We played an old U-Boat factory in East Germany once and…

History has often showed us the strength of the forces that are unleashed by the yearning for freedom. It moved people to overcome their…

— Angela Merkel

East Germany was so total in its totalitarianism that everything was banned which wasn't compulsory.

— P. J. O'Rourke

“The penalties for being an accessory to the attempt to flee the [GDR] were greater than the crime of trying to flee itself.”

— Anna Funder

You know, I grew up in the East part of Germany so we never had English in school, we had to learn Russian.

— Till Lindemann

I was the very first athlete in East Germany allowed to go professional.

— Katarina Witt

Okay, NATO expanded to East Berlin and East Germany. Under [Bill] Clinton NATO expanded further, to the former Russian satellites. In 2008 NATO formally…

— Noam Chomsky

“More riveting to me in the end than the politics of Berlin was the vast social experiment its division had become... it was possible…

— Krista Tippett

It's a historical fact that the Stasi did horrible things and that they monitored a lot of people in East Germany, but I find…

— Christian Schwochow

There was no such thing as a solo career in East Germany. You had to get the best orchestra job that you could.

— Jan Vogler

There was no special event that made me decide. I had collected some photos and the idea was in the back of my mind…

— Gerhard Richter

“The former East Germany hardly had a monopoly on complicity. Life’s every moment caught one out in one form or another.”

— Paul Russell

Some people say Russia is running at 50 percent of its gross domestic product under that during the Communist period. In fact, none of…

— Kenneth Arrow

When I was an adolescent, I was obsessed with having many commercial things, cars, clothes, stupid things. Now that I have all that, I…

— Till Lindemann

The Germans are often too bureaucratic, too fixated on rules and not risk-oriented enough. And some of their officials have the feeling that they…

— Charles Landry

Few tears will be shed over the demise of the East German army, but what about East Germany’s eighty symphony orchestras, bound to lose…

— Bob Simon