Till Lindemann Quotes

After the turmoil of the Second World War, my family ended up in Russian-occupied East Germany. When I attended fourth grade, I had to learn Russian as my first foreign language in school. I found this quite difficult because of the Cyrillic alphabet, but as time went on, I seemed to do all right.

Move beyond the educated elite, and the great majority in most countries outside Europe don't speak English.

When I turned 11, we had to leave East Germany overnight because of the political orientation of my father. Now I was going to school in West Germany, which was American-occupied at that time. There in school, all children were required to learn English and not Russian. To learn Russian had been difficult, but English was impossible for me.

I grew up in East Germany, so we had to learn Russian in school... everybody hated it. I never thought it would come in handy... And being an actor, I've been able to use it quite a bit.

We were behind the iron curtain at last.

People in Tel Aviv can not imagine, but in 1990, here in Leipzig or Dresden, whoever wanted to buy a car had to wait 14 years. The East Germans worked like people in the West, but the fruits of their labor were harvested by a criminal regime.

My father loved to take us on historical vacations, and you should have seen the stares we received in East Berlin.

From Stettin in the Baltic to Trieste in the Adriatic, an iron curtain has descended across the continent.

Every German child learns to speak English in school.

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.

Since German reunification in 1990, historians and researchers have been free to work in the East, where the lost Nazi art collection disappeared.

I can recall photographs of Comrade Ulbricht being embraced by Comrade Brezhnev, which must have been like putting your arms around Grant's Tomb.

When I was 11 years old, my family had to leave East Germany and begin a new life in West Germany overnight. Until my father could get back into his original profession as a government employee, my parents operated a small laundry business in our little town. I became the laundry delivery boy.

My father's really fluent in French, but I can't speak at all. I actually took it twice in school already and failed both times!

Growing up in eastern Germany, I knew of Superman, but he didn't resonate emotionally with me.

All Italians speak Spanish without studying.

Fools, most linguists. Damn all to say in one language, so they learn another and say damn all in that.

… the unfortunate but inevitable connection between the word “socialism” and the unmitigated crucifixion of Civil Liberties in the East [Eastern Europe dominated by the Russian Communist Party.

Bilingual education doesn’t work, and it has never worked.

The only thing the East German system taught us was that we should never do it that way again.

The language skill in the U.S. for the most part has been awful. Many Americans don't learn any foreign language.

When you think of the Cold War, there are various places where you imagine espionage. Espionage crossroads of the Cold War bring you to the backstreets of Berlin, or Vienna.

Romania, which had the worst dictator in Eastern Europe, Ceausescu, he was a darling of the West. The United States and Britain loved him. He was supported until the last minute.

Very early, it became clear to me that East Germany could not function.

Sadly, my German is almost non-existent, although I did a little at school.