On November 10, 1989, Jochen Wichmann’s phone rings in Beijing. His brother is on the line. He says a sentence, he repeats it, he says the sentence a third time. Only then does Jochen answer – angry, which actually does not correspond to his nature: “You know that no one makes jokes about it.” His brother sticks: “The wall is open.” Jochen begins to cry.
Jochen Wichmann was a cameraman. He had to do with dictatorships all his life. He was born into the Nazi state. His father died as a soldier. His mother wanted to leave the GDR with the four children. The country had sealed off the inner-German border since 1952, the only loophole remained in Berlin, where controls were carried out, however. Just the departure of the five from Schwerin could arouse suspicion. So they split up: first, the mother left. The two older children followed her over another railway line. Then Jochen and his older brother set off. It worked, everyone was well received in West Berlin.
They looked at each other, Jochen and Genoveva
The mother did whatever work she could find to support her children. And as soon as a few marks remained, Jochen ran to the cinema. He loved Fritz Lang, Charlie Chaplin, Laurel and Hardy. He dreamed of being behind the camera. He completed his photography training and began making short films that were shown in the cinema before the main films. For one he had to go to a village in Lower Bavaria. The film people stayed at the “Hotel zur Post” for the night, where a young woman named Genoveva served the meal. They looked at each other, Jochen and Genoveva, that was it. She came to Berlin, the two married and had two sons.
Jochen made films and worked as a projectionist in a small cinema in Steglitz. What really interested him was the documentary, “catching films” as he called it. He was lucky, found a permanent position at ZDF and was sent to East Berlin. Every morning he crossed the border to work in the station’s GDR studio, and in the evening he returned to West Berlin.
In 1986 the broadcaster made him the offer: Beijing. Initially for three years with the option of an extension. He ran home and asked Genoveva and his youngest son what they thought of the matter. Both agreed, and so in 1987 they packed their bags.
For foreigners there were “Villages” in Beijing, the Wichmanns moved into one that was mainly inhabited by Germans. The apartments were bugged, each journalist was assigned a watchdog who made sure that nothing wrong was leaked outside.
Jochen’s area of responsibility also extended to other Asian states. He was one of the first cameramen from the west allowed to travel to North Korea. The train he was traveling on stopped in the middle of the route and it was forbidden to get out of the train by yourself. Which Jochen found laughable. He opened the train door and in an unobserved moment started walking towards a village. Nothing moved, no one, nowhere. When it occurred to him that he had come to a Potemkin village, in a staffage for the western visit, he was captured and brought back to the train under rigorous warnings.
Then on April 15, 1989 everything changed. As early as 1986 and 1987, thousands of students took to the streets in Chinese university cities for more democracy, which led to demonstration bans, arrests and blackouts. After the death of the reformer Hu Yaobang on April 15, 1989, the students publicly expressed their grief.
The correspondent Gisela Mahlmann and Jochen grabbed the microphone and camera – and set off. Walked with the demonstrators, interviewed them, filmed. This time no one stopped them. The rulers were overwhelmed with the situation. Student actions in and around Tian’anmen Square became more daring. They smashed lightbulbs and small bottles. Why? The party leader was called Deng Xiaoping. “Deng”, pronounced in the appropriate pitch, can mean “electricity” or “light”; “Xiao” means “small”; and “ping”, also emphasized accordingly, “bottle”.
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Hours of footage were shot, day after day. From June 3rd to 4th, however, there are no pictures of Jochen. On the evening of June 3, tanks rolled towards the city center. Fighting parties appeared everywhere. The protest movement was wiped out. But Jochen was not a war correspondent. The Wichmanns abandoned everything and fled Beijing. They returned in September.
On November 10th of the same year the call came from Jochen’s brother. Here, in China, the dictatorial regime had saved and consolidated its power; there, in distant Berlin, it had perished.
In 1992 Jochen and Genoveva finally moved back to a house in Gatow.
Jochen worked, Genoveva fell ill. She died in 2011. How can one go on living alone, without the one loved one? It was hard. Jochen dealt with art and history, was a member of the association “Friends of Taiwan”. He developed lung disease, had gallbladder problems, and died on September 11th.
The film “The Protest, Hope and the Massacre”, the pictures of which are by Jochen Wichmann, can be viewed in the ZDF media library.
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