good afternoon I'm very happy to be here I arrived this morning from New York
I so I think I'm the only native English speaker so far has spoken I have
a lot of nights just in case I'd thank you for that kind introduction
and and thank you very much because they think that is the most succinct account
that angels and demons evaluated
I said and I'm going to
talk a little bit today about my books ties and which came at ten years ago
in english-speaking world and many countries around the world
but is now text available: icelandic today
proud I think it's that 20th country or something as I think
backup said that I'm going to talk about some the people that I was about us
in stars and and them people who resisted
Easton communist regime and I'm going to talk about why
I am NOT at the moment being on it in Germany
why I think that is happening and
also have about why for me this work against
forgetting is the most important I could be
doing and fix now
a full generation 23 years since the bin
fell so I think that a conference like this
is a fantastic opportunity to reexamine
where we are generation later and
in some ways I was always being told when I was writing style nineties
it's too soon to write this people are too sensitive
or by many germans we know everything that happened
during those forty years what are you doing there's nothing left to rise
so I operated between those two extremes
streisand is a book about four main
people apparently ordinary but actually quite
extraordinary people living at different times during that forty
period of socialist rule one is Miriam whether
as a 16-year-old tried to escape climbing
all for complicated reasons another is
help call a very housewife
dental wellness living in Germany had a baby
1961 the baby was being cared for
hospital in the western suburbs of
and in August when the war went up she was separated
have met extremely sick child she then tried
was unable to reach the baby
nothing left to go starting visit nothing
and she started trying to get out of the country so
that book contains also her life story it's a story
really of making dissidents ass off your children
enjoy housewives and very ordinary people
another therefore phone book wonders if the third one
is a fantastic man has died now as has
from Paul I suppose that's a sign of the generation
going on and who was that
the eastern bloc subversion of Mick Jagger or so he said
he was a lucia alcoholic very famous rock star called class
and and when he once applied for permission to continue to perform
with his great the I'm
committee chairwoman he had in
sets communist countries you have to get permission to perform
declared to his face to him that he no longer existed
and his story my book is about what happens to you when you had declared
to no longer exist in a place like a steamy these people are my heroes
they refuse to betray those around them and collaborate with the regime
even though they knew it might cost them their seventy
their freedom or their lives stars and
is internet exploration him conscience and him
courage on the other side stars and is a book about for mister seamen
says he's me secret police office their men who accepted the politics of a day
as a reality that could no or perhaps should not be changed
they worked within its some people might say that there was a sensible to do that
like
opportunists madness talking about if you wanted a career
education for your children a safe life or even holiday
yugoslavia you might then spy on your family
friends opened itself cuz in transit to West Berlin
or spread disinformation West Germany
to manipulate parliamentary vote stay which happened
1972 my book is about how those men deal with their loss of power
and and about the kinds of contortions of conscience
that they have time to take to remain upright
regime failed in order to fully appreciate the courage of the people
that I was really interested in
I'm going to describe a little it's with
reminding ourselves what they were against when they refused to inform
or betray or tried to escape and so on
days German government maintained its power by subjecting people to feel
and intimidation by the secret police people were turned into
informers collaborators for the stassi
in order to stay safe from the Stussy
there were at least one informer every 50 people
by one by CIA estimates one person in seven
so in this rain in several other who would like to go
talk to handle a and say did you hear what sense
acid coffee and so on and so forth it was a wave
making so no one could trust anyone else was saying
out loud in a seventy I'm in the early days there were many
death or as they called liquidations opponents and
days in Cydia regime in the seventies and eighties
the regime for food to psychologically destroyed
by spreading rumors ruling Korea's marriages
taking children away sport exile people
is germany was the only country nascent ok which could expel
it now contains dissidents
writers and intellectuals into West Germany because the west germans
maintained view that all those Germans
was medically entitled citizenship with Germany's
I actually came to looking at this well i wasnt undergraduates
in West Berlin because in the late eighties
