In the period from summer ’89 to February ’90, my most important contacts outside my seminar group were all studying abroad in the Soviet Union. They weren’t there when I needed them most. And in the Soviet Union, they couldn’t watch Western television and were only allowed to read Neues Deutschland and Junge Welt. In other words, they were completely disconnected. At the time, I had a very intensive correspondence with two women with whom I am still very good friends today. I wrote many of the letters with carbon copies because the letters had very long delivery times and so that I still knew what they were replying to. It took two or three weeks for the letter to arrive, and then again until the reply came back.

The positive side of it was that I was able to clear up a lot of my confused thoughts because I clarify a lot of things for myself when I write. And because I always had to write the letters twice, once to one friend and once to the other, I always had to go through them twice. I did that almost every evening. I would sit and write for many hours in the evening. Obviously the letters all arrived, I had numbered them consecutively so that any gaps would be obvious. I didn’t realise at the time that the STASI opened the mail, read it and then sent it on. The letters were also an important source of clarification for me afterwards. Being able to read again what I thought and felt at the time.

I can also read in the letters how often I despaired about the GDR. The despair came from the fact that I grew up with a kind of ideal, like probably many children my age – and then saw this ideal gradually being destroyed. I thought: This can’t be true. They say they are philanthropic and in favour of peace. And if you stand on the market square in Jena with a candle and say: I’m in favour of peace, you’ll be thrown in jail and deported to the West. I even considered joining the party to change the system from within. Almost everyone has probably had that thought. My father listened to me. He had already been in the party for many years. He then said that was rubbish. Don’t do that. It’s rubbish. You can’t do it. After he said that to me so calmly, I never thought about it again. In between, I went through a phase where I thought it would be better to go to a country where I didn’t have any idealistic expectations, then I wouldn’t be able to break them.

Read more: in „Mother, don’t worry. Everything is fine here. Everyday life from 1989“ (also some of the letters). Publication of Frauenkultur Leipzig, 2009; 2nd edition in 2021. click here->