QOTD

In his book The Berlin Wall, Fredrick Taylor describes (pages 107-09) East Germany's Waldsiedlung (forest settlement) compound for senior government officials:

They had at their disposal the large and roomy Functionaries' Clubhouse complex (known as the 'F-Club'). This contain a cinema and swimming pool. In the F-Club's restaurant [Communist party] functionaries and their families could also eat extremely modestly priced meals (four marks for roast venison!), cooked by a team of gourmet chefs who followed there every culinary or dietary whim. . . There was also a general store where fresh food and (usually imported) household necessities were available, though, given the astonishingly reasonably priced menu, functionaries and their families tended to eat at the club restaurant. The store, like the . . . restaurant, was guaranteed the best produce at all times, including foreign and Western goods accessed through Stasi channels. . .

The employment conditions of the settlement staff were very demanding. A circular to the domestic help from Stasi minister Erich Mielke admonished them that 'by showing an amenable and professional attitude, and by sensitively carrying out of their duties, [they] should constantly foster the subjective well-being of our leading representatives.' This was wryly referred to by staff as the 'Love-Me-Directive.'

For all the egalitarian rhetoric [in the German Democratic Republic], the atmosphere [in the compound] was not unlike a traditional feudal estate. The gamekeeper upon whose shoulder the ageing [initially Stasi chief, subsequently General Secretary Erich] Honecker rested his gun when he took aim and fired at the wildlife, went deaf in his right ear.