L T Gdr Quotes & Sayings

I like trains. I like their rhythm, and I like the freedom of being suspended between two places, all anxieties of purpose taken care of: for this moment I know where I am going. — Anna Funder

Apparently, even in the GDR, sleep deprivation amounted to torture, and torture, at least of minors, was not official policy. — Anna Funder

Julia and her family, like many others in the GDR, trod this line between seeing things for what they were in the GDR, and ignoring those realities in order to stay sane. — Anna Funder

By the time of the GDR's demise, two in every 13 citizens were informers. — Luke Harding

I never felt the GDR was my home country. — Angela Merkel

The penalties for being an accessory to the attempt to flee the [GDR] were greater than the crime of trying to flee itself. — Anna Funder

A Western writer came up to me and said, how come nobody at this demonstration spoke of German unity? I told him, because it isn't on the agenda. People were interested in having another, better GDR, another, better socialism. — Stefan Heym

In the right context you can make words do all kinds of things. — China Mieville

The history of the GDR journalism is a story of partisanship. — Patrick Conley

The unfortunate reality is that what holds most people back is actually their own beliefs that they are not good enough or deserving enough to be successful. — Jay Samit

Betrayal clearly has its own reward: the small deep human satisfaction of having one up on someone else. It is the psychology of the mistress, and this regime used it as fuel. — Anna Funder

In the GDR people were required to acknowledge an assortment of fictions as fact. Some of these fictions were fundamental, such as the idea that human nature is a work-in-progress which can be improved upon, and that Communism is the way to do it. Others were more specific: that East Germans were not the Germans responsible (even in part) for the Holocaust; that the GDR was a multi-party democracy; that socialism was peace-loving; that there were no former Nazis left in the country; and that, under socialism, prostitution did not exist. — Anna Funder

Private travel into foreign countries can be requested without conditions [ ... ]. Permission will be granted instantly. Permanent relocations can be done through all border checkpoints between the GDR into the FRG or Berlin (West). — Gunter Schabowski

I hope I presented what I felt the woman seemed to be about, but I couldn't give any reason as to why she remained in the relationship other than that their relationship was very special. — Jenny Agutter

[ ... ]sometimes it seemed to him that although the man was the master, which was of course only right and proper, if you watched and listened, you would see that their marriage was like a barge on the river, with the wife being the wind that told the captain which way the barge would sail. Mrs. Mayhew, if not being the wind, certainly knew when to apply the right puff. — Terry Pratchett

Every minute that you save by making it useful, more profitable, is so much added to your life and its possibilities. Every minute lost is a neglected by-product - once gone, you will never get it back. — Arthur Brisbane

Beneath the Sacred Host, Christ is contained, the Redeemer of the world — Pope John Paul II

Musical theater is an American genre. It started really, in America, as a combination of jazz and operetta; most of the great musical theater writers in the golden era are American. I think that to do a musical is a very American thing to me. — Rachel Bloom

Forgiveness is choosing to love. It is the first skill of self-giving love. — Mahatma Gandhi

For anyone to understand a regime like the GDR, the stories of ordinary people must be told. Not just the activists or the famous writers. You have to look at how normal people manage with such things in their pasts. — Anna Funder

As a 7-year-old child, I saw the Wall being erected. No one - although it was a stark violation of international law - believed at the time that one ought to intervene militarily in order to protect citizens of the GDR and whole Eastern bloc, of the consequences of that - namely, to live in lack of freedom for many, many years. — Angela Merkel

There are no people who are whole" he says. "Everyone has issues of their own to deal with. Mine might be a little harder, but the main thing is how on deals with them. — Anna Funder

If we had had time and the occasion to develop a new socialism in the GDR, socialism with a human face, with democracy, this might have been an example also to West Germany. The development would have run the other way. — Stefan Heym

Is it true that one travels in order to know mankind? It is easier to get to know other people at home, but abroad one gets to know oneself. — Franz Grillparzer

It is obvious that he has set himself an impossible task; slow and gradual transformations are possible, they even happen quite frequently, but they do not lead us to a new life; they only take us from one old life to another old life. The new life always makes itself known abruptly, without any approach or preparation, and it keeps its strange enigmatical character in the midst of events whose course has been determined by the old laws. — Lev Shestov

People should think less about what they ought to do and more about what they ought to be. If only their being were good, their works would shine forth brightly. Do not imagine that you can ground your salvation upon actions; it must rest on what you are. — Meister Eckhart

You see the mistakes of one system - the surveillance - and the mistakes of the other - the inequality - but there's nothing you could have done in the one and nothing you can do now about the other. She laughs wryly. And the clearer you see that, the worse you feel. — Anna Funder

Brandenburg Beer War," fought out in the courts, lasted for ten years - all over a black beer brewed in the former GDR that contained sugar, something forbidden by the Purity Law. — Neil MacGregor

Hold my hand because I might disappear. — Melina Marchetta

What was I so enthusiastic about? The American Dream - The opportunity for everyone to success, to get somewhere by their own efforts, and like many teenagers, I was also a fan of a certain brand of jeans that couldn't be bought in the GDR, but I had an aunt in the west who used to send them to me. I loved the vast American landscapes, where the air is full of spirit of freedom and independence. In 1990 my husband and I flew to America for the very first time, to California. We will never forget that view of the Pacific Ocean. It was nothing short of magnificent. — Stefan Kornelius

Woe is me! how high art Thou in the highest, and how deep in the deepest! and Thou never departest, and we scarcely return to Thee. — Augustine Of Hippo

In Hitler's Third Reich it is estimated that there was one Gestapo agent for every 2000 citizens, and in Stalin's USSR there was one KGB agent for every 5830 people. In the GDR, there was one Stasi officer or informant for every sixty-three people. If part-time informers are included, some estimates have the ratio as high as one informer for every 6.5 citizens. — Anna Funder

I didn't actually know what the protesters in the West really wanted. It was fantastic here, so much freedom, and that was what they were calling musty, middle-class, and fascistic, a bleak period. Bleak was what the GDR was, and it alone had adopted, almost unchanged, Nazi Germany's methods of intimidation and ideas about propaganda and the use of force. — Gerhard Richter

But there was also a car - for the GDR an expensive car, a Russian Lada - that — Anna Funder

The mistake the GDR made was to force people into a position,' the dark man says, 'either you are for us or an enemy. And if you then came to think of yourself as an enemy you had to ask yourself: what am I doing here? They wanted to put everything into their narrow schema, but life simply didn't fit into it.' He pauses, and the others wait for him to finish. 'I think we need to remember that they came here for the freedom, not for fifteen kinds of ketchup. — Anna Funder

Ambitions tend to Remain undisturbed by Realities. — Frank Herbert

It was a condition of sanity both to accept 'GDR-logic' and to ignore it. 'If you took things as seriously as people in the west think we must have, we would have all killed ourselves! — Anna Funder

Miriam is upset. Her voice is stretched and I can't look at her. Perhaps they beat something out of her she didn't get back. — Anna Funder

Von Schnitzler's job was to show extracts from western television broadcast into the GDR - anything from news items to game shows to 'Dallas' - and rip it to shreds. 'That man radiated so much nastiness he simply wasn't credible. You'd come away feeling sullied, as if you'd spent half an hour atrociously badmouthing someone. — Anna Funder