I did not oppose unification, I knew unification would have to come, but not in the form in which it did come. There were two ways of doing it and they took it the radical way, the forceful way.

The Wall was the actual symbol of a defeat, of inferiority.

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

I was in psychological warfare in World War II, so I know psychological warfare when I see it.

I certainly hoped that in the Eastern part of Germany, what was just beginning to be called the German Democratic Republic, you would develop a system of socialism with freedom and democracy.

Today, when we live in a what is called Western democracy here... you're not taken seriously all the time. You can write what you want because nobody cares about it. But at that time, they cared very much about what you wrote, so that's an entirely different feeling.

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.