87 88 just before the wall fell
I fell in with a group of former east germans who rises
painted me who had been exiled from their own
country and we would sit having coffee in West but then at the end
Street was the wall and over that war with my friends
families in some cases children certainly the whole past
and they were this bidding war
cops through Europe obviously but it cuts through their lives and I think
that was the
initially sistemi to to go in
find out once the wall had fallen what really happened there
and this does is practical message demonstration institutional profanity
inventive malice and at disregard for human dignity
just as he broke into flats and stole people's underwear
bottling it smell samples so they could train dog
to recognize you think by your body to
i've seen these jobs my book is full of black humor and ironies
ironies and not actually funny funny on the surface but
one of them is that shortly after the wharf and I went into the Black Sea
Stussy kinda warehouse
where they were row upon row of these joz which looked at
does that make Jan had labels on them
label would say dates 1984
and object workers and you have to imagine the stasi agent
climbing into flat going 30 Daisy and literally
did I'm
when I saw them these jobs where empty
it was nineteen early nineties and I said to the woman who sang
and so where the bits of cloth waist underwear ways that
she said she was a member of the citizens rights movement sweeping
in the chaos at the end of 1918 somebody
whether it's the Federal Police in Germany with its
collapsing today so who thought
well the snow samples might become useful to us
in this new of Jenny so somewhere there exists a
complete smell something of the entire opposition in Saxony
just with and this study used
to irradiate people and objects with radiation
with that very damaging consequences but they invented
personal geiger counters at the could be stepped to the body so stasi agent in
mufti would be able to trace
follow you kinda something ticking on them
it to me as he went to the crowd also to follow a manuscript if it was making its
way to estimate the publication so
I am the scenic I know I'm of the gym democratic was the vicious war that
waged on it
own citizens who it turned into traitors
or et sociales is my translations or
but there's very little almost spectacularly
negative enemy elements by the strike a bureaucratic
pain the stasi and its vast network of informers
accumulated in forty years of its existence from 49
18 more recent records than
all after history since the Middle Ages
is written records when me what I call the stolen
biographies of their countrymen and women
when I started writing styles and in nineteen eighty 97 ecstacy
had apparently evaporated
whether they evaporated as a fierce lynching as I mentioned before
or legal retribution taxing came
or possibly a Shane no one could tell
many people also think that the nazis disappeared somehow
after the fall of the Nazi regime of course this is not the case and
physical 12 to this the regime dies
but its personnel remain in city
I was curious I was told at that time you will never
find these men they will never talk to you and I thought well
at the woman told me that have been doing a Masters
on stassi and she had written 147 Metis
and let it drop them in these vast apartment buildings in
a very a district with me party members and stuffy
offices lead she got three responses and they were all
carefully worded replies anonymous
giving have the reasons why these men would not talk to her
I have no patience for this I'm i right I'm not doing any scientific study here
so what I did was take out an investment in the local paper in Potsdam
which is where many ecstacy and my Germany's
reasonable but I wasn't confident about it and I have
genuine person check my 10 anyway despite
my care in having the waiting is this investment checked
what it actually say it was and starting right it seeks to Z Man
view conversation and you know
publication in English or something had my home phone number at that time
we didn't have mobile phones I certainly didn't have enough money half
had existed and so I have the phone if the flat
I was having an just hot
to my surprise day or night and with
anonymous sometimes heavy breathing sometimes very anxious man
wanting to tell me this story
so I made a series of resignation to starting and a half
in book they range from kind
fairly ridiculous where somebody won't give me his name
says I meet you at 1500 hours outside the chechen part-time
I will be there when we see I got my rolled up under my left arm
and so on and so forth I said I'll be the woman with a tape recorder
and to you know the ridiculous way
a man very solemnly one very solemnly handed me a copy
beautiful little East gym in addition I'll
the Communist Manifesto and fed at the end talk
perhaps now you can go and so deceive socialism
in a corner of the world with people not prejudiced against us
meaning Australia I think
all the stars meant to him I sent the book before it was published were
disappointed
they were in fact so disappointed I'll explain later how I know that there was
so disappointed
and now there's a battle red waiting in Germany
about have a GD a is going to be remembered
