Ready, Set with Ashley Good
Episode 050 - "You literally had to fight for your right to party!" w/ Ralph Haenel

In celebration of the show's 50th episode, I feature my most intense interview yet. This week's guest is Kung Fu Master/Author, Ralph Haenel! We discuss his life in East Germany behind the Berlin Wall, how his passion for martial arts led him to be incarcerated and tortured for ten months in an East German prison, and the dangers of censorship. You'll probably want to sit down for this one.

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Learn more about Ralph Haenel, and his book series BERLIN WALL SHADOWS at ralphhaenel.com!

Follow Ralph Haenel on Twitter at @KungFuCoach

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Song: Beastie Boys - (You Gotta) Fight For Your Right (To Party)

To listen to songs from past episodes, check out the Spotify playlist --
open.spotify.com/playlist/6KwOnYz…q-C2gk1NMemw&utm

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Resources:

More Than You See - morethan-yousee.com
More Than You See is a platform providing resources, personal stories, and a place to start diving into your mental health.

Ms. in the Biz - msinthebiz.com
Ms. in the Biz is an archive of over 2000 articles aimed at helping women in the entertainment and film industry.

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Contact the show at readysetwithashleygood@gmail.com

Follow Ready, Set on Instagram @ReadySetPod

Learn more about my other projects at ashleygood.ca and blackframes.ca

Holy hell, welcome to episode 50 of Ready Set with Ashley Good.

When the show started I was like, okay, just make...

I think my original goal was 10 episodes, then it was 30 episodes, then yeah, now I have hit 50 and I do not plan on stopping.

And in honor of a very special episode, like number 50, this episode features...

This episode is with Ralph Hanel and I don't say this lightly, but this is the most intense conversation I've ever had on the show.

In short, I mean you could just Google him and you'll see a lot, but in short, he grew up on the East German side of the Berlin Wall, where he not only learned how to DJ, he became a Kung Fu master, and then eventually got arrested because of Kung Fu by the Stasi and locked up and tortured in an East German prison for 10 months.

Definitely 1 that all the little kids should tune into.

But yeah, when our mutual friend, filmmaker and martial artist Anselmare told me about Ralph, I was just blown away.

His life story is so incredible that it sounds, I mean it sounds like bullshit, but it's not.

It's entirely true and I can't believe that I just had the opportunity to speak with somebody who has lived through this much.

This interview is extremely eye-opening and I hope that it reaches people all over the place because It is very pertinent.

To those of you out there that aren't worried by the increasing censorship laws that are happening all over the world, including Canada, I hope that you will listen deeply to Ralph's words.

As he says at the end of the interview, have as many conversations with your aging relatives as you can.

And no longer quoting Ralph, as the cliche saying goes, those that ignore history are doomed to repeat it.

And sometimes it feels like we are getting awfully close to repeating it.

I guess what I'm saying is, if there's an episode that's going to bite me in the ass 1 day, it is probably this 1.

So fingers crossed I don't get assassinated.

That's a benefit of not being famous, I guess.

Based on what Ralph said, it sounds like all the people that got arrested and ending up in the Stasi prison were all, you know, interesting sorts, so I guess I'd probably be in good company.

Anyway, as long as I have a platform though, as I'm sure you guys have pieced together over past episodes, ah, tongue tied.

Fun fact, I'm running on next to no sleep.

We had some young family members visiting and kids are loud and I am very tired.

But yeah, as long as I have a platform, I just I want to encourage people to have conversations with as many people as they can, to think critically and to make your own decisions.

I mean it's basically my own slogan but...

I'm running on about 4 hours of sleep and it's not even 4 consecutive hours.

It's basically become my slogan, but I am a random lady in the suburbs.

And if I could start a podcast and talk to interesting people like this, so can you.

So, I mean, hell, the next time you're out, you know, just go and talk to a stranger.

I don't mean like in a creepy way, like don't approach somebody in a parkade or something.

But if you're at a coffee shop and you're sitting alone and someone's sitting alone, I don't know.

Sometimes it's good to talk to strangers.

You'll never know who you'll meet and what sort of conversations you'll have.

Without further ado, I present my conversation with...

This is a rambling introduction I'm gonna just say 1 more thing.

Apparently the anniversary of the construction of the Berlin Wall is actually in 2 weeks so that's something to be mindful of.

The Berlin Wall was constructed on August the 13th in 1961.

Nobody thought it could happen, and then it popped up overnight.

But back to what I was saying, I present my conversation with the incredibly gutsy, the badass, and the very kind and gracious Ralph Hanel.

He was telling me about you and I was like, wow, Ralph sounds incredible.

