Barbara Sukowa Quotes

I grew up in the time of Germany after the war.

You cannot not know history.

History lets you know exactly where you are today. And if you pay attention to it, it gives you a broad perspective of everyone. You can relate it to pretty much any time.

I think that America has an obsession with history, really.

I knew German history well, and out of my experiences in the rest of the world I believed to know the German kind; therefore I never doubted that, although for the time being all indications were against it, one day a change would come.

But Germany will always suffer, I fear, from the intensely dramatic character of the crimes of the Third Reich.

There comes a time in the history of nations when their peoples must become fully reconciled to their past if they are to go forward with confidence to embrace their future.

We can't afford to deny our past in a bid to be empowered. But what we can do is contextualize the past.

It's very important to always put things in their historical contexts. It teaches important lessons about the country in question.

Until we perceive the meaning of our past, we remain the mere carriers of ideas, like the Nomads.

I spent a little time in Germany as a schoolboy learning German, and it's a country I knew very well, spent a lot of time in. I knew the history very well. I've always wanted to do a piece of work about the post-war period, of one sort or another.

…every country has different needs, conditions, values, histories, societal concerns, and dynamics.

The sense of German history is a constantly repeated attempt to find the beginning.

Many Germans dream of revenge today.

When the Second World War came to an end in Europe, my uncle Sir Alexander Korda was the first filmmaker to reopen offices in Germany and Austria.

I am not a German bitter-ender. I am, though, a German never-forgetter.

We needed 40 years to overcome East Germany. Sometimes in history, one has to be prepared for the long haul and not ask after four months if it still makes sense to keep up our demands.

Unless we know where we've been as a country, we don't know where we are or where we are going.

It is important to understand the philosophy of the city and country.

Without understanding your history, you can't get a perspective about the present.

Use it, enjoy it, but always handle history with care.

I work with history because I come from a country that has a tremendous thirst for reality.

Germany's historical responsibility will not expire. We want to live up to it - and you should judge us on it.

If you go to Germany and get drunk, at some point you will try to look up Hitler in the phone book.

I love Germany so much that I preferred when there were two.