Hello, everyone, and welcome to our third installment of our interview with Ralph Hanel, Kung Fu Master, former Stasi prisoner and amazing storyteller. I am so glad you have enjoyed the first two installments, and Ralph and I sat down for a third interview to talk about the objects he has collected in recent years that remind him of his survival story. Today, Ralph tells us about his Stasi handcuffs, his GDR kung fu certificate, how special PanAm is in his life and about other objects that we really started called his "Corner GDR Museum." This was a really special experience for me, and Ralph has started posting pictures of these objects in the Facebook group. You will really enjoy this episode.
   
  Ralph, we're so grateful to you for telling your stories.
 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.
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 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 European service.

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

Hello everyone and welcome to our third installment of our interview with Ralph Hainel, Kung Fu master, former Stasi prisoner, and amazing storyteller.

I'm so glad you've enjoyed the first 2 installments, and Ralph and I sat down for a third interview to talk about each of the objects he's collected in recent years that remind him of his survival story.

Today, Ralph tells us about his Stasi handcuffs, his GDR Kung Fu certificate, how special Pan Am is in his life, and about other objects that we really started calling his Corner GDR Museum.

This was a really special experience for me and Ralph has started posting pictures of these objects in the Facebook group.

Ralph, we're so grateful to you for telling your stories and the best of health to you as well.

Thank you all for understanding why this episode was a week delayed.

The host would like to dedicate this episode to his little dog Rocky, who he lost earlier this month.

Rocky was a beloved loyal companion who sat at my feet for these episodes and he will be sorely missed.

Ralph, you've told us some incredible stories and I'm so excited to share them with the world.

The other thing that you've done is you've brought to our podcast several objects that remind you of your past that you've carefully collected.

I'm going to use it as the episode artwork because it's just simply fascinating the things that I'm seeing here.

I see a number of possibly like products from the GDR.

Tell us about these, these are incredible.

This is amazing, I didn't even see that until just now, the handcuffs are there.

That's sometimes actually my biggest problem.

As today, in preparation, I was really excited to talk to you again, to answer questions, to talk about stories, show you things.

And I went through my boxes and I thought, we have to go on for hours and hours.

There's so much and everything is connected with stories.

It started at some point in the mid-2000s.

I was in Canada, as you know, had to flee in the 90s for my life from Germany.

But at some point you work on the stories of your past.

I had started to write it down for my kids, for Samantha and Tyrone, so that they can hear about it, learn from it.

And then at some point I started to look at eBay and I saw the first, let's say, postcards, menus from restaurants where I worked at, manuals of things that I had to work in prison for as a political prisoner.

Then, yeah, we just talked about the handcuffs, I saw them.

And so I started piece by piece to collect things.

But I always thought I should have something to as visual for all my stories.

And so today I will have a lot of turning left because as the photo will show, I have beside me this big pile up of memories And it is actually quite exciting.

Somebody said already, hey, you should open up somewhere tiny little corner GDR museum because it covers so many different areas of life.

And since you mentioned it, I'm bringing the goods.

So everything is connected with emotions, with memories, and with stories that I've made out of it.

So when I was picked up in August of 1988, first interrogation through the secret service, then in the afternoon they said, hey, it's decided you're going to stay here.

You don't think yet how fundamental your life will change.

And it was months, the next year in February, when it was said, okay, you're being brought to court today for you to be sentenced, Even though 1 of the interrogation officers had already told me what the sentence is going to be.

But he said, oh yeah, but it's up to the courts.

So you go in this building after 4 months and months being isolated, never seeing anybody else.

I'm not sure if I told you the story after my very first night when I was, when they said, oh, you're going outside for some fresh air.

And I thought there's this ball and chain gang walking in a circle outside in the backyard.

But it was only a cell with an opening towards the sky and there was a chain fence on top of it.

So suddenly, being brought to the court, you're still inside the building.

There's now a transporter that said something like fruit and vegetables on the outside.

And you think, oh cool, that's what we're going to be.

And then, hands forward, and if you've never had it in your life, then somebody has those in his hands and you oh shoot what now then click for the first time those handcuffs close and you stand anything oh my god they really think you are a criminal for thought crimes for having thought that maybe 1 could do this or could do that, but it wasn't everything.

And what happens is this is being put around your wrist, and then the guard is holding it and with a light twist, almost instantly, my hand was numb for days.

So you're being put into this transporter and then the guard was there and pointing on his side, tapping on his gun and he said, any tries.

Even then we thought, okay, we're within a secret service building, heavily guarded.

There's the Berlin Wall around it where people get shot anyway.

There are very few known attempts to escape in East Germany.

So political prisoner, I don't think ever attempted to escape because of the control.