Do you think you'd actually want to talk to me on the show?

yeah, because That's how it started initially, I think in

or so, when he came to my family and said, do you think he would be ready to maybe film 1 fight sequence for a movie we're doing?

And He was at the time already training Kung Fu in Vancouver.

And well, you might have heard a little bit about the background.

Anselm is quite an accomplished fighter now.

It's great to see, like how far he's come.

So with the show, the audience tends to like it when I just jump on in, but I do want to ask you, before we really get going, I understand that you were tortured and everything.

Is there anything you don't want to discuss or anything you want me to stay away from?

Just fire away everything you would like to ask, so what you may have read about, what you have seen on the YouTube channel, and so everything goes.

That's incredible because yeah, the whole point of the show is, I mean, it started to just be, it was originally about independent filmmakers and artists, but now I'm really pushing the importance of free speech and seeing as you were from, you know, behind the East Berlin Wall, I thought maybe

So I mean, my first question I had for you, Ralph, was, actually, do you want to just give a really, really brief breakdown of who you are just for the listeners?

I did grow up in East Germany, was very early, very much interested in English.

Whenever I saw on the school TV Big Ben in London, so I thought, wow, this feels somewhat like home.

So I had early on interest in martial arts, tried to pursue it.

It was, of course, not very much liked, which ended up in 1988, me being picked up by the Secret Service, Staatssicherheit of East Germany, 10 months of interrogation, then the big house still, the big jail, where I met lots of political prisoners and really got to know what was going on in that country.

Then for a short time living in West Berlin, West Germany, Switzerland, and then I actually due to other circumstances fled to Canada and started completely new once again over there.

I had in between turned my martial arts hobby into a profession, had actually done a self-financed job education as a Kung Fu instructor, had an interest in writing, publishing, published the first magazine, the first book about realistic self-defense, then got really interested, published a few magazines, German cookbook, English cookbook, and then the film business came.

Now I'm at the moment currently back in Germany caring for my mom here and and and so just a very brief overview.

Yeah I mean that sounds pretty easy like a walk in the park you know.

I'm not you you would have been quite young but I'm wondering if you remember anything about when the wall was originally built.

No, that was, yeah, unfortunately a few years before I was born.

I was born in 64 when it was, yeah, set in stone, the reality.

By then, Yeah, my parents themselves, my mom had to flee with her mom and grandma from the Russians coming in, 45.

But I grew up that there are 2 Germanys, that there's a lot of things you can't get in the East, that the West is devilish, and yeah, coming to think of it, I remember in 1988, watching the Olympic Games in Calgary and seeing this tower there and the flame on top of the tower and I thought, wow, Canada, that's so far away and how amazing would that be, not knowing that I would end up there eventually.

During my years of job education in my first job way, way back in the hotel industry.

I did the job education in East Berlin and there for the first time it was really into your face.

Somebody who I was doing my final work with, lived directly at the border.

That means you go on the balcony, you look down, you see the wall, on the other side of the street is West Berlin.

So a lot of people would think, oh, then why didn't you just throw a rope over and make your way over there?

There were towers, I saw the guards, I saw the machine guns and everything.

There was no way, but it was really in your face.

And then I started in the 1980s to try to establish my hobby as a martial artist.

I wanted to teach, but I was always told this is the weaponry of the imperialist world, we don't need this in a communist country, there's always peace, everything is good and nobody needs it.

It wasn't a lot of people say, yeah, if it was forbidden, why did you do it?

This training, it wasn't really forbidden, it was just frowned upon.

And, well, the nature of a secret service is that you don't know what's going on behind those walls, and that I was early on being watched already, that I had in my little groups where I was teaching already, I started with judo in 77, then jiu-jitsu, self-defense, karate, so

In 1984 I had put ads in newspapers, I'm looking for books about karate, just that take 1 though, where the ladies at the newspaper office said, can we even publish this?

So I got a lot of material, was writing to other organizations in the West.

Nobody ever answered until a West German, 1 West German Wing Chun Kung Fu organization answered.

Eventually a teacher came across the border, so that was really exciting.

Can you imagine a real Kung Fu teacher was coming into the East.

This was exotic, this was like, yeah, out of a movie that something like this can happen in real life.

After 2 visits he was forbidden to enter the country, He couldn't even see his relatives in the East anymore.

Yeah, I was picked up, the rest is history.

So throughout the 80s, the war, this reality that, if you talk about Canada or Japan, this might've been Venus or Mars or any planet, it seemed, is this really there?

Is there still a little bit more around this globe because we were supposed to have a world view without being allowed to actually viewing the world.

It's chilling how similar that is to, you know, things these days.

