- há 2 dias
How the collapse of communism affected people in the 'socialist paradise' of East Germany.
Categoria
😹
DiversãoTranscrição
00:00Private images from a lost world of communism in Eastern Europe.
00:14The communists claimed they were building a socialist paradise.
00:23Most people think they created hell on earth.
00:27But what was life really like for the people of Eastern Europe, effectively imprisoned behind the Iron Curtain?
00:37The answers are sometimes surprising.
00:47While some cannot forget the abnormality of those times, others feel that they led perfectly ordinary lives.
00:57This series, through rarely seen archive and personal testimony, captures the real lives of those living under communist rule.
01:06It was a way of life that disappeared when communism collapsed across Eastern Europe two decades ago.
01:12East Germany was socialism's showcase state.
01:22East Germany was socialism's showcase state.
01:37One of its iconic faces was a children's TV puppet called Sandman.
01:42He was designed to send East Germany's children happy to bed and to win their hearts for socialism.
01:56It simply had to reflect life in East Germany.
02:00It had to transmit class consciousness and feelings of solidarity.
02:07The Sandman was made by people who used to live under socialism.
02:18They had a vision of socialism and communism, and were happy to spread that vision, namely the vision of a better world, a more just world.
02:33And East Germany's role model for that better world was the Sandman's favourite holiday destination, the Soviet Union.
02:40East Germany was born out of the ruins of the Second World War.
03:00It would emerge from the Soviet zone of occupation established with the total defeat of Nazi Germany.
03:15Everywhere symbols of the Soviet Union and images of its leader, Joseph Stalin, showed where the real power now lay.
03:30In the summer of 1945, 14-year-old schoolgirl Erika Riemann went back to her old school in the company of friends.
03:43A day she would never forget.
03:50We saw that Hitler's portrait had been replaced with Stalin's.
03:53So I drew a bow with some lipstick on Stalin's moustache, because when I saw his portrait, I thought he looked sad.
04:03That wasn't a good move.
04:05I never wanted to be an artist again in my whole life.
04:12Erika was sentenced to ten years in prison,
04:15part of which she spent at the former Nazi concentration camp at Sachsenhausen.
04:18Here she was subjected to a mock execution.
04:27We had to go into a shower room.
04:30They told us they would do the same things they had done to the Jews,
04:36that there wouldn't be water coming out of the showers but gas.
04:40That was a very terrifying situation.
04:44There was great panic and then great relief when only warm water came out.
04:57I spent time in the fortress at Torgau, where many women were raped.
05:03I hadn't been raped yet, but the decision had been made that I'd be next.
05:06Still only a child, Erika suffered repeated physical and sexual abuse, like this episode in Torgau prison.
05:15It's affected my whole life.
05:23I hadn't had any sexual experience at the time.
05:25But I had to take all my clothes off.
05:31And to sit on a bowl which was pushed down the stairs amongst all the men's baying.
05:37I can't talk about it.
05:41I've felt the repercussions till this day.
05:50I felt ashamed and dirty.
05:53I'm a mother and a grandmother.
05:56But after all these years, it still remains and I still feel dirty and degraded.
06:00It's very hard to endure such things when you're that young.
06:12Over 150,000 Germans were detained by the communists in special camps like Saxenhausen.
06:20Almost a third of them died in captivity.
06:30In August 1952, 80,000 young pioneers were invited to Dresden because we, the children, had to carry on socialism.
06:53At the age of 12, I was proud to attend the first pioneer meeting in Dresden.
07:01We knew about the Hitler Youth during the Third Reich.
07:05But they also wore neckties and played drums and trumpets.
07:09They wore uniforms.
07:11When the pioneer organization was founded, many adults were opposed because it reminded them of the Hitler regime.
07:20So parents said, that's not going to happen to our children. Not again.
07:24But my father was a teacher and so he had the task of recruiting children for the pioneer organizations.
07:31The pioneers served the newly formed workers and peasants state of East Germany.
07:37A one-party dictatorship modeled on the Soviet Union.
