Thomas Lukow from Berlin came to the Long Night of Democracy as a contemporary witness to talk to us.
 At first we thought it was about the Second World War. But he was much too young for that. No.

He came from East Germany.  When the Wall came down, he was barely 30. He was in the SED youth organization, the FDJ, until he was 18. Then he finally got fed up with the constant indoctrination. The talk of the class enemy. The spying by the Stasi, which took place everywhere, even in the churches. So he resigned from the FDJ.
That had consequences for his life: Training place gone. He lost his studies. He had to get by. He had all kinds of jobs. Hardly any money. He took music lessons privately. He played jazz and had his little gigs in the East Berlin cultural scene. That kept him going.
At 22, he tried to cross the Iron Curtain that ran through the middle of his city, Berlin, and flee to the West. He was caught. On suspicion of Republikflucht, he had to serve two years in jail.

That and his GDR youth left such an impression on him that he tells everyone about it today. He tours the Stasi Museum in Berlin and gives lectures. What a dictatorship does to people, he explained to us in conversation. We can't want to happen something like that again!