Tom

“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

“He wanted to cry quietly but not for himself: for the words, so beautiful and sad, like music.”
― James Joyce, A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man

“Beauty is truth, truth beauty,—that is all
Ye know on earth, and all ye need to know”
― John Keats, The Complete Poems

“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