listening, or first I was reading a letter from my mom back then into the prison.

And I will later get back to it, But at the end there's a sentence, I want to finish this story to you today in this letter, because I do not want to tire out too much all the other readers that meant the Secret Service Department within the prison in East Germany and some of the prison guards too, who actually had to read it, because until you got a letter, it was either censored or you didn't get it at all and my mom had a few tricks so I will speak about this later so that was 1 part And then I remembered when I was finally free.

I was only a few months in the West and when I was calling from West Germany, my mom at her workplace.

So I dialed from the West and for a moment there was nothing in the phone line, just silence.

And then you could hear a couple of and then I heard the sign that her phone is available And then she answered and said, wow, they had so much to do with the technical stuff.

So hello to you, my son, and everybody else who's on the phone.

So there was, please note, after the Berlin Wall went down, because for a lot of people, the day the Berlin Wall went down, they think now everything was peace and fun and the world was free.

Now those guys were still working for a long time in the form of the Stasi, then they renamed it as Nazi, the National Office for Security, before they were officially dissolved.

But a lot of people also don't think about that some core groups of the secret service continued in the private sector or did their own thing entering capitalism.

Many of them became the best capitalists ever.

So this is all just at the beginning of our talk today what runs through my head, that talking on the phone was not just easy, writing a letter you had to think about what you wrote during East German times and let alone before the wall went down that most people didn't even have a phone because a big part of the phone net in East Germany was still basically from the end of World War II what had existed and then the National People Army, the police, the secret service, they had all built their own phone nets and so engineers from the West German phone companies, after the wall came down, they went into the East and they were just in awe and said, how did this work?

All those made at night, repaired here, fixed there, this phone net.

Because I wanted to have, of course, a phone early on and it was in

that I applied in Rostock at the Baltic Sea coast in East Germany for a phone and of course you never heard back and then much later somebody who lived in this apartment after me knew my mom and she got a letter from

So 8 years after I had applied for the phone connection that at the current time, we cannot yet realize your phone connection and so please stay tuned we'll talk to you again and I thought if the Berlin Wall would have not come down maybe in another 8 years So that's why it was in the free world a few months after the Berlin Wall came down when I was in West Germany.

So weird, I went into a phone shop, I had my first tiny apartment in the West and now I finally wanted to have the phone.

So I went into the store and she said, oh just a moment, I'm servicing a client, do you want a coffee?

And I'm, whoa, they even give you a coffee here, what the heck is going on?

And then she said, oh I'm so sorry, we cannot do this.

And I thought, oh no, not in the west the same as in the east it was Friday afternoon she said we cannot come on Monday would Tuesday be all right with you I almost want to say which year are you talking about so it was of course after the weekend next week So this is how I had my first phone and for most people today since we carry it now around and the phone, the cell phone is everything to us, camera, social media, phone is almost something on the side.

So this is where you also notice, wow, time really has gone by.

This device really is a little computer in your pocket to think to have to wait 8 years for a phone.

And luckily some of the things, so I will get to the eBay connection of it all, Some of those things have been lost, but luckily just a few years ago, I had to clean something out in my mom's apartment and I found this letter from 1988 and I've shown it to young people.

I said, here, look, 8 years later, they wrote to me, you still cannot have a telephone.

And they had, how the heck is this even possible?

So, yeah, that's almost a historical document.

So, and while talking to you about this, I'm thinking, okay, here we are, those my 3 problems.

And Number 2, some of those stories span decades and they only make sense if you mention a few other stories along with it.

And number 3, all the stories are intertwined.

So I always have to sit back and think, okay, where do I start with my story?

In Canada, when 1 of my kids or both didn't quite listen and they were to be punished.

So really nice parents, but taking this away or that didn't do the job.

The mom said then to the kids, okay, your father's going to sit down in the living room and is going to tell you a long story.

And then I sat down, okay, children, the story started in the year

Well, I'll tell you, Ralph, if your kids don't wanna hear those stories, I know a

that will, so don't worry, you're in good hands.

I actually have to admit, they do like to listen to the stories and it was so exciting.

Before I come to my first big story, it happened in

My daughter was the first 1 to come with me to Germany and we just went around in town here in Rostock where I grew up and then I showed her, I said look at this building, this was living quarters, look at this building, this is where the East German secret service in this city worked and here was the interrogation jail, the secret jail of the secret service, because most people didn't even know that the secret service, they had their own interrogation jails, not to be shared with regular criminals.

So I stood there with my daughter and we're talking together.

I said, oh look up there, that was daddy's first cell up there.

And then the man came across and said, oh really good English.

I couldn't help but overhearing you guys talking.

I said, yeah, I spent 10 months in here, 10 months day and night interrogations.

And he, well, I happened to be the boss of this museum, this human rights museum here, and I haven't been here in months because closed for renovations.

It just happens that we're here today for 10 minutes, we just wanted to get something out.

I can open up and you guys can go inside it and we both thought, wow, what gives?

What are the odds that at this day where she just came from Canada, we stand there.

So we went in and now with my daughter I had this whole interrogation prison, the 3 levels there for myself.