the former cadres would like it to be remembered as some kind
9 leftist social welfare experiment
idealistic and well-intentioned in looking after people from cradle to
grave
if perhaps a tad overzealous in its implementation
former human rights activists political prisoners and historians
left and right would have remembered as it was
then it might serve as a warning to future generations
about the jewel productions of belief and obedience
and to court good
to court to excellent
and fair
and a growing degree as us what's called in German astrology
which is wonderful combined come back nostalgia and
East cost so it's nostalgia for the east
is I think a toxic rose-colored fantasy
and infects representations affiliate
TDI a visit to the new GTI Museum in Berlin would leave you with the
impression
that the Stalinist dictatorship was exceptionally an exercise in mid-century
domestic
keeps and deliberated bathing culture
for 54 euros you can stay in the stars the sweet
a hotel offering you an Easton experience
minus the interrogation laboratory imprisonment
all you might take tried the ride 21 is the proliferation
proliferating de Dias stores and come away
that consumers were happy back then what was on offer
I've heard countless examples of the insidious miss remembering
have those who can't afford things in a capitalist society
wanting to go back to the past where there was nothing to buy
and no way to go and anyone who complained about that could have
destroyed there was some things that could have been examples to us
in the west the documented better sense
self-worth and autonomy women India
as opposed to unified Germany is an important one
but nothing is Wes with the price some people paid
wanted is my friend Marion in the late 1960s the Leipzig authorities destroyed
a very beautiful church
call the me that it scares lives is with no
public consultation and marion was a 16-year-old schoolgirl
and she and her friend Senate decided that this was outrageous
at sixteen she said you know you're braver than you think
and you think you can change the world and they made leaflets protesting saying
if you want to call them
cultural heritage you need to consult I'm 8 p.m. these things around town
they were court by the stasi
these children sixteen-year-olds would put on remand for months with no
contact with their parents or anything when they were released
two-way trial Miriam you she was going to go back to prison
and she got a train tried to climb the billing
she very made this story
is and what happened to her later is that
kinda anchor book and story
I started when she was course
the judge at her trial had already started referring to have my number
passive dehumanizing dissidents West
get with names and give she was business 725
your sentences particular how she said because you could start world war three
that was because his reasoning if
the Easton gods have started at the wall street
and then the Western smartest shot back
again would have been a promise
when she was released in seventeen half-a-million has told me
I was barely human there was a extremely brutal
experience in this women's prison called
she met a young man who is a sports teacher coach poet and
marries in the mid-seventies hell looks makes the Chancellor question
was meant to be visiting East 10
so the East German government rounded up anybody and everybody and put them in
custody really as a preventive means of stopping
any kind public demonstration for anything that might happen
to embarrass them in the face if the waste at that time they arrested chali
and I held him for several months and at the end of that period
million got postcard has a book which said
your visitation rights has been canceled you need to cut come and collect her
husband things
didn't know what that meant it end up in prison and what that meant was
giving him his belongings because he had somehow very mysteriously
died in his sale she's a woman has now spent the rest of her life
for the best effect time from mid-seventies to
89 things does he trying to get information to them
which you can say that in one sentence but you really
have to not I'm not a selling books but you have to read the book
no what that actually means and
and now since the regime has fallen has been trying to find out from the start
archive what happened has been in custody so for me it was this
she's a wonderful very funny woman with an extraordinary story that
encapsulated so much about how the regime worked or didn't
I asked him recently I was back in May how she feels now
about the good she said
fundamentally I feel free of course
she added the opens its into cemented
old car chase from the stassi and the social streams
and Socialist Unity Party I still in positions
relative privilege so some of you may have seen the film lies about us for
instance which betrays its ties in
for miss tyson very down on his luck delivers junk mail
and and who falls in love with dissidents couple he's obsessing
tries to save them and subsequently
is thanked 5 he was watching all of which is
never ever happened is an active fantasy and
and it's important why it could never happen
happened which is because totalitarian regimes that total
the systems of control never one send
