“Kids in tje East had also grown up with a genuine sense of fear that the world might actually come to an end during their lifetime. That it probably would in fact. For some this fueled nihilistic feelings - one reason Toster from Die Anderen, for instance, never got deeply political was because he stopped giving a shit.”
Source: Burning Down the Haus: Punk Rock, Revolution, and the Fall of the Berlin Wall
“And as the Stasi began to pay more and more attention to the new network, they made the same mistake they had when trying to break up the punk scene a few years before: they sought to identify leaders and focus on undermining them. The Stasi assumed every organisation had a top-down structure like the Stasi, like the Party, like the dictatorship.”
Source: Burning Down the Haus: Punk Rock, Revolution, and the Fall of the Berlin Wall
“Yeah, I guess I am a sadistic piece of shit. What can you do? What else is there to do? My grandfathers were Soviet officers in Germany. They were Men. Now what is my Father? he's a little bitch who ran away from Russia in 1998. What's his fate? Well. He's gonna get fucked in the ASS with so many different things, you can't even imagine.”
“Some of the “songs” on offer were served up with screams and inarticulate noises to an audience consisting mostly of teenagers who, whipped up by the music, carried out degenerate motions.”
Source: Beyond the Wall: East Germany, 1949-1990
“From 1971, the rates paid were means-tested, allowing working class families with children privileged access. A four-person household in West Germany spent around 21 percent of their net income on rental costs while a similar household in the East only needed 4.4 percent.”
Source: Beyond the Wall: East Germany, 1949-1990
“A great battle is a terrible thing," the old knight said, "but in the midst of blood and carnage, there is sometimes also beauty, beauty that could break your heart.”
Source: A Knight of the Seven Kingdoms
“This project was hugely successful, perhaps one of the most effective aid projects ever conducted. Vietnam is now the world’s second largest producer of coffee, producing around 30 million 60-kilogram bags every year, and its industry employs 2.6 million people. Its Robusta beans have a high caffeine content and are ideal for granular and instant coffee, which is drunk in large quantities around the world. Only 6 percent of the produce is used internationally, while the rest is exported at an estimated annual worth of $3 billion.”
Source: Beyond the Wall: East Germany, 1949-1990
“Anti-Fascist Protection Rampart,” that was officially used to refer to the Berlin Wall.”
Source: Beyond the Wall: East Germany, 1949-1990
“In other fields too, female ambition had become the norm. By 1988, over 90% of East German women fought their own battles in the workplace. The GDR had reached the highest rate of female employment in the world as women entered every last bastion of previously exclusively male domains.”
Source: Beyond the Wall: East Germany, 1949-1990
“Ci sono persone che si sentono a loro agio a parlare della propria vita, come se riuscissero a ricavare un senso dalla successione di eventi casuali che le hanno rese quel che sono. Questo comporta una sorta di fede preveggente nella vita; la convinzione che causa ed effetto siano legati, e che essi stessi siano qualcosa di più della semplice somma del loro passato.”
Source: Stasiland: Stories From Behind The Berlin Wall