07:40Its propaganda stressed the dangers from Western imperialism.
07:45Including the bizarre claim that America was dropping plagues of Colorado beetles from the air to destroy socialist crops.
07:52They would praise us for having collected those beetles.
08:02The very same American aeroplanes that have bombed Dresden, they would tell us, had also unleashed those beetles.
08:08The evil American imperialism.
08:15The evil American imperialism.
08:18The evil American imperialism.
08:22The evil white war.
08:31We did it for the united states.
08:32We made our first pioneer vow in Dresden.
08:33We children vowed that we would do anything to avoid such a terrible and evil war in the future.
08:35the future. 80,000 children together said, that we promise. And I made that vow not with
08:47my mind, but with my heart. Stalin was the great hero. He was a god to us. Stalin the
08:58intelligent, Stalin the wise. Stalin was the representative of the free world, the free
09:07world of socialism, and he was our role model. We would follow him unconditionally.
09:28This rally was a high point for Stalinism in East Germany. Within a year, Stalin was
09:45dead, and the Communist Party faced open insurrection on its streets.
09:48On 17 June 1953, the workers rose up against the workers and peasant state. What had begun
10:05as a strike amongst construction workers over pay, soon turned into wider demands for free
10:10elections and the resignation of the government itself. By late morning, Soviet troops stationed
10:17in East Germany had to intervene.
10:27At 11.30, we heard the tanks, the chains of the tanks. Then we realized the Russians were
10:33coming. The crowd started howling. And when the people at the end of the demonstration refused
10:42to give way, the soldiers fired in the air. And when you hear gunfire, you start running
10:48automatically.
10:58Horst Krita, a Berlin petrol pump attendant, was in the thick of the action that day.
11:02We threw stones at the tanks. Seeing the tanks firing in your direction, the sheer sound
11:16of it causes you to piss in your pants. Someone had died on the Marx Engels Square that day. He was run
11:26over by a tank. There was a blanket and a wooden cross which said murdered by the Soviet army.
11:38It was a day of glory for me. We showed them what could be done. The police could do nothing. The
11:46government could do nothing. The secret police, the Stasi could do nothing.
11:50Over 50 civilians were killed that day. In the clampdown that followed, more than 20,000 were arrested,
12:00scores were executed. The country's leaders had been caught off guard. From now on, security and the
12:06control of the people would be the government's overriding concern. The people themselves were
12:14concerned about simply getting by. The 1950s were austere times, and food and goods were in limited supply.
12:22Families and organizations in West Germany sent aid packages to the East.
12:32We were so happy and surprised as we lived such a frugal life. When the package arrived, we couldn't
12:36believe our eyes. The wrapping was so attractive and colourful. We'd never seen anything like this.
12:42Roland, the youngest, couldn't open the presents fast enough, helping Wolfgang beaming at his discoveries.
13:00In 1954, my father received the 8mm camera 8K8. These are the first films he recorded at Christmas.
13:10I'm the baby, 18 months old. That's his self-made gramophone. We lived in Berlin, in Karlshorst,
13:28which was under Soviet occupation. Only state functionaries and those employed in ministries
13:33were allowed to live there. My father worked in television as a cameraman. He was, of course, a member of the party, but he wasn't totally convinced about it.
13:51My mother's wearing a necklace. Of course, that's only for the film.
13:57Now she's trying out the new vacuum cleaner.
14:03It's called the Omega.
14:07It's called the Omega. It was East Germany's people's vacuum cleaner.
14:14In 1960, Khrushchev came to East Germany.
14:29When he passed through Karlshorst on his way to the airport, my class and I had to wave.
14:38Only much later, when I'd developed the film and got it back home, I realised I'd waved at Eric Milke, the head of the Stasi, who was sitting next to the driver.
14:53In the 1950s, people had few creature comforts.
15:15We were happy when we got hold of goods which weren't available every day, like bananas, which we bought in the West.
15:22Before 1961, it was still possible to drive into West Berlin.