to said that to be in touch operation be able to change their minds
with had 14 people by sending I'm
as a misrepresentation in that film which is the crucial is that the study
some had down on their luck than not they got what
snapped up by western business and enterprise because they had
exactly educations and work histories
that they denied the people that they persecuted
a.m. very useful adapted very well too
capitalists enterprise Miriam
is a producer at the state radio station Livesey
so this is the state-funded public
and a man who manages ecstacy infamous
at the 20th anniversary commemorative demonstration
of the day for demonstrations in 1989 she told me that
one of the things happened was that the bosses who X start viewing for miss
roasted made sure that they roasted on
anyone that they knew was a former dissidents so that that person couldn't
go
and carried a candle in the important
demonstration of twenty years after
the Velvet Revolution Miriam laughed about it she has a gifted distilling she
mass from the blackest
ironies I think so as to ward off
despair she said it's right anyway
you know they went to the demonstrations in
2000 and we didn't because they were
in the crowd twenty years ago favorite
informers
so what does it do to the society and to its ability to accurate
accurate accurately remember a dictatorship
in the recent past to have those loyal to its still sitting
in positions state responsibility
the judge who signed the warrant for Chinese arrest
which after the fall of the wall was found to be baseless
is still a judge making decisions on the page
in Saxony so we have to ask ourselves
did this man's switch overnight from being someone who got his orders
from the political police to set
I to condemn the demonstrators for democracy to someone
who can suddenly uphold the values that they were demonstrating for
at the radio at me and tell me also that one if the
effects
kick
Miriam's most senior boss his net
in charge of radio station was actually responsible
he had experience in radio in the communist regime
because he was responsible for political commentary
at the radio station of India steam at Aditya
so it's kind of mind-boggling that and it
it's like the king is dead long live the king laziness did dead long live
division is still there so the question that we ask about him is
was he able to change from being a spokesperson for a dictatorship
to being a part of the Fourth Estate a bulwark
get against dictate dictatorship
in this part of the world we have to remember has been democracy
since 1933
and million told me some of the effects of having ecstacy bosses
at the radio station after the fall of the wall
a CD which was the Communist Party's Jimmy had
millions and millions of touch math I saw
was disappeared and
that its widely suspected that those funds have gone into funding
this success a party to the ACT communist party called
the party of democratic socialism which has now changed its name
to the link and Marion told me once that
the order came through from the specs stars the informers
that they no longer wanted to assess to the PTAs
as the success a party to the ACT every time it was mentioned on the radio
and in order to at not make a pact that connection
between the two parties now that changed
get any discord d-link
and another friend of mine who is one of the main voices in
to call for accurate remember is the historian
who backs Escanaba who's the director of the
museum which is to be main prison
in for political prisoners called orange in Houston
doctor nada says that means experiences
have seen misjudge still on the fence: or formal cadres
consulting media quite typical
he says after the wall so there was barely any holding
to account of those in power for their crimes
almost all the high-level function is retained their positions
and a full pension and now much better off
and the former victims novices
you get more compensation if you are warda in
about them which was notorious jail
then if you are a prison for 10 yes
similarly to the nazi period can have a says the over valuing
have continuously administrative experience
I think this so many times in Germany people say after
1945 this simply weren't enough United
judges administrators teaches
law is whoever we couldn't train so we had to use
the old God we had to use party members and so on
and in Kanata says that was a big mistake after the end of this regime
they simply weren't enough people
retried so the old card race
stayed in office what this means he says that if a teacher wants to bring their
school class to his museum
where you see sales in which political prisoners were held including
pool captive my book you see mucus office
the head of the secret police you see all these things it's important for
school children
see that but because the teachers
I like that it be teaches who were teaching ovation
this will obviously finish as time goes on goes on they don't bring that would
Scopus and a result effect is that
in 2009 so wide last figures
a survey found the GDR to have its highest
approval rating since unification twenties before
57 percent of people agreed with the statement
that the GD I was more good than bad and a majority of school children were under