So now this, I knew that the distance between the Secret Service building and the court building was, I don't know, 5 minutes max, and they drove us around for 45 minutes, close to an hour, and then you come out behind the court, behind you is the historic city wall from the city of Rostock, and then there's a guard there and having his gun ready then you're still in handcuffs then you get this thing around your wrist again and a young guy he was a little bit shorter than me looking up and already in the hallway in the house he twisted a little bit more.

I was never ready to really take somebody out.

It's crazy what kind of thoughts you will find in yourself.

I've talked to many who've been in this situation and they do not even dare to admit to themselves that you would be ready to take somebody out of this life.

So then you're up, brought into the courtroom.

Then the court said, okay, from now on, the proceedings are to protect the public without the public.

And then in the whole courtroom, there were only Secret Service officers, a couple to learn what to do.

The district attorney, of course, then my lawyer, the deputy from the spy trader from Wolfgang Vogel, the 1 he had basically given the order to do my case, and then all of this started.

So now I got them again out of the basically chambers of the former secret service and it's a good reminder and as we talked before we started today that democracy can be a fragile thing and sometimes it's good to yeah be reminded to be cautious So I'll put this on the side.

Big part of the items that I have is that it's sometimes jumping back and forward and it's going from 1 topic to the next.

Here it for once actually fits this picture there you see here the court building on it.

What you cannot see is that behind it is the historic city wall of Rostock, where we were then let into the building.

And unfortunately, I never found somewhere a photograph on the inside when the Berlin Wall came down months later.

A lot was basically erased from history, taken apart.

So I would have loved to see this courtroom again where so many people were sentenced in a very ridiculous way.

So from there I saw today it actually says here that's the secret service archives that's the only photos I have left of my former apartment.

When they did at the end of the first day of interrogations, they went in in order to take photos of the apartment and I'm just quickly going through it.

Oh yeah, here were all my books, everything gone that I've had back then.

So unfortunately, all of this went away and I'll be there in a second because naturally self-built friends did this in their workplaces.

I had a few weapons but they were, yeah, the sword wasn't sharp, the stars, okay, you could throw with it.

Today you find this in any martial arts school, they have it hanging on the walls, people have seen it in the kung fu movies, so there's nothing to it.

Of course, this was taken and the kind of, sometimes decades later, the weird part of it, eventually they decided that, of course, I cannot be accused of owning weapons because they were all replicas and not really that dangerous.

So 1 day my mom had to go into the Secret Service building, including the big sword.

You can see the whole length here in the picture.

She had it under her arm and this is how she had to leave the secret service building with a whole bunch of kung fu, Chinese weapons, Japanese weapons.

Usually if you would walk past that building, then, well, as it is today, walk past the government building with an open sword and very quickly you will be picked up.

So this is how she at 1 point had to leave that building.

But because of the secret service I still have this set of photos how my apartment looked back then, all the things I had once that I never saw again.

Here I found today among other things a prospect of a hotel and a postcard.

Here you can still see the bar in the hotel.

So 1 would think okay it's big deal a hotel.

So it was in East Berlin it was called Hotel Unter den Linden so it was near the Brandenburg Gate and the importance of it is I think I mentioned it quickly my mom was called by Wolfgang Vogel, by the office of the spy trader to meet in Berlin, not him, but the lawyer that worked for him from Rostock and they had, she had to meet him here in this hotel, Unter den Linden.

And this is where the famous question came, the lawyer from Rostock, He died also several years ago, asking my mom, okay, you need to tell us, Mr.

Vogel wants to know who gave us the job to work for your son.

So, if you think about it, if you put yourself back into East German times behind the wall, she wasn't sure if she should laugh or say, is this a joke?

So of course she couldn't give him an answer.

Well, unfortunately, after the wall came down, Wolfgang Vogel still lived quite a few years afterwards.

Times were so crazy, I never then had the idea to ask him, okay, what did you get back then?

So this happened in this hotel and it's 1 of those crazy incidences which leads me to the next.

Via eBay, I got the postcards here in West Berlin, the Pan Am.

Number 1 in the big prison in East Germany, I heard from political prisoners who had been in the Stasi interrogation jail in Berlin, they saw when they were outside, sometimes the Pan Am jets flying across.

So you knew you're standing down there in East Berlin in a secret service prison.

You can kind of make out in the sky that there's a Pan Am jet.

And you know it's either from West Berlin flying to West Germany or vice versa.

It's almost like freedom is flying over you.

It's like what I would give to be on that plane right

And I know people who are not religious and they said at this moment, they said, if there is a God, just this once beam me up there and I will do for the rest of my life anything.

And then we talked even to pastors, priests later in the big prison who were also in there and they said, oh yeah, we did the same and we are man of God.

We stood there and say, please, miracle now, anytime, make something happen.

