The Lives of Others (2006)

Sebastian Koch: Georg Dreyman

Photos 

Quotes 

• Georg Dreyman : You know what Lenin said about Beethoven's Appassionata, 'If I keep listening to it, I won't finish the revolution.' Can anyone who has heard this music, I mean truly heard it, really be a bad person?

• Georg Dreyman : The state office for statistics on Hans-Beimler street counts everything; knows everything: how many pairs of shoes I buy a year: 2.3, how many books I read a year: 3.2 and how many students graduate with perfect marks: 6,347. But there's one statistic that isn't collected there, perhaps because such numbers cause even paper-pushers pain: and that is the suicide rate.

• Georg Dreyman : You are a great artist. I know that, and your audience knows it, too. You don't need him. You don't need him. Stay here. Don't go to him.

  Christa-Maria Sieland : No? I don't need him? Don't I need this whole system? What about you? Then you don't need it either, or need it even less. But you get in bed with them, too. Why do you do it? Because they can destroy you too, despite your talent and your faith. Because they decide what we play, who is to act, and who can direct.

• Georg Dreyman : I want to ask you one thing.

  Minister Bruno Hempf : Anything, my dear Dreyman.

  Georg Dreyman : Why wasn't my flat wired? Everyone was under surveillance. Why not me?

  Minister Bruno Hempf : [whispers]  You were under full surveillance. We knew everything about you.

  Georg Dreyman : Full surveillance?

  Minister Bruno Hempf : The whole place was bugged. The works.

  Georg Dreyman : Impossible.

  Minister Bruno Hempf : Take a look behind your light switches. We knew everything. We even knew that you weren't man enough to satisfy our little Christa.

  Georg Dreyman : [contemptuously]  To think that people like you ruled a country.

• Paul Hauser : [to Hessenstein]  We know you're working with the Stasi!

  Georg Dreyman : Paul! No, Paul, I don't know that!