15:29On August the 13th, 1961, construction began on the Berlin Wall.
15:39East Germany called it an anti-fascist protective wall designed to keep the West out.
15:45In fact, it was built to lock East Germans inside their socialist paradise.
15:53Around three million of them had already fled to the West, threatening the very existence of East Germany.
16:00One of those preventing people from escaping was Hagen Koch, the young pioneer at Dresden, who was now a member of the expanding Ministry of State Security known as the Stasi.
16:12In the afternoon, we reached the border crossing at Checkpoint Charlie.
16:19I was ordered to paint a thick white line on the street at that border crossing point.
16:25I stood with one leg in the West and the other in the East, and my assignment was to show the evil, and I repeat, evil people in the West, so far and no further.
16:38Capitalism is over there, and here is socialism.
16:40I painted that line and was still firmly convinced that that border would avoid a Third World War and help to maintain peace.
16:49Many people were against it. I was not the only person who was for it.
16:53Growing up behind the wall were these school children in the village of Golso.
17:10They were about to become the subject of a long-term television project.
17:14Winfried Jerschel was the youngest child in his class.
17:18They built a new rural school, brand new and impressive.
17:26It was an East German film, and an East German film was always a propaganda film.
17:35They obviously wanted to communicate the message that a small village has a brand new school and all the children are happy.
17:41I remember that the questions at school became more probing, such as what does the Sandman look like.
17:52They wanted to see what programs we were watching at home.
17:57During the early years, they imprisoned people when they watched television from the West.
18:01Our antenna was always pointed towards the West.
18:03The teacher tried to find out if people were watching television from the West.
18:14Winfried wanted to be an inventor, and was of a practical, inquiring nature.
18:21We learned a lot about the political theories of Marx and Lenin.
18:32Once I asked my teacher, when does the real communism start, real communism without money?
18:40The teacher was obviously as smart as I was, and said that we would succeed in trading without money sometime after the millennium.
18:47As an ignorant child, I thought that's fantastic.
19:03Most East Germans, like Jürgen Hartwig, the baby in the 1950s home movies, conform to what the state required of them.
19:10Here he attends his Jugendweyer, a secular coming-of-age ceremony for 14-year-olds introduced by the communists.
19:19Despite appearances, however, Jürgen was no communist.
19:24I was actually West-orientated. I was interested in beat music. The Beatles, the Rolling Stones.
19:38It was clear I wasn't a socialistically orientated person, who would wear a blue shirt for the free German youth.
19:44I started wondering how to make it to the West.
19:49I tried to escape through Hungary in 1973, but things went wrong and I was sent to prison for two years.
19:57By the late 1970s, disillusion with the reality of life in East Germany was spreading.
20:12This is my farewell video. I was 19, had just passed my A-Levels and going into military service.
20:27It was a real rite of passage.
20:30This is my room in Dresden, in my parents' house.
20:47All the posters of my ideals, my dreams, all these were shattered.
20:52Learning the truth about the Warsaw Pact's invasion of Czechoslovakia, which had happened a decade earlier, was a defining moment.
21:13This is footage from East German TV of some of our tanks, like the ones that advanced into Czechoslovakia in 1968.
21:20I actually remember being there, aged 10, looking at the tanks leaving for Prague, and I remember winking at one of the soldiers.
21:30But when I joined the army, I realised what they had done, and I felt angry and betrayed.
21:41Such feelings could only be expressed privately.
21:44The public face of East Germany promoted the economic and scientific achievements of real, existing socialism.
21:59Space exploration and the achievements of the Soviet cosmonauts were reflected in the Sandman.
22:04They had something to do with the belief in progress.
22:07It was believed that communism would also be established in space.
22:13Obviously, it was used to make socialism appear victorious.
22:18But while East Germany was promoting socialism's achievements in space, it was the secret police that became the country's real growth industry.
22:32No act was too intimate to be observed, and no other country in history has spied on its citizens as East Germany has, with one in six of its population informing on the rest.
