Heidi Bohley

"I've always said that what we did, the events and everything in general, was nothing special. The remarkable thing was that we did it in the GDR. Therefore, it is now somewhat hard to explain what we did there. We were swimming against the current and we basically - at some point we knew then how to call it - tried to live in truth."

"We lived in parallel societies. So, I think Germany was not only divided into East and West, but the East was even subdivided still further. Internally? Internally. And you very quickly developed a sensorium, whether you can trust someone. It made you recognize if the person sitting opposite to you was your brain child or not. And then these people came together, especially the young people. There were entire groups of friends, in Jena and in Weimar and Berlin, and they knew each other. [What kind of issues did you debate back then?] Well, that was in the period of the suppression of the Prague Spring. We debated the prospects of socialism and how it could go on, how it should develop, and uh, we compared, so to speak, the theory with the practice of socialism. We also aimed to develop a critical analysis of the events and the goal was actually to not just criticize and whine and to say 'everything sucks', but to name concrete things worthy of improvement, also with an eye a little bit to our own protection. So that we would not be perceives as to be against socialism, but to have concrete demands and ideas. And that is often being misunderstood by historians, when they look at the period documents and when they read there "well, we are for socialism", then they say 'Yes, you all were indeed for socialism'. But this sentence was always also a cover up - you did not want to be in the anti-government corner."

"It is also a personal decision what kind of friends you make. You can indeed make friends that are more courageous than yourself and you can then at least support them. So, this sentence 'one cannot do anything', I think that's nonsense. You can always do something. And even if one is really anxious, you can at least back up those who dare a bit more than yourself. Yes, and then came Bärbel and said we had to do something because if nothing had been done at that time, if there was no protest, then they could do whatever they liked next. And even though it was very obvious, it was clear that we could do nothing against this law, yet, still the lack of any protest would have encouraged them to take the next step. We then filed written submissions because you had in the GDR the formal right to complain to the highest places, if you disliked something. The law said that you had to get a response in a given period. Usually, people would complain because they got no flat or because the gutter was dripping ... and then it was most often passed down again by the State Council to the authority through which one had complained in the first place and they answered your complaint. Yeah, it was such a sham democracy. And so we wrote to the State, we protested against this military-service law, and we made it clear that we did not agree with the mustering of women and we sent the complaint. And I was really terribly scared, also because of my experience with a friend, subversive elements... so I thought, because when I'm writing a letter, I mean, we will not be able to change the law, it is basically equal to knocking at the door of the national security and saying 'hello, I'm back again'. But it was, indeed, it's actually always been like this in my whole life. I've always thought 'yeah, that's important and someone has to do it'. And although it would have been dearer to me if somebody else had done it, there was simply nobody else there, so you had to do it yourself. And so I wrote this complaint and underneath it - there's now this exhibition on this story with the women and the complaints, and there this sentence was quoted. At that time, I didn't think that it would ever appear publicly, but I was very satisfied with the sentence. Underneath it, I wrote 'Gentlemen, your army will have to do without me'."