(Ralph  - Cold War Storyteller)
 
In this episode, I had the honour to have Ralph as my guest. He shared with me his interest in storytelling as his hobby.
 
Definition: Storytelling is the social and cultural activity of sharing stories, sometimes with improvisation, theatrics or embellishment. Every culture has its own stories or narratives, which are shared as a means of entertainment, education, cultural preservation or instilling moral values. Crucial elements of stories and storytelling include plot, characters and narrative point of view. The term "storytelling" can refer specifically to oral storytelling but also broadly to techniques used in other media to unfold or disclose the narrative of a story. storytelling is what we use to make stories. Wikipedia contributors. (2022, February 19). Storytelling. In Wikipedia, The Free Encyclopedia. Retrieved 04:45, February 27, 2022, from https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Storytelling&oldid=1072847722
 
Disclaimer, there are a few corrections to be made: The Wing Tsun Kung Fu training in East Germany started in 1984. Martial Arts since 1977.
 
Ralph’s Links
Twitter: https://twitter.com/KungFuCoach 
Website: https://linktr.ee/kungfucoach 
 
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So until the next episode... make some time for your hobby.
 
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Take care,

Good day everyone, you're listening to Time for your Hobby And this is episode 195.

And today I have the honor to have Ralph as my guest on the show.

And I'm so looking forward for us to talk about so many questions that you hopefully have for me.

And Ralph was such a friendly person when we just started talking on social media.

He says, Hey, I have a story I want to share, which is about storytelling.

So I'm like, you know what, This is perfect.

It's been a while since I've had anybody on for storytelling and I love different perspectives and I'm sure you guys will be very interested in this topic today.

But I don't want to get ahead of myself because Ralph is going to be the 1 sharing all this story.

But before we jump into your story, mind giving a brief definition.

Yeah, let's call it a definition of who is Ralph.

So I hope we, we have enough minutes for that.

So the thing is always sometimes people ask me, what's your hobby?

And then they ask, what is your profession?

And I end up always saying, you know what?

I had this interest for martial arts since the 1970s and always wished for making this my profession.

So I eventually became a Kung Fu instructor, started to found schools, first in East Germany, later in Canada.

So when the opportunity came, I started to publish first magazines, couple of cookbooks on the side just for fun, books about Kung Fu, about fitness for Kung Fu, for self-defense.

So I like writing it, I like publishing it.

Then came the next along, coupled with talking about my stories, about my experiences, about martial arts, came along in Canada, an indie movie, that this in itself is a fabulous story.

So never having learned how to act, I became overnight an actor and was in the middle of a movie set.

And then I discovered that in the end, teaching Kung Fu, teaching self-defense, writing my books, acting for a movie, doing my YouTube videos, that everything is combined by 1 thing that I teach always via stories.

Sometimes my Kung Fu students already say, oh my gosh, what story is coming next?

But I think this is so important, especially to transport things that happened, even historic events to the next generation, to talk about so many different issues and to pack it into interesting stories so that the knowledge doesn't get lost.

And hey, who doesn't remember of us when we were really little how we liked when somebody read a bedtime story for us, How exciting was that?

And so I pack just about everything into stories.

And you know what, the beautiful thing about you sharing your story is just showing that there are multiple stories out in the world.

It's not always about the stories of the victor.

There are stories from people that you will learn things that you might have never heard of them before, but their story is being heard.

And I guess a perfect example of this is Anne Frank.

That's going way back to the Second World War, in the sense that Herster shared her diary.

And it just gives the perspective that if we have more people like yourself sharing their stories, we get to learn more about humanity and how civilization works.

And basically this is our way to share your story on this podcast.

So this is the audio sharing portion of your story.

But before we jump too deep into the story itself, you sound like you're a very accomplished person with a bunch of things you love to share.

So do you have any social media links, websites or projects you are working on that you would love to share?

Daniel Right now I'm actually working on my second short stories book that is getting bigger by the week, sometimes by the day.

We had just finished the filming on the movie set, and the next day we were going to the movie premiere.

So, the evening before, I was in the forest, and then I slipped and hurt myself so badly, it was almost the end.

So a body going into complete shock and having a muscle torn in my leg and no ambulance inside would have taken way too long.

I got over it, got next day to the movie premiere, And then within 5 days, I hammered out the first short stories book.

Back then it was a short 1, but it was a collection of, for me, very important stories.

And then over the years, I started further working on this, especially the last couple of years.

