Welcome to Bookmarker!

This is a personal project by @dellsystem. I built this to help me retain information from the books I'm reading.

Source code on GitHub (MIT license).

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7 years, 4 months ago

the illusion of the Wall

[...] the prognosis for the day the Wall came tumbling down was that the Germans would discover they differed more than they agreed. After forty years of living under such unequal conditions, it seemed likely that they would feel things other than tenderness for each other: lack of understanding, p…

—p.13 The German Comedy: Scenes of Life After the Wall Before the Fall (3) by Peter Schneider
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7 years, 4 months ago

When the Wall became more porous

A friend from Romania--she speak fluent German and had been arrested numerous times as a dissident in her home country--couldn't convince the German authorities of her German identity. Livid with rage, she asked whether she ought to mention that her father had been in the SS and that her uncle had …

—p.9 Before the Fall (3) by Peter Schneider
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7 years, 4 months ago

it wasn't solid enough

But Berliners complained the loudest. They felt threatened by the Wall's new porosity. The almost forgotten phrase "Polish housekeeping"--meaning chaos and disorder--resurfaced. A few people said outright what they didn't like about the Wall: it wasn't solid enough. Finally people saw, and admitted…

—p.6 Before the Fall (3) by Peter Schneider
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7 years, 4 months ago
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7 years, 4 months ago

who was behind it all?

But who was behind it all? Mikhail Gorbachev? No one will disagree that, with perestroika and glasnost, and, most of all, with his explicit rejection of force, Gorbachev set off the avalanche of revolutionary change. But did he know what he was unleashing? I'm sure Gorbachev intended to free th…

—p.viii Preface (vii) by Peter Schneider