22:46High up on the watch list of the state's enemies, was the emerging punk rock movement.
23:05All I wanted was to have a bit of fun, but the state obviously saw it differently.
23:33We were criminalised, we were politicised.
23:38Chaos was the lead singer in a punk rock band called Wuttentfall, meaning Fit of Rage.
23:45His best friend Zappa was the bass guitarist.
23:49What Chaos didn't know was that his best friend was a Stasi informer.
23:53My codename was Captain.
23:58They gave me a phone number, and when I called, I was to say, Captain speaking.
24:05Zappa had succumbed to persistent Stasi pressure for information about the punks he knew, and signed an agreement with the secret police.
24:11The Stasi dictated to me a two-page text full of that gibberish saying, I swear not to undertake anything against socialism and I will work with the Ministry of State Security.
24:29I simply thought that I'd sign it and then they'd let me go and I'd be done with it.
24:38But they had that lousy signature of mine.
24:41So they continued to approach me and say, you've signed it, so now you can tell us when the concerts are.
24:46And I had to sit around at the Stasi building for hours and hours.
24:51I said, okay, I will inform you when the concerts take place.
24:59I didn't expect it to be so drastic for me.
25:03By the end there were nine informers set on me.
25:11The Stasi gave me a flat so they would know where I was.
25:14In return, I had to swear that I would vote in the next elections.
25:23Chaos only found out about his best friend's treachery after the wall came down, when he read his Stasi file.
25:33I felt great disappointment at my friend's behaviour, especially because of the breach of trust.
25:38It was a mistake. It was a horrible year. I was at the mercy of the Stasi.
25:47Heidi Krieger's life was also dramatically affected by the Stasi.
25:57Heidi was one of communism's star athletes.
25:58She went on to win the gold medal in the shot at the 1986 European Championships.
26:04I loved being a sporting champion for East Germany.
26:13I liked representing my country abroad.
26:18Simply because my narrow-mindedness would make me believe, with our achievements we strengthen the Socialist Republic.
26:31But Heidi paid a heavy price for her sporting success.
26:41Unwittingly, Heidi was one of 10,000 East German athletes who were part of a Stasi-run doping programme.
26:48At one point, shortly after I'd turned 16, the coach suddenly started giving me packs of pills.
26:59He would tell me, these are to help you, everyone takes them.
27:05You'll handle the training programme better, you won't get ill, and if you're injured, you'll recover more quickly.
27:10I trusted him and started taking those pills.
27:20There are teenagers whose sexuality hasn't been fixed yet during adolescence, and probably I was in that situation.
27:28I was neither fish nor fowl.
27:31In that period, they gave me those pills.
27:34Because of the pills, my balance switched over to the masculine side.
27:37Massive doses of anabolic steroids over several years changed Heidi's body forever.
27:48I realised they'd made a lab rat out of me.
27:54Because they saw my potential.
27:57East Germany has taken my life away from me.
28:01And without asking.
28:06I wasn't allowed to decide for myself what I wanted to become.
28:14The effects of the doping system finally forced Heidi to undergo a sex change operation.
28:20And today, Heidi is called Andreas.
28:23Heidi still exists.
28:28I'm still a bit Heidi.
28:33That is my life.
28:35I used to be a woman, and I'll probably always remain a woman, up to a certain extent.
28:38The man ultimately in charge of East Germany's doping program was Stasi leader Eric Mielke, filmed here on a hunt.
29:00This is the Schorfheider.
29:05The Kaiser hunted here.
29:07Nazi leaders hunted here.
29:09And hunting here was a way of life for some Politburo members.
29:13A time when important business was done.
29:15We usually went hunting on Tuesdays after the Politburo meeting.
29:29Mielke was an enthusiastic but inaccurate hunter.
29:32Mielke had specific ideas about hunting because he wasn't a very good shot.
29:47The forester who went with him had to intervene and shoot the prey to try and make him look successful at least once during the hunt.
29:53Stasi officer Bernd Bruckner was party leader Eric Honecker's bodyguard.
