Freedom of Suppression

Abstract

This chapter retells what it was like to live under repression in communist East Germany. This account would be very funny if it weren’t also bitterly sad. The chapter talks about how during his teaching career the author received a visit by the police. He was also spied on by informants working for the secret police, and was told what could and couldn’t be read. He was also bullied by school inspectors, and “betrayed” by pupils. The chapter describes the intimate relationship between the Communist Party and the media. The repression that the people of East Germany suffered was remorseless, yet it was also stupid and inflexible, so that when the crisis of the regime finally came, its leaders initiated their own downfall.