YouSaid · the spoken record

Angela Merkel

lines on the record: 57
first: 2024-12-09
most recent: 2024-12-09
sittings or episodes: 1
sources: podcast

Every line below is reproduced as it was said and linked to the record it came from. Nothing here is summarised or generated. Directory · Search · Corrections

“And let's prepare. I remember the 9th of November 1989, I went to the sauna, nevertheless, with a friend. And I talked to her about this. And then very briefly, we went to a pub, having a beer, and I was actually living close to a border crossing point, born on Machse, which is where a big flow of people could be seen on the street. I saw them with my bag, where I had my soner towel and everything with me. I was also sort of joining them. And then we had somebody from the West walking up to us once we had crossed, inviting us for a beer. Then I went back home as a good citizen that I was, because in the next morning I had work and I wanted to go to Poland the week after, didn't have my presentation ready yet, so I thought, well, you cannot go to Kufos and Tham now. You haven't got your work. You can't go dancing there. You need to go back and then try and get some seabird.”
2024-12-09 · The Rest Is Politics: Leading · 111. Angela Merkel: Putin, Trump, and Europe's future · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“We could feel that ever since Gorbachev had taken over power in Moscow, things became a little bit easier on you. There was more freedom of maneuver in the summer 1989. A lot of people, as you know, fled via Hungary. The Hungarians had opened the dividing line, and there was something in the air. Nobody really knew what was happening. I came at one time from the Academy of Sciences where I worked and I heard Gunther Shabowski saying on the radio, which I had switched on, that freedom of travel is possible. I thought I couldn't hear right. And I called my mother and said, have you heard this? Because we had a saying, we said, well, once the war comes down, we go to Kampinski in Berlin and eat oysters. And I said, well, it may well happen very soon. And do look whether we have some West German money.”
2024-12-09 · The Rest Is Politics: Leading · 111. Angela Merkel: Putin, Trump, and Europe's future · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Interesting about the GDR was that at first you did find a lot of people who were also critical about the state of the GDR, like-minded people, if you like, who actually rejected this state. We talk less about how we ourselves might envisage a society once the war had come down because it was fictional. It was not something that we thought was possible. So it was a very limited time in history where we had to decide those of us in which political direction we wanted to go once it came down. And with me, it was only a few months. So when you say, what do you learn in the GDI? You learn that Present because the state imposed certain boundaries. Was you felt If we have best computers, we Once the war had come down”
2024-12-09 · The Rest Is Politics: Leading · 111. Angela Merkel: Putin, Trump, and Europe's future · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“And then when the war came down, my mother actually became a member of the Social Democratic Party. So you could say, politically speaking, they were indeed a little bit to the left of me.”
2024-12-09 · The Rest Is Politics: Leading · 111. Angela Merkel: Putin, Trump, and Europe's future · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Was the one who made this decision. He was a parson. He had studied theology in what was then the Federal Republic of Germany. And even before he started his studies, he sort of had this plan to come back to go to the East because he felt that Christians also in the GDR needed good pastoral guidance. And my mother followed him because she loved him. It was not her wish and for her it had actually quite difficult consequences. She had studied English and Latin. She wanted to be a teacher. That was something that she was not allowed to do in the GDR because a vicar. And so she had to assume this kind of reduced life, if you like. But the trigger was actually actuated by my father. And on the whole, my father was also enthusiastic about the liberation theology. So he was more or less...”
2024-12-09 · The Rest Is Politics: Leading · 111. Angela Merkel: Putin, Trump, and Europe's future · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Might entail certain remarks that we made in public, but on the other hand, we had safe havens. We had protected areas with our parents, with our friends, and that is what a happy childhood is all about. As a child, very early on, I learned to make a difference between the public sphere where the state was all watchful and the private part. This is what you do in liberal societies as well. But here it was a matter of surviving because if you had a difficulty, if you Made remarks about certain political situations you had to learn that this might actually entail long-term and very difficult consequences.”
2024-12-09 · The Rest Is Politics: Leading · 111. Angela Merkel: Putin, Trump, and Europe's future · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“both for inviting me and indeed my book Freedom describes if you like two parts of my life the first 35 years I lived in the GDR the second 35 years in reunited Germany and these first 35 years of obviously left also an imprint and influenced me as regards the second part it's not all that easy to describe in just a few sentences what life in the GDR was like what it was made of many people who grow up in a democratic society thought it was difficult for me because I was a Christian because it was dominated completely by the state and this is why I call my childhood a happy one because it was not completely true on the one hand we had the state that taught us to be very very careful very circumspect to always try and weigh in the balance what sort of difficult”
2024-12-09 · The Rest Is Politics: Leading · 111. Angela Merkel: Putin, Trump, and Europe's future · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source