30:04His boss was addicted to hunting.
30:07Hello, hello, hello, hello.
30:11Honecker was determined.
30:15It might have rained cats and dogs, or even snowed, and he would still want to go hunting with his fur hat on.
30:26On our good, brave, responsible hunters, our fellows of the city of Erfurt, who have been here, a three-finger hunt.
30:37Today!
30:39Today!
30:41Today!
30:42Today!
30:43Today!
30:44Today!
30:50Animals had to be imported from other Eastern Bloc countries like Hungary, because they had killed so many.
30:58They overdid it.
31:00From time to time they didn't respect the hunting restrictions on certain game.
31:04They shot everything.
31:07That was too much.
31:12That was too much.
31:13So we are still winning.
31:18Through you the brothers and sisters and sisters.
31:22That was too much.
31:23From time to time to time to time,
31:25we are in charge of the hunting for having Hoog
31:30alley and other Christians
31:36who don't even miss a degree.
31:38In a profoundly unfree society like East Germany, any free space was to be treasured.
31:49Nudism had long been popular, especially on the beaches.
32:08Nudist floats were an attraction of parades attended by party leader Eric Honecker.
32:13And the regime's attitude to public displays of eroticism was changing.
32:31I was employed in the Amherst sector, as it was called in East Germany.
32:38To take your clothes off in an erotic fashion was something very new.
32:49I started with my Edelweiss striptease. People laughed and were enthusiastic because they hadn't seen anything like it before.
32:57Striptease was not a common thing in East Germany, but at one point there was a big bang and striptease started booming.
33:03This footage shows Heidi Witfer's audition for a striptease license in the late 1980s.
33:13The shop assistant from Leipzig soon finds herself in demand at exclusive Communist Party functions.
33:19It was clear that the Stasi was involved and that similar things had always existed.
33:27At some events people arrived exclusively in monopoly capitalist cars.
33:32I became aware of what things actually occurred in East Germany.
33:36I saw champagne in huge bowls, fruit like bananas and everything we didn't have.
33:41I earned lots of money.
33:47I wish I could still get that dosh.
33:51I bought all those things which ordinary citizens couldn't afford to buy.
33:55As artists, we were lucky to perform at marvellous and fantastic events.
33:59There were some great things about East Germany.
34:03Former Golzo schoolboy Winfried still appeared to be buying into the communist dream.
34:06He's getting married to Sabine, whom he met at a dance.
34:08They enjoy a good socialist wedding.
34:09But at work Winfried is in trouble.
34:10He's joined the party but is summoned to appear before a party meeting for misrepresenting
34:11people.
34:12his qualifications.
34:13VLUNDMENT
34:22I feel very happy and upset you all, that you can give up.
34:24What is the difference of your religion?
34:27I feel as an artist, is a very difficult thing to do.
34:31But at work Winfried is in trouble.
34:34He's joined the party but is summoned to appear before a party meeting for misrepresenting
34:37his qualifications.
34:39We are meeting to decide how to punish you for your wrongdoing, which we might have to
34:55record in your party book.
35:02We will give you a chance to defend yourself.
35:04You must tell us what you did for the party and explain why we, as a collective, should
35:14not punish you.
35:19It has been made clear to me by you that I must never lie again while working in the factory.
35:33I would have liked to travel to the west and probably would have stayed there, but it
35:36wasn't possible, so I had to make other plans.
35:41I played along with the system.
35:46By the mid-1980s, East Germany was a decaying society, morally and economically.
35:52You can see it in these photographs of ordinary people's lives.
35:56The fact that such images were exhibited at all is as surprising as their realism.
36:07While I was in the plant that makes rubber in Thuringia, I met Andreas, king of soot.
36:17His job was to weigh the soot and mix the right amount with the rubber.
36:27Every Wednesday at one o'clock, there'd be a big guards' procession in Unter den Linden,
36:31by the Stasi guards' Felix Zscherzynski regiment.
36:36There used to be the same old man leading the parade, who would march as though he was
36:44the Führer, the leader.