The second short stories book, where there's a lot about East Germany in there, growing up behind the Iron Curtain, how life was with the Berlin Wall, how detailed stories happened as a political prisoner, how it was coming into the free world, the first connections there, coming to Canada, visiting in the US many cities, and there sometimes being looked at this strange bird.

The second project I'm working on is following up this sci-fi action indie movie we did in British Columbia is now a short film here on the German side.

And third big project is a Wing Chun Kung Fu book about my, I'm not even sure how many years it is.

So it's quite a lot of years to do a book about my learning methods, my training methods, and my teaching methods.

All this might come as a real surprise, all packed into single stories, 1 after another.

What it means to defend yourself, what it means to really grow your self-esteem, to develop healthy self-confidence, and how people in a good martial arts school form friendships, improve themselves every week.

I just talked today to a musician in Taiwan who wrote me a while ago about how the Kung Fu training back then helped him with his music career, actually the creativity.

And yeah, Those are a couple of projects.

And do you have a website or any social media links that can find these projects going?

You can find all of them on the link tree and then Kung Fu Coach.

K-U-N-G-F-U Coach, Kung Fu Coach, and all the links are combined.

There is especially some of the clips from the movie shoots, from my Kung Fu lessons, from seminars, videotapes I found from 1994 and the first open house I did 1997 in Vancouver.

And everything is combined under the link tree address and Kung Fu coach.

I'll put that down below so people can go check that out and listen, watch experience your whole life story.

They will learn some stuff about you that you didn't even know.

Yes, sometimes I surprise myself because I think then how can I make this story without changing anything just a little bit more interesting, a little bit colorful, colorful related to current events?

And it goes from 1 to the next to the next.

And speaking about going to the next and the next, we're going to take a few steps back.

What moment in your life did you say, hey, I want to start sharing my stories and you became a storyteller.

This probably goes as far back as to the early school days.

Now after a long time having been back in Germany the last couple of years I revisited my schools, the neighborhood where I grew up, the first workplaces.

And then I remembered, hey, wait a minute, even back then in high school, I wrote already the first reports about things that happened in my life and that I just liked the moment when you sit with several people, talk about it, involve them, see people laugh about it, sometimes serious when it's a more difficult story and how it stays with people.

And then those past couple of years, you know it for yourself as a podcast host.

Sometimes you sit over, if it's your business card or a short blurb on a website, how do you define yourself?

So I always had there, Kung Fu coach doing Wing Chun Kung Fu since 1949, martial arts since 1977, author, publisher, actor.

Well, of course, when you're a 1 man enterprise, you always do a little bit show off stuff.

And then I thought, Hey, wait a minute for everything.

The first line is just my name and storyteller.

That just happened the past 1 or 2 years.

And then I feel like the moment you got started, you just started steamrolling.

You're like, you know what, I need to just keep doing it and sharing more and more and more.

And the way that you have Kung Fu under your belt, no pun intended, and you have all these other life experiences.

There's multiple different ways people can tell stories.

They could tell stories through audio, they could tell stories through books like you did, you can tell stories through presentations.

So for you, what is your preferred method to share all these interesting stories?

Now, since we are on the podcast, so a couple of years ago, I was a radio junkie in the 70s.

But in the 80s, the first private radio station in West Germany went on and we were on the East side in East Germany listening to that.

And I always loved the radio jingles out of the old days, the...

How somebody was Sunday evening telling a crime story and just with a few noises in the background could have you almost glued to the speakers and that it's actually even more exciting as a movie, as a TV show and that was always with me.

And it was actually 2018 and 2017, expert in his field, Dr.

Perry, he's a rehab doctor, fascia specialist, also did fitness, has clients, pain is actually called stop chasing pain.

And as a Kung Fu instructor, when it's about the health aspect, about injury recovery, I always read his things online.

And suddenly I get an email and he, the doctor, wrote, hey coach, I've seen your Kung Fu videos and the movement.

Would you like to come on my podcast?" First I thought, wow, this guy is inviting me and he likes my videos.

And then I thought I had heard it already very often.

And I actually like this medium because you have to think about how you transport the story.

Since you don't have the visuals in a book, you have pictures, you can put diagrams in.

If you tell stories in a Kung Fu class, then I use my hands and it gets all animated in videos.

Anyway, you see all the movement and you can speak here.

You can only speak and you have to change your tone of voice.

You have to get to the point of the story.

As happened to me, too, was a guest at the Cold War History Podcast.

And we were, I think the first time where we talking 4 hours or longer, and sometimes you get into a story and you're in the middle of the story and the back of your head While you're still talking, you think, where the heck did I want to go with that?

