Dear Friends,
As a business professional, I have spent many years finding data to validate what I already knew. “I had a feeling… an instinct… my gut was telling me…” But, I was trained over time that “smart” decision-making is based firmly on data, not some soft “sense.” Fortunately, this wasn’t the rule when I was a journalist covering the revolutions in Eastern Europe at the start of my career. My actual survival depended on my instincts and intuition.
On Monday, October 2, 1989, I was in Leipzig, East Germany, in the middle of a crowd of protestors. It was the beginning of the end of East Germany, but no one would know it for another month when the Berlin Wall fell. I was a young and eager journalist for ABC TV news based in London, and when word of the Monday night protests leaked out of East Germany, everyone wanted to know more. At that time, the East German government refused to let any foreign journalists into the country.
I concocted a plan to enter East Germany as a tourist and bring with me a small video camera to capture the demonstration. Amazingly, my boss, Terri L., agreed it was worth trying, and convinced the powers that be in NY to let me give it a go. Because this was unorthodox and considered dangerous, there were only four people who even knew it was happening.
A few days later I was driving through one of the Berlin checkpoints from West to East, identifying myself as a secretary going on a vacation. I was nervous, but I spent some time chatting with the guards, thinking that may be a good idea. An instinct that ended up saving me at least a few weeks in an East German prison.
Once I arrived in Leipzig, after a three-hour drive, I got settled in my hotel. I had requested a room overlooking the Karl Marx Square (now known as Augustusplatz) where the demonstrations would culminate, after starting at the St. Nicholas Church. The day before the Monday protest, I walked all around Leipzig, talked with nervous locals and checked out the church where it would start. As I walked away from the church, a person walked about five feet from me, didn’t look at me but said, “You are being followed by the Stasi (East German secret police). Be careful.” Wow. Sure enough, heart pounding, I realized there was a man following me. I managed to lose him by winding in and out of the streets. After driving around for a while, thinking about what I would do, I went back to the hotel to plot my plan for the evening.
If you are under 50 years old, you may not have a sense of the terror of the Cold War. At this time, no one thought anything was going to change. It was pre-revolution, and the people of Leipzig were nervous to talk with a Western foreigner, even in private. The secret police were everywhere. It could be your neighbor, or even a family member. You couldn’t trust anyone.
Back at the hotel, I decided to change my appearance as much as possible by slicking my hair back with Vaseline. I also created a makeshift bag for the camera, using a sewing kit and a pair of sweatpants. I cut a hole in the bag, so I could point the lens through it when I was ready to videotape. I made my way to the church. A crowd of thousands of people were gathering, true demonstrators mixed with many undercover Stasi police. There was determination and fear in the air. No one was sure if the security forces would be ordered to shoot.
I knew I couldn’t do this alone. I needed a group of people to guide me and shield me from the large number of armed security forces surrounding the route. I scanned the crowd and looked for someone I thought would be an authentic protester and who may be able to speak English. I found a young student who quickly gathered five friends around me. During the march, I was able to capture images of the protesters and the intimidating armed security forces. I returned to my hotel room and got more footage of the crowds gathered in the square, holding candles and singing “We Shall Overcome.” It was beyond my hopes as a journalist. I had a significant scoop. Now I just had to get back to West Berlin, and then New York, with the tapes.
Early the next morning, I called Terri and used a code to indicate that I had something significant and she should meet me in West Berlin. The next hurdle, the biggest hurdle, was getting through the checkpoint back to West Berlin without having my video camera found, my tapes confiscated and possibly being detained as a Western spy. I was terrified, and for good reason. When exiting East Berlin, the guards looked through the car, the trunk and luggage as a matter of course. Security was intensified given the demonstrations in Leipzig. As I waited in the line of cars at the border, I watched as each car was searched and each passenger questioned. I really thought I wouldn’t get out. My turn came, and the guard told me to get out of my car. As I stepped out, another guard shouted over to my guard. I looked up and saw it was one of the guards I had chatted with two days earlier when I had entered East Germany. He must have said to the guard at my car to just let me through because he knew I was okay. And that is what happened. To give you a sense of the intensity, once I got into West Berlin, I pulled over, shaking and crying and thanking my lucky stars.
After meeting Terri in the hotel, I got on an Air France flight to Charles de Gaulle airport in Paris. This part of the story doesn’t have to do with intuition, but it’s wild, so I’m throwing it in. During the flight from West Berlin to Paris, the pilot came on the speaker and said, “We have a Concorde* passenger on the flight who has a tight connection, so we will be arriving in Paris 15 minutes ahead of schedule.” I was that Concorde passenger. I can’t imagine what strings the bosses in NY pulled to get this to happen. But that’s not the end of it. Once we arrived at the Charles de Gaulle airport, the pilot said, “Please remain seated. The French airport police will be boarding the plane while we are on the tarmac and escorting our Concorde passenger to her plane.” And that is what happened. The man sitting next to me in first class said, “Who are you?”
Once in NY, I was a hero for the day. In the news business, you’re only as good as your last story, so I was back at work quickly. We were the first news organization in the world to get images of the demonstrations out of Leipzig. The following week, on October 9, every news organization had “undercover” journalists in East Germany covering the growing unrest. And on November 9, 1989, it was over. The border crossings that had stopped East Germans from entering the West for 40 years were historically opened.
Barbara in Berlin in 1990
The ultimate moral to this story is that my instincts and intuition were central to the success of this journalistic venture. I had to rely on my heart and my gut, and not just my head, though that came in handy too. I will share more on this topic of intuition and how it applies to modern-day business in the coming weeks.
With intuitive warmth,
Barbara
CEO, ROI Communication
Chief Catalyst, Living ROI
I created Living ROI as a passion, to share what I’ve learned and support others who want to live more authentic, joyfuland fulfilling lives. Please visit our website.
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*The Concorde was a supersonic passenger airliner that flew the transatlantic from Paris to New York in half the time—three and a half hours. It was discontinued in 2003 after a fatal crash in 2000 reduced demand. There is talk of bringing it back.