Not saying modern society is as bad as life behind the Berlin Wall.

However, I mean, the things that are happening now with regards to various Canadian bills that can impact freedom of speech, freedom of the media, and people are like, oh, but they would never use those laws for bad.

They would never use that against the people.

Yes, I've been following exactly what you're talking about and it reminds me of something that became known in the 1990s.

1 of the first leaders of East Germany told

in a small circle, comrades, it has to look democratic, everybody has all rights, but we must have the absolute control.

Yeah, it's it's human nature for somebody to take charge.

And there's a lot of people that say, yeah, but if you don't do anything wrong, then it can't be bad, a law like this.

And they don't know how quickly something like this can catch up with you.

It was like me coming into the big prison in East Germany, and suddenly I saw a former party leader who was in there because he had put a foot down for a young family to help them but they were not conformed with the country itself, with the laws.

I saw a youth organization leader who had questioned this total role of the youth organization, since It was very similar to what was there before 45, different uniforms, different colors, different sayings, but the organization and the type of control was pretty much the same.

You find this in every dictatorship again, and only people who live in a relatively free world, just like I just saw the other day show about North Korea, where people who live in England or somewhere else say, oh yeah, but it isn't really that bad, and they have some freedoms.

Yeah, live there, and you will change your views.

Yeah, then if you go to visit North Korea, you're only going to see the tourist version of it and that's hardly an accurate representation.

No, let's say it's difficult to paint this picture if you don't know who of your friends, which 1 of your students may report on you.

I do know now that I had bugs everywhere in my apartment And if you think about it, just think about your life.

You go to bed, you talk to your husband in the evening, and somebody listens to everything and is making notes.

It's somewhat a strange experience, even though it has happened.

Just a short while, a year before the arrest, I had a student coming to me, a Kung Fu student.

He came into my apartment, a story I always like to tell because it shows, it gives you a little bit this feel.

And he was nodding his head saying, hey, you have to anyway go to work.

And then he told me, I would like you to throw me out of the Kung Fu group.

Just say I'm irresponsible or always coming late.

He said, well, I'm supposed to do something that I cannot do as a human being.

By now, he told me, you might imagine where I'm working in this city.

I said, okay, then officially you're thrown out of the group.

And I met him later in life several times again.

And yeah, then I got to think, okay, there's a lot going on around me.

I went on vacation, 1988, early August, came back home, and then I was actually ready in the morning.

I got up pretty early, I was still tired, was ready to go to work, and suddenly doorbell rings.

It's really like in the movies where the man in trench coat is standing there because they always come early when you're still tired.

So this stereotype really, it's what it is.

So there were 3 guys in the hallway and 1 just flipped his ID.

Staatssicherheit, so state secret service, we would like to come with us to clarify a few questions.

That's a standard quote that you hear again and again from people who have been arrested.

Yeah, I would like you to come right away with us.

No worry, we'll drive you back to work later.

So they took me with them and then you get let into an office because you're there for a few questions, nothing else.

And eventually I saw, kind of like through a fork, but a pattern emerging.

1 was the father type, the 1 we we have to work together to get through this.

The other 1, the kind of same age body but every now and then a little bit harsh.

So, come on, we got to do something here.

We have to now fix everything that's broken.

And then the 1 that seems to be a little bit on the outside, who's neither 1 who says, yeah, you're here for a reason.

And eventually I was being asked, did you plan to leave the country?

Do you want to get to this Kung Fu organization in the West?

And then in the afternoon, it was there 7.30, 08:00 in the morning, and somewhat at 2 or 3 p.m.

well, it's quite some time if you get asked non-stop the same questions – suddenly they were all in a room and said, it has been decided, you're here to stay.

I've got laundry to pick up from the laundromat.

Well, you will change your clothes, you will brought to your cell, then we'll bring you back.

And then they all started to laugh and they were laughing.

1 of them, the tears were running down and they were shaking the hands.

And oh, that's, oh, never gets old this 1.

I mean, younger listeners to your podcast may not know anymore who Madlock was on TV, this lawyer show from the 80s.

And yeah, of course, I didn't get a lawyer.

So then I was brought into my cell and now, B, for the first time ever, you have to completely strip, everything gets catalogued, your stuff, you have to bend over, you have to lift your leg, everything, you have to open your mouth, where you say what, and you think I have a radio behind my back tooth.

You have to turn around, spread, and everything.

So what for a lot of people is just impossible to imagine.

And then later this day, I was brought back in for questioning.

He basically asked, did you plan to flee to West Germany?

Did you contact people in the West about trying to flee.