I thought, okay, for a moment, I will be quiet in a moment.

And then she said, yeah, I feel the vibes that something has happened.

At the time she was, I think, still 14, about to turn 15.

So it's a lot for a teenager to even be interested in old dad stories and then to take it in and then to have this opportunity.

So it was some other podcast where I was actually telling the tiny story.

I showed her upstairs my very first cell and then she disappeared for a moment.

Then she came out and said, yeah, all good.

So she had gotten off a piece of pain from the inside of the prison door that I had faced for quite some time to take it with her back to Canada.

So as a reminder, so that was 1 of those odd circumstances that you get a chance to be there alone with nobody and go through this cell.

So I imagine still the walkers as we call them because you in the morning you had your loud signal and then you had to get up for the count and since you were never addressed by name you didn't have any personal things and no personal belongings nothing in there.

Today in prison cell you have a TV, a radio, lamps, this and that.

Even the light was turned on from the outside.

And it took a couple of days until I had 1 cellmate.

You had only 1 and you were always waiting for the steps of the walker.

Bam, bam, and then get ready, bed 1, you were always addressed with bed 1 or bed 2, depending on which 1 of the 2 beds you were sleeping on, then you were called for interrogation and you never knew what to expect.

And so this 1 leads me right into the first big story.

A lot of listeners of your podcast might be familiar with the names.

He was paid by the church and a lot of political prisoners when they knew about him preferred him because a lawyer that's with the church is more trustworthy, because the other lawyer was Professor Dr.

He was the trusted person from Erich Honecker, also the 1 who had brokered a lot of the spy deals during the Cold War.

So the very first day when I was interrogated the whole day, Did you do this?

And then in the afternoon, okay, it's decided for you to stay where you think, if you're not exposed to it today, people through crime stories, TV shows, you think, most people think they know everything about prison and how all of this works, talking to lawyers and making deals.

If you're inside a secret service building and there's 3, 4 interrogators in front of you and they say it's decided you stay here.

And a lot of people say, oh my god, were you shocked?

Oh my god, did you start to cry and said, no, there was nothing.

You just, your brain cannot process that.

And of course, I always have to tell this little story.

You automatically say, okay, then I want to talk to a lawyer.

And I can still see it today, even because 1 was the father type, 1 was the young kind of your body but we have to do the hardcore talk and then 1 was the bureaucratic type that didn't move a face muscle but in this moment all of them were laughing and tears running and oh my god how funny is this we arrest somebody and they ask for a lawyer oh my god and then in the end 1 of them said oh you probably have watched too much madlock was back then on west german tv the lawyer show ben madlock I just happened to see the other day an old rerun and had to smile and think, oh Mr.

Matlock, if you would know where you were mentioned by the East German Secret Service.

So and Then a few days went by where nothing happened and then 1 of the next interrogations I was asked, so you asked for a lawyer, here's a list, name a lawyer.

Some people who were in church circles, early environmental activists, people who had been in the civil rights, East German civil rights movement, who had already by pastors or priests prepared for what might come from the secret service.

So I knew from my work 1 lawyer personally on this list.

He came a short time later but he also said okay I cannot do anything here And I could see he was he was in fear.

He was just doing some personal stuff about my apartment, but he said, otherwise I'm out of here.

This is nothing I'm used to, but I had to come because you called for me, called meaning making a check mark there.

So I thought okay what kind of lawyer should I ask if you don't know it all and then 1 of the first days it started to knock on the wall in my cell.

Another thing you're alone in the cell you don't know what's happening in life you know you have to get back home you got things to do friends to meet you missed already appointments you missed work and everything I thought what the heck is this?

So on the wall, tock-tock and then boom, boom, boom, boom.

At some point I thought, oh, there seems to be a rhythm to it.

Then I was trying to listen and then it was for A, 1 knock, for B, 2 knocks.

And then I answered something, hello, and while I was in the middle of hello, there came already a triple knock, kind of, okay, I understand what you're saying.

And then there was a conversation for a minute or so back and forward.

Later, a guy was banging at the door, stop knocking on the wall.

And I thought, oh my gosh, there's like a grapevine, like a secret connection here to other prisoners.

It was years later that people thought, did you ever think about that this is maybe somebody from the secret service trying via the knocking game to get information out of you?

In those first days, I had no idea whatsoever.

You sit in there and you have no radio, no tv, no watch, nothing.

You have some old running suit on from the secret service, probably who many generations of political prisoners were already wearing this thing and you sit in there and there's nothing.

You just look at the walls because you also can't see outside.

There are 2 lawyers and I thought, oh my gosh, hopefully I get the 1 from the church.

But then a few weeks later I was called in and all of the interrogation officers that were with my case, they stood there and they had faces that's almost like for some reason I always have this Simpsons episode in my head where Hans Mohlman is there in the jail and talking to the pastor, Homer just ate my last meal.

And he says, Hans, that's the smallest of your problems today.

And then when they take Hans Mohlmann out and, are you even allowed to execute people in the local jail?

And the pastor, Hans, from now on, no talking.

Of course, the episode I saw much, much later, but it's somehow it connected in my brain and I find this always very funny.