So this is what I find positively challenging about the medium of a podcast and really exciting Because eventually you have to get to the point, otherwise you lose the people who are listening to it.

And so you mentioned for that first time you shared your story, it was around 4 hours or so.

So it had me wondering, how has your storytelling ability changed over the years?

I had to, because I like to also not just tell the story, but think about what do I want to achieve of it.

When I tell a story, I want to transport a certain information.

So with getting into podcasts, being interviewed, I went in my thoughts all the way back to, I think that's 2006.

Back then, for my daughter, she wanted to have My Little Pony.

So every parent with a daughter knows what this once meant, or maybe again.

And then I had never ever used eBay before.

I went to eBay, got a couple of my little ponies for her.

And then I started to just look up stuff from East Germany.

And to my surprise, I found so many items.

If it's old newspapers, magazines, postcard, restaurant menus, tools, autographed cards, guides.

And suddenly I thought, wow, this is a good idea.

If I collect pieces of the history that I went through.

Then maybe 1 day I will do a video podcast and limited to a certain time, tell my stories and then have the items to hold up to the camera, show and say this.

Today, just for my own support, I put up here next to the laptop my last self-defense magazine that I published, my first short stories book.

There's a piece of the Berlin Wall from the checkpoint Charlie from 1989 here, from the East German secret service.

A choke chain for the prisoners, autographed card of the last chief of the East German international espionage, a letter to me back then when I was a political prisoner from the spy trader himself, Dr.

Vogel, who was also portrayed in the Tom Hanks movie Bridge of Spies, some East German money, my own mugshot from the East German Secret Service.

Sometimes I have those things around me just to create the right vibe in order to get into the stories.

And I know this might be a really tough question to answer, but with all these meaningful items in your collection, is there 1 that just speaks to you more, that you have a stronger bond with?

1 important thing is here from the spy trader, this letter was 1 of those strange weird stories where you seem to have kind of an out-of-body experience.

I was already being questioned by the Secret Service for a couple of months, sometimes day and night, the interrogations, where 1 is the father type, The other 1 is the kind of same age, tough friend who says, hey, we got to go through it.

And the next 1, kind of the office type with old glasses, with an old frame who says, Oh, I'm not sure what we're doing here.

I'm just trying to do my job not to get fired something.

And then 1 day, I was by the guards from the pre trial prison, the East German Secret Service had in every 1 of their buildings.

And every major city, they had their own pre trial prison in there what most people didn't even know.

And I was brought into the interrogation office, and there all the interrogators were standing, and they threw this letter that I have lying next to me here onto the table, read and respond.

And then I just read on top of it, Professor Dr.

Wolfgang Vogel also admitted to the courts of West Berlin.

And he said, we have received notice, we're taking over your case.

And this was, I'm not sure how to describe it.

There were 2 main lawyers in East Germany back then that did the majority of cases of political prisoners.

And this was, I don't know, like this future golden ticket into the free world, into the countries of democracy.

And Until this day, I do not know how he got my case.

And I had this letter in front of me, which meant at some point, it might still take a year or 2, I will be freed and I will get into the free world.

And there he wrote me, he's taking on my case, not to worry about anything.

And the interrogators looked at me with squinty eyes, angry.

And then I was asked, how come that the professor doctor is taking over your case.

Isn't this your job to know how this happened?

So they were actually quite angry, because it meant you are kind of 1 step further, you're being paid attention to.

He was the 1 the lawyer who was also an intimate friend of the communist leader of East Germany.

But he was doing since the 60s already all this spy exchanges what the movie with Tom Hanks, Bridge of Spies is also about.

So to this day, do you still not know how he found you?

No, there's so many crazy stories around all of this, how I got arrested.

When I came to the West, then my 2 meetings were double gangers and attempt of all secret service gang to finish my life when I got really sick, when I was poisoned, how I then basically had to flee to Canada to get to safety in the mid-90s where Canada was really still, it was around the globe, it was a different world.

So you're also mentioning or we were talking about how stories, there's more and more stories coming out to learn more about the past.

Have you learned anything new that kind of not necessarily change your perspective on your story, but like, Oh, that might explain why this happened or, Oh, I thought something different.

So, especially those past years now, so much has happened.

Just to mention 1 example, coming back to Germany now recently, supporting my mom, she had a stroke last year and I'm the only 1 left in the family.

The authorities here in Germany making it really, really difficult for me as a German citizen to be back in here.

And a good friend of mine, she called a citizen office to get some information about the proceedings for me getting new papers and everything.

And that day, she, my friend, she just wanted to ask, who would be responsible dealing with me.

And the lady on the other side said, did you just mean Ralf Fehner?

