I disapproved of the fact that the government here refused to adopt the few reforms that Gorbachev put over in the field of media and the field of culture.

We certainly hoped perestroika would win out and that there would be changes. We knew all along that socialism could flourish only with a certain amount of freedom and democracy.

Show me one place where a whole government is concerned with a book of a writer and is concerned enough to suppress it.

People who were not active in the intellectual life of the country could go on without feeling restricted, except they could not go where they wanted. They could not cross the border to the West whenever they liked.

And of course, in West Germany, they made every effort that people who came from the East would get jobs and would get a comfortable existence. That was part of the Cold War - and part of the winning side of the Cold War.

Even in West Germany in the beginning, people wanted a kind of socialism.

In the question of peace, people spoke up and demonstrated for peace and against the threat of war, the threat of atomic war.