The American Spectator

Print Email

Text Size

The Spectacle Blog

It's been two decades since the Berlin Wall fell.  The road to freedom has been rocky, but it is hard to remember the awful world that once existed:  dreary, brutal, repressive prison states extending from East Germany all the way to the Pacific.

It turns out that West German intelligence collected East German jokes as a measure of discontent behind the Wall.  Laughter was an important form of resistance.  The Daily Telegraph reports:

Among the jokes recorded in the files were:

Did East Germans originate from apes?

Impossible. Apes could never have survived on just two bananas a year.

What would happen if the desert became communist?

Nothing for a while - and then there would be a sand shortage!

How do you double the value of a Trabant?

Answer: Fill it up with petrol.

And the regime reacted accordingly.  Explains the Daily Telegraph:

Thousands lost jobs, families and sometimes even their liberty for poking fun at the worker's paradise.

On November 9 we all should raise a glass in remembrance of the fall of the Wall.