There's also, I'm not sure if the terrace is still on top.

is a little, yeah, you can not really make it out but at the bottom in this part of the Europa Center, Europe Center was back then still Pan Am.

So number 1 in Cottbus jail I heard from the East Berlin prisoners who had seen the Penn M jets.

Then, I'm not sure if you remember this tiny little story, when I arrived in West Berlin, and then you had to go through all the German secret service, West German secret service, the French, the Americans.

You know what, to this day, no, I don't think there were any Soviet back then who did the questioning and then from the American Secret Service, I was because I wanted to stay in West Berlin, I was told you must leave West Berlin for security reasons, we have to fly you out.

And this is how I got back then a ticket to fly with Pan Am from West Berlin to Hamburg.

And I so enjoyed it because I was still thinking about how those poor souls from the ground had seen those jets and now, okay, the wall was open, but now I'm sitting in 1 of those and as crazy as life sometimes is.

A year later when I worked in West Berlin I was doing what?

I was catering the end of Pan Am times in West Berlin and did the buffet and everything in their Pan Am office here in the Europe Center.

Everybody later said, oh my gosh, Did you get 1 of those little Pan Am airplanes on the desk?

They had bags there, those Pan Am bags that cost a fortune today on eBay.

I said, no, I didn't even think of it back then.

I was just, for me personally, I was looking and thought, wow, who would have thought people have seen the airplanes in the sky, sign of freedom.

I was by order of the American Secret Service flown in a Pan Am airplane to Hamburg, to West Germany, and now I'm in West Berlin and doing the catering there for them, the last days of Pan Am in West Berlin.

And so those are items for me to remember this.

As I said I'll be jumping back and forward.

So with a good friend here in Rostock a few years back.

He said, oh he knows personally this man Klaus Müller, crazy guy, you still see him in the city on an old, on a small old East German bike in a white suit driving back and forward.

So my friend Andreas, he got the 2 of us together.

What happened here, he back then got lucky.

He wanted to do a passage on the sailboat past Italy and so on.

And then he wanted to return to East Germany.

So now I've met him, I bought his book and we talked together and then you cannot make this up he wrote into the book for me for Ralf because he left at night I'll get to the point how he left, basically for the East Germans, illegally East Germany around the days when I was picked up by the secret service.

So in German it's funny, he says, für Ralf, der

eingefahren ist, als ich weggefahren bin.

So for Ralph, who in the summer of 1988 was brought in while I was going out.

And so we had a great talk together and he had at an island of East Germany a sailboat and he thought, hey, you know what, I'm going to try it.

Sometimes in the universe, things come together.

So he left with his boat and suddenly fog started to come in really thick fog.

He was trying the lines for the sail to move it basically in slow motion and he, I think it's also written in his book, he told me personally about it, there was this moment he thought the fog was for a moment gone and he saw 1 of the border boats of the East German Navy and he thought, oh crap, now I'm going to die.

And the next second, the fork was again there.

And he did this passage that he wanted to do.

And at the end in 1989, came back from West Germany.

I'm not sure at which border and came to the East German border guards and said, hello, I did a sail trip.

You are an East German who has flown the country and now you just want to come back.

And because short time later the wall came down, he was still brought into this camp, because very few West Germans over the years immigrated to East Germany.

Very few East Germans who had left East Germany came back because they just missed their friends and family too much and couldn't deal with it all of their lives.

Even if they were actually released after this camp where they were checked again and again, there were people jumping off the roof,

If they were released back into East Germany, their lives were never the same, because East Germany never trusted them again.

They always thought they were NATO spies.

And so this dude Klaus, He just came back, also got lucky first time that he made it out on a sailboat.

Second time when he came in that he didn't have to stay months and months in this interrogation camp that the wall came down.

And so that short time later he could write the book about his travels.

So the people you meet along the way, it is sometimes very crazy.

Man, I'm going to pile this up to take it from the left on my right.

Another good friend of mine, Herman from Alberta, Canada.

His brother worked, let's say, in a secure area of the American secure area of the American government and still had access where police, fire brigades, secret service, sheriffs, and all have in Texas, there's somewhere a factory where the badges are being made out of metal.

And in order I had, I think it was 20 years Wing Chun Kung Fu in Canada.

My friend and student Herman, he had 10 years of Wing Chun in Canada, so he called his brother up in Texas and had to do something and it's really, it is crazy and they made me a badge.

There it says on top, Canada Ralf Hänel, then my logo on it, Kung Fu 1994, when I started the first Canadian school and he made it as a badge.

And since in the 1980s in East Germany people were either watching Miami Vice, White Ferrari, palm trees, beautiful people on the beach, everything.

So everybody in the East knew Don Johnson.

In a strange twisted way, there was a chain of stores in East Germany.

