I defended myself at the first opportunity I had, which was a meeting of writers in which I proved that Honecker had based his whole attack.

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.

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.

You must have, if socialism was to succeed, a socialism with lots of democratic elements in it.

People in the East looked toward the West with longing. They would have liked to have the same comforts, the same goods, the same chances. They saw a system that demanded of them sacrifices with nothing but promises for the future.

A foreman in the East wouldn't know how many workers he would have the next day, because part of his working force had left the system to go to West Germany.

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