When I was a young boy, during the aftermath of World War II, Germany was broken and in ruins. Many people were hungry, sick, and dying. I remember well the humanitarian shipments of food and clothing that came from the Church in Salt Lake City.
Up until the First World War, when people turned anti-German, Germany had been described by American political scientists as the model of democracy.
My grandfather arrived in Houston in 1942 as a refugee from Nazi Germany. He had lost everything – his profession, his language, his money – but the city welcomed him, as it has hundreds of thousands of immigrants over the years.
I was born in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, on June 15, 1916. My father, an electrical engineer, had come to the United States in 1903 after earning his engineering diploma at the Technische Hochschule of Darmstadt, Germany.
I certainly like working in Germany.
Germany’s fascinating. It’s a really rich landscape to film and dramatise.
I have had almost only positive experiences in Germany. I want to be very clear about that.
The dangerous American fascist is the man who wants to do in the United States in an American way what Hitler did in Germany in a Prussian way.
In Germany, you have to see that there are not a lot of black people in the media. I am a tiny bit of colour on German TV and there are a lot of kids who write to me.
Germany has spent the decades since World War II in national penance for Nazi crimes. America spent the decades after the Civil War transforming Confederate crimes into virtues. It is illegal to fly the Nazi flag in Germany. The Confederate flag is enmeshed in the state flag of Mississippi.
As a result of the World War, this old Germany collapsed. It collapsed in its constitution, in its social order, in its economic structure. Its thinking and feeling changed.
The pressure in Hollywood is bigger to look good than in Germany. In Germany, we are more forgiving. Having a personal coach in Germany is not nearly as common as in Hollywood. In Hollywood, I think everyone has a personal trainer.
Our failure to properly deal with Germany and Japan early cost the world dearly later on. We dare not make the same mistake with China.
My kids miss me when I’m away, but I don’t mind living out of a suitcase. The U.K., U.S., France, Germany, Iraq… it’s such a thrill meeting people of different cultures, learning about and from them. It’s changed my perception about life, humanity and spirituality.
In the United States, the wealthy have a tradition of charity. But in Germany, the rich say, ‘We pay taxes. It’s enough.’
I was thinking about finding a coach and I was able to find a coach and he was based out of Germany, and I had no problem going over there training if I know this is worth it and is going to make me better. The worst that could happen is I don’t like it. I really, really enjoyed it and was able to get a lot better.
At present, England, America, France, Italy, and Japan constitute the so-called ‘Big Five.’ Even with the rise of Germany and Soviet Russia, the world has only seven Powers. When China becomes strong, she can easily win first place in the Council of Nations.
The Cold War practice of garrisoning large numbers of troops with their families on massive bases in places like Germany is now, in part, obsolete.
I just wanted to play football and didn’t get the chance in Germany in my second season there.
At a very young age, I was in Germany watching TV and I told my mom I wanted to be an actor. She said, ‘Go for it.’ When my dad retired from the military, we moved to Los Angeles, and it all kicked off.
The rise of China as a new power is another great challenge for the US. Our failure to properly handle Germany and Japan earlier in the 20th century cost us and the world dearly. We must not make this same mistake with China.
The euro is a vital issue for Germany. There is no other country that derives as much benefit from the common domestic market and the monetary union as Germany.
I don’t see a film industry in Germany. They have a great TV culture, but how many German films are really exciting?
I feel privileged to have grown up in Germany so it was a heavy blow for me to be portrayed as somebody who isn’t integrated and who doesn’t live his life according to German values.
If high-wage, high-cost nations like Germany and Japan can compete on exports, California can.
Looking back, I’m almost happy I lost that fight. Just imagine if I would have come back to Germany with a victory. I had nothing to do with the Nazis, but they would have given me a medal. After the war I might have been considered a war criminal.
The role of Italy and of Austria has diminished as has that of France and Britain; Germany and Japan have suffered catastrophically.