And there you could buy clothing, jackets, pants, shirts and shoes a lot of times from Austria, also from West Germany, or produced in East Germany for the West.

And yes, I have to admit, I think it was 1987 or early 1988.

I don't know how this happened, how they sold them.

So now to bring the story full circle with this badge from Texas for Canadian Kung Fu, somebody got me, a good friend Sandra got me on eBay the copy from the movie set of Don Johnson's original badge from Miami Vice.

So I have it now with this original made where the Texas Rangers have their badges done.

So you can also always flip it on the wall, spread your legs, show your pockets.

So from my friend in Alberta, Herman, thank you.

That was an amazing gift to get something like this.

Well, Ralph, I have 1 question about that object.

Went to Beverly Hills, which was kind of disappointing, was in New York, Chicago, Seattle, Portland, Oregon, but never made it to Miami, so that's maybe that should still go on my to-do list.

What I liked the most, the city I liked the most for a strange reason was New York.

I think it was just the energy and all what I dreamt about during East German times so that if you put your mind to it and if you jump into it you can achieve everything anything in life at some point I'm the best example I yes did everything if it's publishing books if it's having had the chance to act in a movie, teaching Kung Fu and all of it.

I did everything where everybody for years told me it is impossible.

Things do happen in life if you put your mind to it.

And sometimes you have to wait for your chance.

Well, I was pondering the question, like how do I ask someone that was in East Germany, what their favorite places are to travel.

And yeah, you and I, I know Miami like the back of my hand.

Yes, when you go, you're going to have to let me know, because I can show you all around.

Yeah, that would be my privilege to have a friend that lived behind the Iron Curtain get to know 1 of my favorite cities.

Because of this experience in prison where we had this travel book with Canada, Vancouver, so where everybody said the great Canadian north, free country, Vancouver, it was everything.

So of course that's still my top favorite city.

I can't even say 1, 2 or 3 at the same level New York And at the same level London.

I guess all 3 cities have a certain energy.

You're out in the world, can make it happen, doesn't matter how long it takes and that's why they're all at the same level.

I always wanted to be under palm trees, so it wasn't in Miami, but it was in Mexico, So Chichen Itza, Tulum, saw those old temples because of some other things that I wanted to see.

Those old warriors that were a long time ago painted on the side of this temple was in the basically half in the jungle there waking up and hearing all kinds of animal noises in a hotel from the jungle so Mexico was amazing.

Denmark also great, Italy but Iceland I want to go 1 day.

But I think New York was back then still doing East German times already in movies.

And for me, it was not so much about seeing the things that you see there, but the energy.

Yeah, and I'm a big lover of New York City as well.

Well, for someone from East Germany, upon whom travel restrictions were put, I think it's amazing to hear your perspective on these places and to hear someone who for many years was not allowed to visit these places.

There has to be a part of you that's still kind of like, it's not real.

Like, in your own words, this is impossible.

I don't think this will ever leave and that's why I'm trying to convey this message also when some people just oh yeah we had a nice vacation I said oh get more out of it this is not just about having a few weeks rest going back to work so to take something with you from those places which reminds me my mom had during East German times always talked about, ah, Paris will never happen.

So everything was still fresh, and didn't have much money yet.

But I knew from Hamburg, there's a bus going via Belgium, Holland to France.

So for her 50th birthday she came to the city of Münster near Hamburg and I said, oh we're doing bus trip and so just looking at some stuff, museums and so on and she said all right, didn't show her first where we're going just the middle of the ride, said yeah in the morning we're going to have latte and croissants in Paris.

So we went for her 50th birthday to Paris.

Which was for her there to go the Champs-Elysees, to go up Montmartre, to see the Arc de Triomphe and so on.

Everything, yeah, like a kid that is in front of this humongous toy store and is looking, wow, that's the gift I want.

And this is, yeah, this is how I still feel myself.

It was kind of funny a couple years ago with my daughter, first time for her to Europe.

From Germany we traveled to London because I did a Kung Fu seminar in Bristol and so we came back to London and among other things I wanted to show her Big Ben because in East Germany we had on educational TV for school lessons English for you.

There was always an old elderly lady with those cat glasses from the 60s and then you always heard Big Ben boom boom boom and then she said welcome to English for you and so now I wanted to show my daughter Big Ben and we get out of the tube station in London and I said behind me there's Big Ben and she starts to laugh and can't stop laughing and said, what the...

I look back, is the whole Big Ben scaffolding all around.

So she still laughs when she hears the story because I said, yeah, look, there it is.

So which brings me to another long, long, long journey.

See all East Germany Podcast - Radio GDR transcripts on Applepodcasts

Ralph Hänel, Part III - Opening the Memory Box: Ralph's Corner GDR Museum