564 FRANK BÖSCH AND CHRISTOPH CLASSEN
journalists were accredited in East Berlin; as of 1973, only four GDR jour-
nalists were working in West Germany: two from the ADN, one from the
radio and one from Neues Deutschland (which further underscores the
lesser status of the other newspapers).^48 There were also West German
travel correspondents who applied for permission to enter the country to
report on specifi c events. The GDR required the correspondents from the
West to pay dearly for their East German offi ces and to establish a per-
manent residence in the GDR—without a doubt so that they could keep
better tabs on them while also underscoring the status of the GDR as a
separate state. When these reporters had questions, they were initially
only allowed to contact the Department for Journalistic Relations at the
Ministry of Foreign Aff airs, but as of 1976, they were also permitted to
contact the individual press offi ces. They could not move freely within
the country. Travel outside of East Berlin had to be cleared ahead of time,
and most of the time someone was assigned to accompany them on these
offi cially registered trips. In 1979, these restrictions were tightened even
further after a series of reports appeared about protests. The Stasi, of
course, had kept a close eye on the West German correspondents in the
country from the very beginning.^49
In terms of daily life, however, these journalists usually just went about
normal business. Many of the West German correspondents emphasized
in interviews as well as in their memoirs that they had not faced many
diffi culties living in the GDR.^50 It was easier and less obvious for print
journalists to move among the public than for television journalists, whose
cameras attracted attention. As an analysis of the content of the reports on
the GDR in two West German newspapers in 1987/88 revealed, their arti-
cles often covered topics such as the church and opposition movements,
as well as attempts to fl ee across the border or emigrate.^51 The correspon-
dents saw themselves as intermediaries between East and West because
they established a joint public space. Rather early on, for example, they
were also referred to as “diplomats in shirtsleeves,” because they acted as
political and cultural mediators between the two German states.^52 At the
same time, many of the West German journalists tested the boundaries of
their journalistic freedom by publishing articles that the SED deemed to
be too critical—for example, a report about the forced adoptions of Re-
publikfl üchtlingen (political refugees) that appeared in Der Spiegel in 1975.
The GDR did in fact expel fi ve correspondents in the fi rst decade, and the
offi ce of Der Spiegel in East Berlin remained closed from 1978 to 1985. It
was not until the run-up to Erich Honecker’s offi cial visit to West Germany
in 1987 that the situation became less tense for reporters in the East.
The West German correspondents played a key role for the opposition
movements in the GDR in the 1970s and 1980s. Their information and