Erdmute Greis-Behrendt

Carrot red hair, a walk somewhere between a flounce and a strut plus a giggle to lighten a grey day in East Berlin. Erdmute would help wade through a 36-page speech from party leader Walter Ulbricht, negotiate a service for the office car (a two-stroke, blue smoke belching Wartburg), cover the results of the visiting Senegalese badminton team and rescue a teleprinter hell-bent on self-destruction.  

She was a cheery friend to all correspondents and visitors and was, like us, oblivious that the Stasi, the secret police, occupied the flat next door. She told of how once, shortly before the wall came down, she had driven away from the office only to get an anonymous call on her mobile to inform her she had forgotten her handbag in the office. When I visited her on her farm east of Berlin three years ago she, like many East Germans, said she felt there were many good things about the old GDR lost in reunification.   

I'll miss her - and that giggle. ■