I recall my first reaction, when some tribal elder tried to tell me that Germany had a history in the 1980s too, being along the lines of "None of these guys play flute OR court quasi-atheist philosophes... screw 'em!" So, for a long time, most of my knowledge of Kohl and Honecker came from cribbed Spiegel cartoons or "common German jokes" about them relayed by German teachers that were Very Nearly amusing.

As you can see, my understanding has clearly deepened substantially.

- Count Dolby von Luckner