No one can take this daily decision away from you: you must face it yourself.
And if your life is to have any meaning, you must choose socialism every day and every hour.
For these words by Goethe apply to your generation like no other: “You must rise and fall, You must be master and win, or serve and lose, grieve or triumph, be the anvil or the hammer.”
[ . . . ]
Has Youth Earned Our Confidence?
There are many older people in the GDR who trust the youth, understand them, and help them. But some older citizens of the GDR still feel uneasy about young people and somewhat mistrustful towards them. Although they know that our youth is different from the youth of West Germany. But they believe that our girls and boys will not be able to meet the high demands that the comprehensive build-up of socialism places on them. Such skeptics judge our young workers and collective farmers, our young technicians, engineers, artists, and scientists by external appearances. They mostly concern themselves only superficially with the problems of the youth. They approach the youth with bureaucratic methods and are then surprised when working with young people is “complicated.” They are not familiar with Lenin’s remark that young people will come to socialism in a different way than their fathers. The Socialist Unity Party of Germany has nothing in common with all those who mistrust our youth. Our party operates on the premise that placing high demands on young people shows the greatest confidence in them at the same time.
A lot is demanded of you, girls and boys of the German Democratic Republic: Buttressed by a more than century-long tradition of the workers’ movement, and true to the advice and experiences of your fathers, you are asked to help build a state that represents the future of Germany, here in the GDR. By now it is clear to every independent-thinking young person that the future of all of Germany lies only in a socialist order.
Therefore, the girls and boys who work hard for the GDR today are also working for the entire nation!
We call upon all smart and industrious boys and girls [and say] do not let that which your mothers and fathers have created in the GDR be dragged through the mud by anyone! Wherever it might still be fashionable to speak poorly of the GDR and its achievements, young people who hold their own accomplishments dear should always honor the truth and should meticulously distinguish the great achievements from the shortcomings that still exist.
[ . . . ]
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