More quotes for Stasiland (by character) Flashcards
Anna/Funder
Funder wants to create “portraits of people, East Germans of whom there will be none left in a generation”
Anna’s early visit to West Berlin left her wondering “long and hard about what went on behind the wall”
“I look at the box in her arms and know that you cannot destroy your past, nor what it does to you”
“They wanted to enjoy their lives right here, right now”
“Land gone wrong”
Miriam
“Little Tics”
“It was hard to be sure of anything, of anyone”
“I was basically no longer human”
“Dresses in layers of black”
“It is as if her existence is no longer real to her”
Julia
“I can’t commit myself to any sort of authority”
“regards fixed appointments as intolerable constraints on her freedom and is unable to go forward into her future”
“A women…only part-attached to the world”
“I wanted to die”
“It was the total surveillance that damaged me the worst”
“She associates the fall of the wall with the end of what had remained of her private sphere”
“I didn’t like it but I thought I live in a dictatorship so that’s just how it was”
Frau Paul
Frau Paul is now a “lonely, teary guilt-wracked wreck”
Frau Paul is at a “Terrible distance” from Torsten who is institutionalised
“I had to decide against my son, but I couldn’t let myself be used”
“Frau Paul does not see herself as a hero, or a dissident”
Her story makes her “cry so silently it is more like leaking”
“The picture she has of herself is one that the Stasi made for her”
Hagen Koch
He stole a plastic plate from the firm after he was dismissed as an act of “Private revenge”
It was “all I had the courage for”
Herr Christian
Felt his work with the Stasi “might lead to a bit of an adventure”
“I thought it was the right thing to do”
He was a “stickler for the rules”
Always believed that “some things are private”
Klaus
Feels the Stasi “have been sufficiently punished by their own consciences”
“Gift of taking things easy”
“The bad boy of East German rock ‘n’ roll”
“He seems incapable of regret and anger evaporates off him like sweat”
Karl Eduard Von-Schnitzler
Wall was “humane and necessary to defend a threatened nation”
Considers himself “one of the leading figures of the GDR”
“It was the most useful construction in all of German history. In European history”
Erich Mielke was “the most humane human being”
“I live among the enemy, and not for the first time in my life”
“Incandescent with rage”
Herr Winz
“Hopes to set the record straight”
Clings hopelessly to “the second coming of socialism”
“wants to play spy games seven years after the fall of the wall”
“He speaks in authoritative barks”
