I had witnessed the last parade in my lifetime in which German soldiers would goose step

Goose-stepping, grey-uniformed infantry, the unhappy heirs to the Prussian martial tradition, seemed keen to demonstrate their superiority over any other European infantry. I retreated to a café after half an hour to write in my diary: 'When the Wall comes down, as it must, the thoughts of all this Prussian military tradition married to West German economic power is extremely disturbing' (7 October 1989). Happily, I was wrong: after reunification the quietude of the West German military quickly infected the former East German military; I had witnessed the last parade in my lifetime in which German soldiers would goose step.

R. Bassett, Last days in old Europe (2019), 143

The system that specialised in preventing you

'In Erfurt, I became radicalised against the system. The system that specialised in preventing you. Preventing you full stop.'

I had felt the same at sixteen, in the same system. I'd felt old before I was young. In a liberal democracy, Felix would have been a run-of-the-mill anarchist, a regular angry young man, and his rebellion would have run its course. But not in East Germany in 1971.

K. Kassabova, Border (2017), 92