By Karsten Stanley Andersen

Winner of East Berlin contest found

Published 2013-08-04

The winner of a signed copy of "Bruce Springsteen, Rocking the Wall, The Berlin Concert that Changed the World" by Erik Kirschbaum has been chosen in a random draw among the 26 people who got all the questions right in our trivia contest.

And the winner is: Michael Bechstein from Germany! Congratulations!

The book will be signed by the author and none other than Bruce's manager Jon Landau, who provided valuable information for the research.

And to those of you who are wondering, the correct answers for the trivia quiz were:

Question: How many people attended the East Berlin show?
Answer: About 300,000
This was by far the largest crowd Bruce has ever played to. Originally the estimate was around 180,000 people, but thousands and thousands of people without tickets made their way to the concert area, and the real number of attendees was therefore closer to 300,000.

Question: As what did the organizers originally promote the concert?
Answer: As a benefit for Nicaragua 
Bruce had not agreed to perform a benefit concert, so when he realized the orgainizers were trying to link his name to the Nicaragua cause, he threatened to cancel the show. The organizers quickly obliged and removed the Nicaragua references.

Question: The tv broadcast of the show was marred by what?
Answer: Half the broadcast consisted of shots of the audience
This was Bruce's first show to be broadcast on TV, but one of the conditions was that the East German TV couldn't show the full songs. Instead they showed the stage half the time and the crowd half the time.

Thank you to everybody who participated!


Clear
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