'I'

Notes

The headquarters of the Ministry for State Security (or Stasi; here: MSS) occupied a complex in Berlin-Lichtenberg between Frankfurter Allee, Normannenstrasse and Magdalenenstrasse. [Back to Text]

Also known as the Liebknecht-Luxemburg Demonstration, held each year on 15 January at the grave of leading German communists Karl Liebknecht and Rosa Luxemburg, murdered in 1919 by a right-wing militia. [Back to Text]

In the 1980s, increasing numbers of GDR citizens — ultimately hundreds of thousands — successfully applied for permission to emigrate. During the long, difficult process, applicants and their families were marginalized and subjected to reprisals and harassment by the authorities. [Back to Text]

Alfred Kurella (1895–1975): one of the GDR’s leading cultural functionaries. [Back to Text]

In the summer of 1989, increasing numbers of GDR citizens sought asylum in embassies (notably, the West German Embassy in Prague) or West Germany’s Permanent Mission in East Berlin. [Back to Text]

In 1976, the GDR expatriated dissident singer-songwriter Wolf Biermann, demonstrating a new hard line and disillusioning broad circles of East German intellectuals, whose attempt to pro- test Biermann’s expulsion was squelched. In the following years, increasing numbers of intellectuals left the country. [Back to Text]

The East German state profited when GDR writers published work in the West, as the hard currency which they received flowed into the state coffers. Beginning in 1979, GDR citizens were required to convert any hard currency they owned into ‘Forum cheques’ at state banks; these cheques could be spent only at ‘Intershops’, state-run retail shops which offered Western goods. These measures ensured a flow of much-needed hard currency. [Back to Text]

Walter Ulbricht (1893–1973): GDR leader from 1950 to 1973. [Back to Text]

A common greeting in the Catholic regions of Southern Germany. [Back to Text]

Pensioners were permitted to travel abroad. [Back to Text]

Rührung ist nur eine Randerscheinung: Allusion to the anthology Berührung ist nur eine Randerscheinung (Connection Is Just a Fringe Phenomenon). See Afterword. [Back to Text]

The official East German term for West Berlin, which the GDR did not recognize as part of West Germany. [Back to Text]

Lavrentiy Beria (1899–1953): chief of the NKVD (Soviet secret police) under Stalin. [Back to Text]

Yuri Andropov (1914–84): general secretary of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union from 1982 to 1984. [Back to Text]

Samuel Beckett, How It Is (1961). [Back to Text]

Giles Deleuze, ‘How Do We Recognize Structuralism?’ in Desert Islands and Other Texts, 1953–1974 (David Lapoujade ed., Mike Taormina, trans.) (Paris: Semiotext(e), 2004), p. 171. [Back to Text]

On his visit to East Berlin in early October 1989 to mark the fortieth anniversary of the founding of the GDR, Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev warned GDR leader Erich Honecker to undertake reforms in response to the massive citizens’ protests. Gorbachev is popularly quoted as saying: ‘Life will punish those who come too late.’ [Back to Text]

Rosa Luxemburg’s best-known saying: ‘Freedom is always the freedom for dissenters.’ [Back to Text]

Hungary was a popular tourist destination for East Germans. In summer 1989, Hungary tolerated, then officially permitted travel across its border to Austria; hence, many East Germans used their Hungarian holidays to escape to the West. [Back to Text]