Obituary: Erdmute Greis-Behrendt

Erdmute, pictured in the East Berlin bureau in the late 1970s, was 74 and died after a long, courageous battle against cancer, Annette von Broecker writes. She is survived by her son Max and husband Thomas.

Erdmute, an East German graduate, joined Reuters in November 1959 and helped Peter Johnson set up Reuters’ and the western world’s first media bureau in East Berlin as an editorial assistant, her journalistic ambitions cruelly controlled and curtailed by East Germany’s foreign ministry. Erdmute kept the bureau going throughout the upheavals of Berlin’s recent history, from the building of the wall, alongside Adam Kellett-Long 50 years ago, to its collapse 28 years later. She then became a member of Reuters’ first united Berlin reporting bureau, retiring in 1997.

Among the many Reuter correspondents who gained their first journalistic experience out in the cold war were, among others, the late Brian Horton, Jack Altman, Frederick Forsythe, Tony Grey, Colin McIntyre, Derek Parr, Mark Wood, Mark Brayne and, at the time of German reunification, Martin Nesirky and Paul Taylor.

I am sure that everyone who had met Erdmute was impressed by her kindness, her devotion to her work and her reliability. I will remember her humour and her wonderful, crystal-clear laughter, her red hair and gentle smile. I saw Erdmute last June. We knew each other for 52 years, because I joined Reuters two weeks before her but on the other side of the iron fence – in West Berlin. We were friends. I am very sad.

Erdmute will be buried in her husband's family grave in Thuringia on 2 September. ■