Tomorrow Belongs to Me

Even people with grudges against Germany were moved to tears the night the Berlin Wall came down. Peter Millar was in the middle of it, literally, stuck in Checkpoint Charlies amidst confused border guards, delirious waitresses and beer-swilling squatters. It was the night that redefined German history - the apotheosis of the long trek out of the Nazi pit, through a communist tunnel, into a brave new world where they had woken up. Alex Margan, East Berlin barman, amateur angler, wit and raconteur, stayed home in a huff. He had had a row with his wife. While the children took a walk on the wild side, Alex poured another beer and muttered, "I told you so". As a child in distant Danzig, Alex had been co-opted into the Hitler Youth; as a trainee hairdresser he had survived Stalinism; in middle age he had become middle class under Communism. This is his story, and the stories of his friends: Manne, the overweight smuggler; Hans, the conscientious Communist; and Barbel, the dynastic landlady of a magical corner bar in a run-down district of East Berlin. Europe's most misunderstood nation is re-examined in these pages through the extraordinary lives of ordinary people, set against the author's vivid eyewitness reportage of events that changed the world. In "Tomorrow Belongs to Me", Peter Millar puts the politicians in the back seat and lets the little man take the steering-wheel of history. Peter Millar is a columnist on "The European" and the "Sunday Times" and a former foreign correspondent for the "Sunday Telegraph". His coverage of events in East Germany and Berlin in 1989 won him the Foreign Correspondent of the Year Award from BBC 2's "What the Papers Say", of which he is also an occasional presenter.