the illusion
it had been legitimate democratically elected government
I have some small experience myself Xcode
the book was launched in and
ironies a certificate launched in therefore my headquarters
stassi in at the Leipzig Book Fair 2004
so it was the room where it was his vast
ballroom it was literally the Secret Policeman's Ball
room and I could happen when I got up to speak
was a grand room the whole front row was full
I don't know exactly where they were either party members all-stars the
people
because they were wearing the uniform which involved being middle-aged
having a bomber jacket on real creamy hand being very very fierce
know very angry at me and as soon as I started speaking taking notes and
huffing and puffing really viciously
at which point I switched from being really frightened
at to thinking this is outrageous
hit what r you can take notes on me now
what are you going to use those nights for you can't hold that against me
but after the book came out a group of ecstacy man
who used to be called in the nineties
thats inside a complete a inside committee
and changed it at this group changed its name because that kind
very adept at PR that is required in
capitalist society change the name from the inside a committee to
the Society for the Protection civil liberties and the dignity
israel's of the time and good
excise men they stayed by Jenna have a set about this book
and and I'm not sure if it's going to be the same page on the ice and
edition but on page 84 boys affair english-language editions days that
couple paragraphs where outline what group ecstacy
in the nineties after the fall of the wall to harass former
dissident and these involve things like to live in pornography
it someone's wife ordered or taking package to the door
or cutting break blade making people have corrected
or taking someone's child after school for a few hours to make everybody panic
all of those things were true but the pad all finished
group is such that my German publisher deleted
in all feature additions of the book and not only that its not too much bigger
publisher Jamie Fisher
and I have kept that book whether that is a sign of some kind of silence or
how these things go I don't know all really means to me that I talk about it
everywhere
going 10 people to page 84 and
in there I was
in billion in May I was watching television and I was watching
to be with a politician from the link so this success a party to the
a CD and I noticed that he was still trying to convey
me a 59 well-intentioned dictatorship he extolled the universal
free childcare in the GDR health care and education
the low events and affordable food prices
of course he said some mistakes were made
when he said is it rang in my ears because I remember longer speaking
to people who'd lived through the Nazi regime and I'll never forget one of them
saying to me well that stuff was ag's went too far
but that aside they were good times there was no unemployment
we built the freeways and Sun and so on I think
that this instrumental use of people
which bremen was describing so and
for a greater mythologized course whether
right or left area in purity master race
a communist utopia is something that goes against the basic
humanity of the individual good to said
long before Germany's catastrophic twentieth century
nations like human beings unaware of the workings of a
in nature and ultimately we are surprised
even astounded at what images to write ifp
any nation as many of us have is to intervene
in its history in one way or another its to eliminate sit in silence is
to spotlight satin struggles if you've been able to tap into what it is to be
human
which is after all the job writer your writing for people in similar situations
all over the world
I think that the story if and
resistance to illegitimate dictatorial power which is also the subject of my
latest book which is a novel coming out of that
Nazi period I think that this famous resistance
to the judgment power is eternal and I think it's universal I could have
written both my books
with differences have surface detail about situations throughout history or
indeed now I could have set them in Russia or China Libya
them out or north korea Argentino any number other countries
with power is concentrated in an elected government
and sustained by force using an internal security service
as Lord Acton had its power tends to corrupt
and absolute power corrupts absolutely so just to finish
the details change but the forces in play
remain the same as to the extraordinary and
ordinary human responses conscience and courage
on the one hand and capitulation compromise on the other
my books I work so vast obviously
trying to be but they're also active witnessing
it's important to hear stories from the four
so that is will be a change for the whistleblowers to come
when power stuff to concentrate again in a way
that threatens us and individuals to send
can be the price of freedom for the rest of us I'd like to finish with
words if the grace American contempt in office now
Robinson she says a successful
autocracy rests on the universal failure I've individual courage
democracy relies on its exercise
I think we would be wise and to cherish it in one another
thank you