36:51I often remember Tamerlan.
36:54She was that powerful type of woman.
37:02Her flat looked horrible.
37:05Elderly people got small pensions.
37:07She was a soulmate.
37:08She had wonderful strength.
37:18One day I was lying on the grass in an area where new building was going on.
37:22I had a hangover.
37:25I felt a breeze on my cheek, opened my eyes and saw a little girl with blonde hair and
37:29snow-white skin.
37:37I told her, you look like an angel, and she answered, I am an angel.
37:45She ran away and came back dressed as an angel.
37:52Gundela's photos prompted great interest from the Stasi.
37:56They had plans to arrest her on bogus charges of working for the CIA.
38:04In the ceiling of my studio was a beam which was hollow.
38:07I wasn't naive and I was concerned about my photographs.
38:15I would hide them in that hollow beam.
38:23I always expected the Stasi to show up at some point.
38:31A new generation was seeking alternative lifestyles outside party structures.
38:37That's us in the Trabant.
38:42That was the last really bad winter.
38:45That was 1985.
38:48You were pregnant but didn't know it yet.
38:51It was Roland trying to fix the Trabi.
38:53No petrol.
38:55Mashed potato and it was important that we could eat well, eat lots, eat fatty food.
39:12Look how skinny you were, you've got more muscles now.
39:27We didn't have a bathtub and we were very happy to take a bath at Roland's before New Year's Eve.
39:40I grew up in Dresden where no West German TV existed.
39:50It was called the Valley of Unknowing.
39:52I was very unknowing in many ways.
39:58There's a saying, living in East Germany was like driving with a handbrake on.
40:04I felt that very much.
40:06You weren't allowed to do things independently.
40:08You always had to file a motion and wait for approval.
40:20That was the summer of 1985.
40:23We'd just fallen in love.
40:25We'd known each other three months and we dared go on holiday together.
40:29Here we are in my flat in Berlin showing off the holiday souvenirs.
40:43You can see how much we fancied each other.
40:46I find him wonderful.
40:48This was our wonderful shower device.
41:03We did it ourselves.
41:05It had a very thin hose which fitted the water tap.
41:10We would put a bowl in there and sit in that bowl one at a time.
41:17Our daughter was already born and we lived in a very small flat where rain would drip from the roof and rats would gnaw away at our vegetables.
41:29Actually, it was horrible.
41:42Increasingly, official rallies like this one held little appeal for young East Germans like Andreas and Carmen.
41:48A spirit of rebellion was gradually emerging, sometimes in the most surprising places.
42:03The often grim reality of living in East Germany was something Michael Schmidt, a children's film animator, wanted to feature in his work.
42:21I wanted to represent a bit of East German reality.
42:35That is, I wanted to show houses with crumbling plaster and broken gutters.
42:39But I was told it was too realistic, so my film was rejected.
42:55Michael responded by secretly making an erotic version.
43:00The policeman shows the girl how to get to the park.
43:07Where he wants to seduce her.
43:12At first, the Karl Marx monument remains impassive to the tearing up of the rule book.
43:30But then his eyes start roving and you realise that after all the monument is alive.
43:37A little bump comes out of the pedestal as he follows the action with his eyes and takes in the girl.
43:46That's when you realise that even the great Karl Marx has urges.
43:58He also has feelings, in the moment.
44:05A person who was holy at the time, and who you couldn't really enjoy it.
44:10This man was sacrosanct, and at that time it was not allowed to make fun of him.
44:15But Gorbachev was already in charge, and people started to think of Marx as old fashioned.
44:28People knew that many things Marx had written in his bible didn't work.
44:33That is, communism as it was envisaged.
44:36By now, even the Sandman was harbouring illegal thoughts.
44:43This episode proved controversial, as paragliders were banned in East Germany,
44:48to prevent people using them to escape across the border.
44:51And it is the border, and especially the wall, that remains the symbol of East Germany,
44:57shutting its citizens in, and dividing families.