But that's how I felt in there like, oh my, what the heck is happening now?

And there it said on the top of the letterhead, Professor Dr.

Wolfgang Vogel, also able to appear at the courts of West Berlin.

I thought, oh my god, the spy trader, the dude who a lot of your listeners know this character from a movie, the Tom Hanks movie Bridge of Spies, where Wolfgang Vogel plays unfortunately only a small part, of course, The important part is played by Tom Hanks, naturally.

But Wolfgang Vogel actually had more to do since this first spy exchange back then with Gary Powers, who was shot down over the Soviet Union.

I thought, wow, this dude is writing to me that he is accepting me as a client.

So I was just sitting there holding this letter and then they said, say something.

Vogel is taking over your defense?" And for a moment I thought, you guys are the secret service, I'm in here, how the heck am I supposed to know tiny little secret ahead?

Even today I don't know how he got my case.

But he had in every part of East Germany other lawyers who took some of the cases.

He always had control over all the cases for political prisoners and all the last things who were sold to West Germany and so on.

I hope you're with me here, Steve, with how the stories are intertwined.

I have to put it in here, because it started having nothing to do with East Germany.

I think in 2006, my daughter wanted My Little Pony.

And even at toy stores in Canada or so, you couldn't get the right ones from the My Little Pony connection.

And I had no idea, really had never used eBay before.

So I got the ones for her and a couple of really expensive historic ones.

And then I just for some reason I got a recommendation from East Germany, this newspaper, So I started to look for things and I thought, wow, I'm seeing so many East German things because in just after the wall came down, I had made some notes just to remember some bullet points of everything that had happened.

to 2000, when my son was born, I started to write down the first stories.

You have to write this down for this next generation because every year we get a year older and sometimes we forget stuff or just disappears because life has gotten so busy with social media.

There's this constant whoosh and whoosh of information.

Time passes so it's it passes so quickly.

That's why these recording this is so important for future generations.

So and then I found a little folding booklet about a former hotel in East Berlin.

It's called Unter den Linden, where the linden trees are alongside the street to the Brandenburg Gate, because this lawyer responsible for the city of Rostock had called my mom to meet with her in this hotel in East Berlin.

And of course I was in interrogation jail of the Secret Service, I didn't even know about it.

And then she went there and at the bar, in this little booklet, you can still see the bar, the lawyer said, okay, Mrs.

Vogel, of course, all the titles a little bit flaunting.

So wants to know, and I want to know, how come we were basically ordered to take over the case of your son?

And she, I don't even know yet what is going on.

Because at this time today, you talk, you're right away.

Soon as you ask for a lawyer, police has to stop and you can discuss everything with the lawyer.

And back then people didn't even know what was going on in there.

If you met, if you had half an hour visiting time a month, 1 half hour a month with 1 relative, you could not talk about what was going on.

So she had to tell him the same, said police.

I do not know, because she was back then been picked up or called in several times by the headquarters of the secret service in East Berlin in Lichtenberg.

And they told her, we still don't know what they were suspecting back then.

They thought there's some huge enemy organization on the West.

Also due to my martial arts training and so on, that maybe they're building something for the day X in East Germany to pow, to bring communism down.

So when my mom had to appear at the secret service in Berlin.

She was always told, when we find anything out this moment, we will arrest you as well.

Your son, we've got him already and we've got time, Mrs.

And she said, yeah, but it's already end of August.

months, years, This doesn't matter to us.

So, of course, going back into the interrogation jail

The spy trader personally had taken over my case.

But of course, until I saw his lawyer for the city, months went by until the case was pretty much done.

So meaning a lawyer helping you in East Germany, this didn't happen.

They were there to kind of, yeah, he's sitting there so by the law we have fulfilled it but it doesn't really really matter.

So then I had talked there were 2 lawyers in East Germany that political prisoners will still remember because the second 1 got also famous Wolfgang Schnur.

After the wall fell he came he became very close with the West German Chancellor, Helmut Kohl.

Helmut Kohl had almost picked him for the CDU of the maybe soon reunited Germany.

A little side note that many listeners may not know.

Do you know this Wolfgang Schnur back then?

Who did he introduce to Helmut Kohl, then the West German Chancellor.

So it's a trick question because you very likely do not know it, right?

So what nobody knew at this time when Wolfgang Schnur was always behind the West German Chancellor, He was on big posters all over East Germany after the wall came down as the new rising shining light in politics.

But he had not paid attention to former alliances.

So some of the comrades of the East German Secret Service then suddenly released files that he, as a lawyer paid by the church, had delivered all of his clients to the Secret Service.

That some of his lead officers were even almost a tiny little bit in fear of him because he delivered too much material.

He also said for example, oh I also know from this friend's friend he has done that you can follow up on this as well and they whoa whoa whoa we're working on this 1 case so why do I even mention this person because 1 day the walker came so the prison guard You have to imagine it was this interrogation jail and it was attached right to the interrogation building, both of which were in a complex surrounded by other office buildings and living quarters of the secret service.

See all East Germany Podcast - Radio GDR transcripts on Applepodcasts

Ralph Hänel, Part I - My Father and the Stasi Lawyer