Okay, herewith I consent with the Secret Service, you have to remain in the interrogation jail and no freedom.

I said okay, I'm saying I didn't do anything, You have no proof, but I'm here to stay." And sometimes you have the strange moments.

It's almost like in a dream sequence in a movie where the viewer sees, okay, it's not actually happening.

So I still remember I was looking at the secretary of this district attorney and she was typing.

I thought, wow, she looks beautiful, such a young woman and sitting there.

How come she is working here at the Secret Service and typing this protocol?

It's sometimes strange that you remember decades later still such a detail.

I was just wondering, well, how do you end up here?

Another evening or so you could have met while you go out and have a chat and share a drink.

And there she is sitting and just writing, no emotion on her face, this protocol.

And then I was brought back, was overnight naturally alone every 5 minutes, light on and then I still remember I got in the morning breakfast and it was like in the olden days, this easy breakable plastic cutlery.

Now, When you experience all of this for the first time, you really, you think you're in a different reality, something switched and you think, okay, just this will be over.

Just slap yourself a couple of times and then it will be real again.

But yeah, it did get real just differently than I thought because that evening I still had thought, okay, I might still come out tonight, that it was just to shock me.

I thought I'm going to a particular hotel and I have some friends and then I order champagne in a bar and it will go bottle after bottle.

It shows you sometimes how your thoughts are really influenced by what you've read or what you've seen in movies.

The next day, they knocked on the door, get ready for your outside time.

And I really thought, wow, I'm coming out into a prison yard and then there's the prison gang going in a circle, pulling a chain and a ball behind on the leg.

I almost had to laugh about my own thoughts.

And then I got in a little outside cell where you couldn't even see the sky.

It was just 4 meter high walls, so 2 meters by 3 meters.

And it was outside and somewhere through a little hole there in the roof above came some fresh air in it.

And then it was a guard with a Kalashnikov walking up and down.

And of course you stand there, look at the concrete walls, and then you, Stop coughing down there.

Yeah, because you weren't even supposed to give a sign because if there's somebody else in the cell next to you that they don't recognize your cough or anything, oh my gosh, how paranoid is all of this.

But it was, of course, also to completely isolate you, to put you in a state of complete fear.

Because for months, you don't have any personal belongings, you naturally you don't have a watch because you're supposed to lose completely your orientation, there are no windows, they're just milk glass bricks in the kind of windows you only see if it's light or dark outside.

You lose control because you don't have a calendar, what day it is, and so on.

You don't have a TV, you don't have a radio, you have nothing.

Just imagine now you move into a new apartment and there's a completely empty room.

I have to ask, Did your family wonder what happened to you?

There's 1 thing that is not solved for long.

He played a big role in there, but I haven't found out anything.

Officially nothing exists about him, but since I returned from Canada to Germany, I heard testimony from other people which proves that he must have been in some kind of special role up there in some kind of Department of the Secret Service, but nothing about him exists.

He was the 1 who actually later on in the 90s told me that my life is not safe in Germany and that I should flee the country, better Europe at all.

And, well, the story might come later, why Canada.

So my mom, yeah, they picked up my mom several times and told her, if I'm making now the quotation marks, if you know anything about what your son has done, number 1, he's a traitor to the country, he's a traitor to communism, his actions were about to incite World War III, where you think, oh my gosh, what is this?

And she was told, yeah, she will be arrested the moment they know anything.

She wanted to visit me in the city Rostock near the Baltic Sea, East Germany back then.

And somebody told her there were 3 men, or 4 actually, with the driver in 1 of those cars and he might have been arrested.

So it's like in the Nazi times where in the movies you always see those people in the long trench coats.

Mine didn't look like this, but 1 of them had opened the jacket the morning I was picked up and showed his gun and pointed at it.

She actually, I showed my children when they visited Germany from Canada now, I showed them the places here in Rostock.

My mom went actually to the Secret Service building and went into the main entrance.

No normal person, no regular person would ever go in there.

She told me just recently again, the guard in there at the entrance was looking at her like, what are you doing here?

And she, I want to know if my son is here.

And he didn't even know how to answer this question.

He called somebody and then a man, they always look quite arrogant in their posturing, a man came then, said, what gives you the idea, miss, is that your son is here in this building?

She said, well, people have said there was a ladder, particular car, and there were 4 men and to put him into the car.

Then shortly after she had to leave, this main entrance had to go around the building, past some guards at every corner of this.

Imagine a huge four-story block with dozens and dozens and dozens of offices, so she had to go around some guards and get into a side entrance.

See all Unknown transcripts on Lbry

Episode 050 - "You literally had to fight for your right to party!" w/ Ralph Haenel