Erdmute Greis-Behrendt

This is sad news. Erdmute was an inspiration, since she had a knack of seeing the bright side of adversity. As a wartime child she “rather liked” hiding from devastating air raids in Berlin bomb shelters, because the grown-ups did their best to spoil the children. Evacuation to the countryside fascinated her, as she remembers it full of brown men wearing turbans - Indian prisoners of war. When Berlin women had to clear mountains of rubble in 1945, she happily joined in since it was better than hanging around bored.

With that sort of aplomb, she was an example to any young Reuters correspondent daunted by the menacing atmosphere of East Berlin (in 1971/72 I felt as if World War II had finished only three weeks ago).

As others have been able to verify, she did not report on Reuters correspondents to the Stasi secret police. However the Stasi spied intensively on her. In her files, she later found piles of reports by Stasi collaborators tracking her as she went to and from her country cottage. As she drove through villages, always on the same route, they would telephone on to the next village to warn that “she’s coming” and record the fact for posterity. They also knew exactly how she gave birth to her son, since the obstetrician turned out to be a serving Stasi officer.

When I met Erdmute three years ago, after a gap of 36 years, she told me these stories in her Pankow flat - as the good journalist she had become. When I asked what impact Reuters had in East Berlin as the only Western news organisation, she replied: “Class. Reuters added tone to East Berlin.” She did that too. ■