German Reunification Quotes

“Jetzt sind wir in einer Situation, in der wieder zusammenwächst, was zusammengehört.“

("Now we are in a situation where what belongs together, will grow back together.")

Berlin radio interview, November 10, 1989 [the day after the de facto abolition of intra-German border controls by the East German government]”
― Willy Brandt

“[I]ch habe es noch in diesem Sommer erneut zu Papier gebracht: Berlin wird leben, und die Mauer wird fallen."

("I put it down on paper again in the summer of this year: Berlin will live, and the Wall will come down.")

Speech at Rathaus Schöneberg (Berlin City Hall) on November 10, 1989 [the day after the de facto abolition of intra-German border controls by the East German government]”
― Willy Brandt

“Und Berlin? Und die Mauer? Die Stadt wird leben, und die Mauer wird fallen. Aber eine isolierte Berlin-Lösung, eine, die nicht mit weiterreichenden Veränderungen in Europa und zwischen den Teilen Deutschlands einhergeht, ist immer illusionär gewesen und im Laufe der Jahre nicht wahrscheinlich geworden."

("And Berlin? And the Wall? The city will remain alive, and the Wall is going to come down. But an isolated solution for Berlin, one that does not go hand in hand with the broader changes in Europe and between the two parts of Germany, has always been illusionary and has not become any more probable over the course of the years.")”
― Willy Brandt, Erinnerungen

“What in essence happened under the Treuhand was a complete transfer without compensation of property and assets accumulated over forty years through hard work and effort by GDR citizens, as well as the land they owned (which in the GDR had no monetary value as such) to, in the main, West German owners. This transfer of a country's assets — unprecedented anywhere in the world during peacetime — amounted to billions of Euros: a robbing of ordinary people for the enrichment of a few. Of those companies and individuals who bought GDR property, 80 per cent were West Germans, only 10 per cent were from other countries, and a mere 5 per cent went to GDR citizens.”
― Bruni de la Motte, Stasi State or Socialist Paradise?: The German Democratic Republic and What Became of It

“What followed was the largest and most rapid privatisation ever seen in any country in the world (except perhaps in the Soviet Union under Yeltsin). Never in the history of civilisation has a state's total assets and infrastructure been disposed of so rapidly and in such a criminal fashion. Its machinations make Al Capone look like a paragon of capitalist virtue.”
― Bruni de la Motte, Stasi State or Socialist Paradise?: The German Democratic Republic and What Became of It

“I find it difficult to say whether the leadership's 'second echelon' could have preserved the German Democratic Republic. Helmut Kohl later told me he had never believed that Egon Krenz was capable of getting the situation under control. I do not know — we are all wiser after the event, as the saying goes. For my part, I must admit I briefly had a faint hope that the new leaders would be able to change the course of events by establishing a new type of relations between the two German states — based on radical domestic reforms in East Germany.”
― Mikhail Gorbachev, Memoirs