Virtual reality is going to teach the YouTube generation about the Berlin Wall – inews

CultureTVA new YouTube documentary uses VR to take young Germans back in time to meet their parents who experienced the Berlin Wall first hand

Wednesday, 6th November 2019, 1:54 pm

Not many of us will have had the chance to crawl through Berlins Tunnel 57, an underground route which allowed 57 East Berliners to to the west side of the wall in October 1964, but 19-year-old Anton Von Keussler has. Even fewer people can say theyre related to the men responsible for digging the tunnel, but again, Anton can - his grandfather is Klaus Von Keussler, a man who helped the fugitives escape with their lives when he was just 23. Theres a photo of the elder Von Keussler during the excavation that the family has kept and, thanks to the wonders of virtual reality, his grandson can now jump inside and experience for himself.

The project is part of YouTubes foray into its own programming, YouTube Originals, the latest of which is the one-off documentary Virtually History, presented by historian Emma Daibri, to whom the VR aspect particularly appealed. Its thrilling to be able to be so immersed in such a different period of time, she says. I feel like theres a lot of history that younger people would be fascinated by if it was sold in the right way and this feels like a really innovative way to get those audiences engaged with history.

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Broadcast to coincide with the 30th anniversary of the fall of the Berlin Wall, this standalone show invites Anton, along with others with personal connections to the wall and a number of YouTube creators, to step back in time and experience what it was like to live in such a dangerous, divided part of Germanys recent history.

While Anton virtually squeezes into the cramped space that his grandfather built, Franzi Rosin - whose grandmother appears in a famous photograph of her family fleeing East Berlin just days after the border closed - visited the street her relatives lived on as it would have looked at the time. It was very weird, but in a very special way, she says of revisiting her familys past. My grandma would show us the picture when I was younger because shes very proud of it, as she should be, but I didnt actually know much about the story until I stepped into the photo with VR.

Virtually History is a new, innovative way to present historical documentaries and one that director Joff Wilson hopes will attract younger viewers to the medium. A lot of the YouTube audience werent alive for the fall of the Berlin wall and the experiential moments really bring this important world event alive. When Anton went into the tunnel, that was the first time he realised how small it had been.

Watching the young Germans experience the Berlin of their ancestors makes for an enjoyable documentary, but its the second strand of the VR experiment that is really exciting. Viewers at home will be able to visit the streets of Berlin themselves by watching the specially made VR videos that will accompany the doc on YouTube - no fancy equipment is needed as you can just hold your phone in front of you, but for the full VR experience, viewers can buy a cardboard headset for less than a fiver.

To give more insight into the meticulously designed virtual world of Berlin, the creators enlisted YouTubers Hannah Witton and Riyadh K to go back to discover what it was like on the citys so-called death strip, the area between the two walls littered with guard dogs, watchtowers manned by snipers, trip-wired machine guns and perhaps most terrifyingly, floodlights. The creators werent chosen at random, as they too have personal connections to the event or others like it - Hannahs grandmother is German and lived through the period, while Riyadhs father fled from Iraq during Saddam Hussains regime.

I felt quite lucky, says Hannah. Its the closest well ever get to time travel. Riyadh agrees: Our job is to be the voice and eyes of the viewing public, who might know the very basics of what we were taught in school but dont actually know what it was like to actually be there. If you were watching a history documentary like this on a terrestrial broadcast, you wouldnt be able to then experience it yourself - the VR adds such an interesting new level to learning.

School does us a huge disservice in making learning seem like a chore, says Daibri, You start to feel really resentful towards the information youre given and reject it. There are so many subjects Ive rediscovered as an adult but school just made me hate them. There shouldnt be an inherent division between entertainment, like Virtually History, and education.

Virtually History is available to watch on YouTube now.

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Virtual reality is going to teach the YouTube generation about the Berlin Wall - inews