Freedom: Memoirs 1954-2021

What does freedom mean to me? This question has occupied me my entire life. Naturally, politically, because freedom needs democratic conditions, without democracy there is no freedom, no rule of law, no protection of human rights. But this question also occupies me on another level. Freedom, for me, is finding out where my own limits are, and pushing my own limits. Freedom is for me not to stop learning, not to have to stand still but to be allowed to continue, even after leaving politics.” - Angela Merkel

But there is another feeling that has lingered as well. I don't know exactly what to call it, and I'm searching for the right word. Perhaps this is it: superiority. Superiority in relation to the state's efforts at discipline and intimidation. This was a state that never trusted its citizens, or, most importantly, itself -- and as a result it was as petty, narrow-minded, tasteless, and -- yes, that too -- humorless as it could possibly be. ...despite it all, this state didn't manage to take from me something that allowed me to live, to sense, to feel: a degree of light-heartedness. It had been with me since I was a little girl. And the fact that the GDR couldn't take it from me is what I feel to be my greatest personal victory over the system. Without this light-heartedness -- and in retrospect I am convinced of this -- I never would have guilelessly done my homework during that ML lecture.

I must say quite honestly: if we now have to start apologizing for showing a friendly face in emergency situations, then this is not my country.

Even now, I cannot understand how anyone could assume that a friendly face on a photo could encourage people to flee their homeland in droves.

De mis conversaciones saqué la siguiente conclusión: con Trump no habría cooperación para un mundo interconectado. Él consideraba todo desde la perspectiva de un inversor inmobiliario, lo que había sido antes de meterse en política. Cada propiedad solo podía adjudicársela una vez, y si no la conseguía él, la conseguía otro. Así es como Trump veía el mundo: todos los países participaban en una carrera en la que el logro de uno significaba el fracaso de otro, no creía que la cooperación pudiera incrementar el bienestar común.

Dejé claro que en el transcurso del siglo XXI sería necesaria una descarbonización considerable de nuestras economías.

Nada me angustiaba más que no ser capaz de formular una pregunta razonable por saber muy poco sobre una nación.

de que nadie abandona su hogar a la ligera, tampoco quienes lo hacen por carecer de perspectivas económicas y sociales, y que no tienen posibilidad de ser reconocidos como solicitantes de asilo político

Tanto es así que el resultado fue insuperable en cuanto a mezquindad, estrechez de miras, mal gusto y —sí, eso también— falta de humor.

La política no es cosa de brujería. La política la hacen las personas, con sus inclinaciones, experiencias, vanidades, debilidades, fortalezas, deseos, sueños, convicciones, valores e intereses. Personas que si quieren llevar a cabo algo, en una democracia deben luchar por una mayoría.

Treuhandgesetz—the Trust Law (officially: Law on the Privatization and Reorganization of the Assets of the People).

on October 3, 1990, the country was reunited.

Two Plus Four Agreement”—a treaty between the Federal Republic of Germany and the German Democratic Republic on one side, and France, the Soviet Union, the UK, and the USA on the other.

It was hard for me to understand why the majority of expropriation cases should be analyzed in detail and judged in favor of the former owners, when virtually no one showed any willingness to compensate the East German citizens—dissidents, the victims of SED crimes, and many pastors’ children, for example—for the lifelong disadvantages they had suffered.

chancellor’s often-discussed authority to decide policy: following one’s own moral compass in certain situations and genuinely assuming ultimate political responsibility.

raised to mark German unity. From Schöneberg in West Berlin, the peal of the Freedom Bell was broadcast in the square in front of the Reichstag. A replica of the famous Liberty Bell in Philadelphia, financed in large part by donations from Americans, this bell had hung in Schöneberg’s town hall since October 1950. To this day, it bears the inscription “That this world under God shall have a new birth of freedom,” echoing President Abraham Lincoln’s Gettysburg Address in 1863, at the turning point in the American Civil War. The inscription had become reality for us, too. The GDR was history. There was only one German state now.

Cuando iba a ver partidos a los estadios, en ocasiones, desde el mismo instante en que un equipo accedía al terreno de juego podía saber por su lenguaje corporal si iba a tener un buen día o no. Era algo que conocía por mi trabajo, cuando entraba en una sala como ponente, ya en los primeros instantes podía percibir si podía conectar con el público o, por el contrario, si entre nosotros se interponía un muro.

I didn’t see the Chernobyl reactor accident as a systemic failure of nuclear power, but as simply a result of Soviet sloppiness.

The desire for freedom and independence from the socialist system was much more evident in Poland than it was at home.

They’ve lost the justification for their existence.