What can we learn from the GDR experiment?

In the fourth and last part of my conversation with Susanne Mueller, we turn to the future, but also look back at the world that shaped her biography and see if there is anything that we can learn from the failed socialist experiment. What Susanne took with her from the GDR is a spirit of invention, a certain modesty and the principle of equality. So Susanne is still not happy to join the consumer society. At some point she wants to move to Tasmania and live there in a very sustainable way. She doesn’t identify with Germany any more, whether east or west. Above all, the political development to the right is incomprehensible to her. We also come to talk about the gruesome methods of the Stasi, because when Susanne visited the Stasi Museum in the mid-2000s, as a teacher accompanying an Australian school class, she discovered even she, as an ex citizen, didn't know everything about what the dissidents had to suffer at the hands of the secret service.

Susanne Mueller auf der Veranda ihres nachhaltigen Traumhauses in Tassie Source: Susanne Mueller