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

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.

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.

These were the things that the government supplied you with - in turn, of course, demanding obedience. But you must not imagine that it was a constant feeling of outrage that was in the minds of people and the hearts of people.

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

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.