And the lady at the citizen office said the 1 who in the up to the eighties left here in East Germany and Rostock at the Baltic Sea, who did Kung Fu, who worked there and there.

And my friend again, she said, yes, because you're always not quite sure where this is leading to.

And then in the public office where there's several desks next to each other, where customers come in all the time, they pull a number outside, get called to the next desk, where all, every stuff that deals with what citizens do from new papers, changing address and so on.

So this lady on the phone broke out into tears for probably 20 minutes non-stop.

So the 2, my friend and the other lady, met up and it came out she knew before the wall came down about something that could have helped me, could have warned me, but she was threatened by the Secret Service that they're taking her baby away.

Her husband was threatened that they take his passport.

He was going to see the ships into foreign country that was worth more than gold or anything in the East to have this ship passport to get into the world.

So she basically told her she could have done something to help me, but she has been in counseling since the wall came down And she still feels guilty, would like to talk to me.

Making long story short, I met several, met up several times with her in the office.

We never got to talk, but I think she's punished enough by life, whatever they did to her back then.

But every time when I met up with her, she was crying a little bit, big hugs, and I think this is all it should be.

So there's still so many people who carry this burden from those old days of communist dictatorship.

This was 1 of many stories that happened those last couple of years.

Another 1, I was invited by the BBC Russia.

They did in 2019 a documentary for the 30th anniversary of the fall of the Berlin wall.

And I just got written up on Facebook, you know, you open up your Facebook private messages and there was, my name is so and so, I'm from Russia, but right now in London, and I wanted to talk to you and I thought first, oh yeah, okay, a Russian woman seeking, seeking man or so, but no, it turned out she was actually, she's a lovely lady.

She did, does work for BBC Russia, lives and works in London, and she was looking for different people.

They wanted to do a documentary, so 5 different life stories that had to do with the Berlin Wall.

And then what was super nice, it came together, we did some filming and Q&A at the Berlin Wall, at Checkpoint Charlie, at the place in former East Berlin where I got my secret Kung Fu training in the 80s from instructors that came disguised as tourists from West Berlin.

And we did a shoot in an East German museum that exists now in different former East German cities.

There were several prisons back then in East Germany where political prisoners were put among the regular population of real criminals in order to punish the political prisoners.

And now I was there, arriving at this prison that's now a museum for Human Rights, arriving there with a BBC crew and my daughter from Canada.

And they filmed in 1 of my old cells, asked me questions there.

And it was kind of a very special experience.

And to share this with your own child, being there, seeing that, was very exciting.

So that's another thing that just happened now.

The very first time was 2018 that my daughter came to Germany from Canada, and we went to the old interrogation jail of the Secret Service in my former hometown.

So there's now within the former block of the Secret Service There's now a supermarket in there where people sit down, have a cup of coffee, a piece of cake.

But we went there to this building, it's just for most people, just a building.

And I stand out there with my daughter having to explain to her, oh, I'm so sorry, they are closed now.

They're doing renovations that will probably be closed for a year.

So then the man was standing there and obviously listening to me speaking in English to my daughter.

And then he came and said, oh, I couldn't help but overhearing that you told your daughter about this pre-trial prison.

We haven't been here in months that's a pure coincidence that we're today here I'm only here for 5 minutes taking something out.

Would you like to show your daughter inside?

I can open everything up and then you can show her everything.

Then we went into the format that still basically preserved the way it was.

You could do this, bam, and you're right back in time.

And you just want to look around, oh my gosh, how did I get out of the cell where's the next guard is it interrogation time so now I had time there with my daughter to go through all the levels show her the different cells and so on and then at 1 moment she had disappeared and I just heard the scraping noise.

So I called her, Samantha, what are you doing?

Then she came out of my very first cell and she said, I just scraped a little bit of paint from the door and put it in a little bag and said, I'm taking this to Canada as a memory of this.

So that's yet another story just happened a couple, in the last couple of years.

And that changes how you go on about those stories.

Because when you can share them with family, when they can see where you were, and then you explain to them the experiences, changes everything.

Which reminds me, it was still the early 95, maybe or so, 94, This building, of course, Berlin Wall was down for several years.

This building had been taken over by a company where all the interrogation rooms were.

And 1 of the interrogation rooms I just stepped into was from a phone company.

They still had on the outside the bars on the window.

But if you're young, if you didn't have anything to do with the time period, it doesn't really mean anything to you.

And then they just looked at me and said, okay, can we help you?

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Ep.195 It’s Time To Share My Story (Ralph - Cold War Storyteller)