Peter Richter

I was beginning to think I just imagined the East Germany of the late 80s I grew up in. It seems so very different from everyone else's that I was beginning to doubt my recollections -- the liberties we took, the delicate balance of not breaking the rules hard enough to ruin one's future while being unable to actually take them seriously and assuming that everyone else was in on the joke and just better at pretending.

Did I dream it all? If so, Peter Richter had the same dream, and so I'm torn between being envious that he wrote the book I would have written and being relieved at having my memories confirmed.

I can relate less to the 1990 section of the book. Maybe things were different for me because in East Berlin, the western part of the city was now -- again -- just a city train or subway ride away, but I still sympathize with a lot of the emotions at the passing of a country that, while not being a very good country, had been ours.… (more)