WORD OF MOUTH:
 
Some news comes by word of mouth and smuggled messages. Brave people travel back and forth to carry it.
 
In the mid-70s, for example, Rainer Eppelmann's alternative church services become forums for dissent.
 
Church-goers discuss liberty of travel, fear of police and communist control over people's professional development. Books from the west are in high demand, as is news of expatriates. Some journalists from the West act as secret couriers.
 
" ...basically you caught it through the west media... it was indeed complicated to get close to books from the west. You had to find someone who had the courage to take this with him. ...At the moment when western journalists could come into GDR and then I got into contact with the others...and many journalists who were willing to take letters from me to the other side or the other way round."
– Courtesy of GDR Oral History Project
   Hoover Institution for War, Revolution and Peace
   and Stanford University