The campaign in the media takes place in many different formats, such as in citizens forums or town - hall shows. And because we don't have a presidential system in Germany, people vote for parties instead of specific candidates. From the perspective of smaller parties, even one single televised debate is a detested anomaly, because only the lead candidates from the conservatives and the SPD take part.

Belong purportedly to certain groups say, "We are the people and not the others." That is something that we cannot allow to happen. That is something that I think at the time in the GDR - at the time when we had this in the GDR, where the people stood in the street and said, "We are the people," that is something that filled me with great joy.

It is actually a very good thing, if after eight years of coverage the president of the United States [Barack Obama] says that this is a cooperation based on friendship that we cooperated well.

If I run a time-limited test program, I'll never discover whether markets with additional employment truly exist. A solution in the low-wage sector cannot be a limited special program.

I believe that we will move forward a little tomorrow but I have my doubts that we will achieve a result.

The land of unlimited opportunity was for me, for a long time, impossible to reach. The wall, barbed wire and the order to shoot at those who tried to leave limited my access to the free world.

History has often showed us the strength of the forces that are unleashed by the yearning for freedom. It moved people to overcome their fears and openly confront dictators such as in East Germany and Eastern Europe about 22 years ago... The yearning for freedom cannot be contained by walls for long. It was this yearning that brought down the Iron Curtain that divided Germany and Europe, and indeed the world, into two blocs.