MÜLLER: It might sound a bit distant, but this Wende, this turning point, or this so-called turning point, came at least five years too late. In other words, the substance of GDR society had already been hollowed out. It was nothing but a zombie. The opening of the border on November 9, 1989, came too early. It was an occupational accident. No one was prepared for it. Now it’s all just unity pabulum. And the problem is that the people all got caught up in this revolutionary delirium, which was not a beer delirium at first. And now everything is going so fast that they’re quickly being torn apart into interest groups. My dream would have been to have left time for this unification and to approach it gradually. I am rather certain that the tempo of this unification is being determined by the CDU’s interest in reelection.
SPIEGEL: But also by the people’s interest in getting Deutschmarks as quickly as possible.
MÜLLER: Yes. They didn’t know what they were getting with it. They did not reckon with getting far fewer Deutschmarks in comparison with the people in the Federal Republic.
SPIEGEL: Dreams of paradise in times of revolution are always like that.
MÜLLER: And now these illusions are breaking down. Now the lethargy is taking over.
SPIEGEL: Do you think that a new GDR consciousness will emerge, a nostalgia?
MÜLLER: No, not in the next five years. What will emerge are pogroms, outbreaks of violence, aggression on the streets and everywhere. That will increase.
SPIEGEL: You said that this turning point, the Wende, came five years too late. Do I sense a bit of self-criticism in that? If anyone could have precipitated it five years ago, it would have been the intellectuals.
MÜLLER: No, that is not at all the case.
SPIEGEL: Why not?
MÜLLER: I already said what I thought five or ten years ago – here and, of course, also in the West. But I played the role of the clown, the fool.
SPIEGEL: Okay, so no self-criticism, but criticism of your colleagues?
MÜLLER: Maybe also of myself. But it makes no sense to play the Winkelried.* There were always discussions on literature, that a writer has to be a communist first and a writer second. I would say: I am a writer first and a hero second.
* Arnold von Winkelried is a legendary hero of Swiss history, who is said to have saved the victory of the Old Swiss Confederacy by throwing himself onto the pikes of the Habsburg soldiers, taking them down with his body so that the confederates could attack through the opening – trans.
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