"We did it because it was ace. It was just ace. We did something, we showed determination, like I always said, we got our foot in the door and pushed so it opened wider and wider…"
Dirk Moldt was born in Berlin and moved to Friedrichshain as a young adult. There he became involved in "Offene Arbeit" and "Kirche von Unten" circles and the author and editor of “mOAning stars”, a dissident samizdat publication. Motivated by his democratic convictions as well as his wish to live together with his friends, in 1989 he and a group of others squatted a house in East Berlin. He remembers the violent attacks on squatted houses by "rightwing thugs" and the murder of his friend Silvio Meier, who was stabbed to death by neo-Nazis in 1992. But he also looks back on the new opportunities that he and others gained after the Wall came down. A trained clockmaker, from 1996 to 2002 he studied history, gained a doctorate in 2007, and is now head of collections at Lichtenberg Museum.
"It’s a feeling of liberation, it still is. We couldn’t have become anything in the GDR. I would probably have become a frustrated little … perhaps I would have studied something, but it wouldn’t have been anything great – I wouldn‘t have been able to become what I am now, neither my children, or my relatives."
Additional information:
Publications and cartoons by Dirk Moldt (only in german): http://www.dirk-moldt.de
Eyewitness Dirk Moldt (only in german): https://www.zeitzeugen-portal.de/personen/zeitzeuge/dirk_moldt
Dirk Moldt, Youth opposition in the GDR (only in german): https://www.jugendopposition.de/lexikon/personen/148125/dirk-moldt
Information on the "Church from below" and the squats (only in german): https://besetzensowieso.de/tag/dirk-moldt/