45:02Jutta Gallus-Fleck, with her two young daughters, made an unsuccessful escape attempt from East Germany.
45:08This led to her family literally being torn apart.
45:11Her two daughters were forcibly adopted by the state.
45:15On average, more than seven people were imprisoned every day for trying to escape.
45:20Jutta was sentenced to three years in prison for attempting to flee East Germany.
45:26All I was allowed to keep was one photograph, where I was pictured with my girls.
45:32But I had to cut my head off from that picture.
45:35I had to cut my head off because I wasn't allowed to preserve any identity, just a number.
45:44In their mother's absence, the girls threw themselves into dancing.
45:49Every day at school we were told how bad capitalism was, and that our mother was a bad person, and that she had done wrong.
46:08Jutta's freedom was eventually bought by West Germany.
46:14Over the years, the communist regime made over one billion pounds from the trade in selling its own citizens.
46:21Once in the West, Jutta campaigned for the release of her two children.
46:27I went to Checkpoint Charlie almost every day for six months.
46:34I'd put my placards on, and looking towards the East, I would say, they are what I want.
46:40Honecker regime, give my daughters back.
46:47My children who are in forced adoption, and who live in a state children's home.
46:52I want to have those children. Give me my children back.
46:55Their only communication was via letters which were censored.
47:03I can say we weren't allowed to draw Mickey Mouse. Mickey Mouse was Western propaganda.
47:12It was forbidden to draw such things.
47:17After six years of separation, Jutta was finally reunited with her daughters in August 1988.
47:27That was incredible. No one will ever be able to take that away from me.
47:36For us, that day is the day of our personal reunification.
47:41I'm very proud of the fact that we managed to make it happen before the wall came down.
47:46By the autumn of 1989, discontent with the regime was growing apace.
48:05That was the big demonstration in Berlin.
48:09It was about social justice.
48:12Curiously, it wasn't about getting rid of East Germany.
48:15That was not the issue.
48:16And neither was the reunification of Germany.
48:19It was about reforming our country.
48:21Back then, we still believed it would be possible to create another type of socialism.
48:26Now you see flowers attached to a police car.
48:38The security forces kept well back.
48:50Unlimited freedom of travel was a very important demand.
48:53And when we got it, we lost many other things.
49:00Many East Germans, like Carmen and Andreas, miss aspects of their socialist state.
49:12Guaranteed employment, generous welfare benefits, and a certain camaraderie are often cited as examples of what was lost when the Berlin Wall came down.
49:22Actually, we used to lead a good life.
49:25Actually, we used to lead a good life.
49:29There were many things in East Germany that disturbed us and made us angry.
49:32And I'm glad they don't exist anymore.
49:34But nevertheless, we had a good life in many ways.
49:37East Germany was a child of the Cold War, and its end came with the end of the Soviet Empire two decades ago.
49:52Given the revelations that have emerged since, from places like the Stasi Files, it is perhaps surprising that anyone should feel nostalgic about it.
50:03Yet the country lasted for 40 years, long enough to produce a new kind of society.
50:08A socialist paradise it wasn't.
50:11But while few want communist East Germany back, some genuinely miss aspects of their lives there.
50:21Next time, the lost world of Czechoslovakia, where communism tried to reform itself and failed, consigning people to an era of forgetting.
50:34I was like this, it was the one that was a big thing to do.
50:36This is when the world of Czechoslovakia had to die.
50:38There was a living that was a little about it.
50:40The one that had this, that was what they did.
50:41The one that had this, that was a very hard time ago.
50:43One that had this, that was a very hard time.
50:47The first day that I felt was a little about it.
50:49I felt like it was agrove of my own life,
50:52The other day that had this bit of death to be my own life on my own life and a chair of the other day.
50:54A fighter of Czechoslovakia and a warrior,
50:55As a whole.
50:58The other day we would find out this, that had to tell the world of the world that I felt about it.
50:59The other day, it would be here to be a great thing.
51:00You
Seja a primeira pessoa a comentar