This fact lays on us – so long as the maintenance of good relations with Russia seems to us worth an effort – the duty of satisfying Russia that she has no need to fear any invasion of her sphere of interests on Germany’s part.
My father was a military judge, and my mother was a psychiatric social worker. My brother and sister and I were moved around constantly, in and outside the U.S., living in Germany for much of our teens.
In Germany I am not so famous.
My struggle led to the reunification of Germany and the creation of the state of Europe. We destroyed the borders; globalisation is on the horizon.
You could grow up in Germany in the postwar years without ever meeting a Jewish person. There were small communities in Frankfurt or Berlin, but in a provincial town in south Germany, Jewish people didn’t exist.
I wanted to go outside of Germany and I saw English football as a big, big challenge.
I want to warn anyone who sees the Peace Corps as an alternative to the draft that life may well be easier at Fort Dix or at apost in Germany than it will be with us.
The one thing with writing stories about the rise of fascism is that if you wait long enough, you’ll almost certainly be proved right. Fascism is like a hydra – you can cut off its head in the Germany of the ’30s and ’40s, but it’ll still turn up on your back doorstep in a slightly altered guise.
I watched the Premier League regularly in Germany. It is the most famous league in the world, and I have always enjoyed it.
I’m sorry to say this, but Putin is spreading lies. He is doing this with the goal of removing Stalin’s Russia responsibility for starting the war jointly with Nazi Germany. I assumed he is ashamed of that.
But now, with the Internet, your picture is up and they’re seeing you in Japan and Germany. That’s what happened, and that’s why I became more visible. Nothing I did was calculated.
My father was in the service. His job was to integrate the Armed Forces overseas. So that meant we showed up at military bases in Okinawa or Germany, racially unannounced. That made me, in that particular society if you will, the outsider.
Here in Germany, we have emotional players, too.
Germany stays and falls with the success of the policy of Hitler.
I used to say that I got to Germany as a boy but I left as a man.
When I was very young, I remember my mother telling me about a friend of hers in Germany, a pianist who played a symphony that wasn’t permitted, and the Germans came up on stage and broke every finger on her hands. I grew up with stories of Nazis breaking the fingers of Jews.
As soon as I heard there were people in Germany who wanted to restore the old part of Dresden, I wanted to help. Even before the Nobel, I had started this group, the Friends of Dresden. The destruction of Dresden made a big impression on me when I was a child, and I wanted to do this.
I think that in a year I may retire. I cannot take my money with me when I die and I wish to enjoy it, with my family, while I live. I should prefer living in Germany to any other country, though I am an American, and am loyal to my country.
After watching ‘Peepshow,’ people always say to me that it was more than what they expected. It is so much more than a musical. It has a lot of energy and is fast-paced. You are entertained the whole time watching it. One guy from Germany watched ‘Peepshow’ every single day for the whole week he was in Vegas.
I went to Germany taking a chance on seeing what Europe was like, and taking on that new challenge. Obviously it wasn’t for me at the time, but I always had that goal to come back to the U.S. and work hard and hopefully go back to Europe.
Even though Japan and Germany were not formal allies at the time that Japan conquered Shanghai in 1937, still, Frenchtown was an area that Japan could take complete control of – and they did. And it was the locus of nightlife.
We are concerned that Germany, which has protected the PKK and DHKP-C for years, has become the backyard of the Gulenist terror organisation.
The vast majority of Muslims living here are peaceful citizens. Unfortunately, however, we also see religious and political fanaticism among Muslim groups in Germany.
They dedicated the whole time until around Nov. 10, 2003 to questioning me about Canada and Sept. 11; they didn’t ask me a single question about Germany, where I really had the center of gravity of my life.
In the wake of the collapse of the Soviet Union, everyone in America assumed that there would be wars to follow – wars over the reunification of Germany, over the nations within the sphere of Soviet influence, and more. There weren’t, because George H. W. Bush’s policies and diplomacy prevented that.
