Katja Hoyer

“The last diplomatic crisis had been all too recent. A month earlier, a West German man, who had travelled through the GDR, had died of a heart attack when questioned by border guards in a barrack in Drewitz, Saxony-Anhalt. As such, this was nothing out of the ordinary. The psychological pressure that East German border guards deliberately built up during questioning proved too much for an estimated 350 people in total who died of heart failure at inner-German checkpoints.”
― Katja Hoyer, Beyond the Wall: East Germany, 1949-1990

“The idea was that a factory could send an elected representative, as could a university, or a women’s organization. These delegates would then meet in a central council – or ‘Soviet’ in Russian – to decide on policy matters, elect an executive and so on. So far so democratic. The reason why so many of the manifestations of this theory have turned out to be nothing more than puppet parliaments who rubber stamp legislation for those who wield real power is that it is open to manipulation. In the case of the GDR’s council, the Volkskammer, the list of candidates was completely fixed.”
― Katja Hoyer, Beyond the Wall: East Germany, 1949-1990