Berlin 1945

Dr. Michael Brettin, born 1964, studied History, Politics and Slavistics and graduated with a PhD in History from Hamburg University. His dissertation examined the nationality question in the Soviet Union under General Secretary Mikhail Gorbachev. He is also a graduate of the Hamburg School of Journalism, the Henri-Nannen-Schule. Currently, he works as a managing editor of the Sunday issue of Berliner Kurier. His writings on the history of the Berlin Wall was published in twelve issues and as a magazine. He lives with his wife, his daughter and his son in Berlin.

Peter Kroh, born in 1950, has worked as a photo reporter for a number of East German newspapers, among them Junge Welt in Berlin, and Thüringer Allgemeine. In 1995, after the Berlin Wall had come down, he moved to the German capital to work for Berliner Kurier. Kroh became the photo editor of the paper. Today, he is retired. He lives in a small town near Berlin.

Stephen Kinzer is an award-winning foreign correspondent who has covered more than 50 countries, mostly for the New York Times. He was chief of the Berlin bureau between 1990 and 1996. Today, he is a visiting fellow at Brown University. His most recent book is “The Brothers: John Foster Dulles, Allen Dulles, and Their Secret World War.”

Otto Donath was born in Berlin in 1898. During World War II, he worked as a photographer for the propaganda company of the Wehrmacht company 689. After 1945, he took pictures first for the Soviet army, later for a number of newspapers and magazines in East Berlin, among them Neue Berliner Illustrierte and Für Dich. He died in 1971, in Berlin.