“To remember or to forget – which is healthier” (pg.52) Funders Stasiland argues that remembering the past is important, to what extent do you agree?
INTRODUCTION
* Funder is fascinated by the question of how those who lived in the former GDR, whether believers in the regime or not, deal with the past. * For victims like Miriam, Julia and Frau Paul, recalling the past is extremely painful. Each has suffered experiences that some would prefer to forget. * Funder also possesses a personal mission: to understand how former East Germans lived behind the Wall and their experiences once the Wall fell. She is fascinated by people who suffered at the hands of the regime as well as those who worked for it, and their responses when the world as they knew it changed overnight. * ‘The stories of ordinary people’

PARAGRAPH ONE * Characters from the story who remember, that Funder praises * Julia - Julia is seeing a psychotherapist during the time period in which she slowly reveals her past experiences to Funder. She withdrew from the world after her imprisonment and experiences with the Stasi, as well as having to deal with the trauma of being raped soon after the fall of the Wall. Julia’s psychotherapist wants her to confront her past, in order to move on with her life, hence her search for the letters from the Italian boyfriend. Stasiland ends with the reader finding out Julia has embraced a new life in California * Miriam - Miriam has suffered immense grief over Charlie’s inexplicable death and her own imprisonment. She has invested considerable emotional energy in her search for answers and lives a life ‘suspended’ * Frau Paul * Her role as narrator also allows the reader to know how she feels—to see events and people from her point of view. Funder sheds tears as she talks to Miriam, Julia and Frau Paul. * She feels