Bravery
Anna interviews in the novel many people whose lives were affected directly by the Stasi. Some of them were pressured to become informants, other were pressured to stop doing what they knew was right and others were imprisoned and tortured. Despite all this, they all remained loyal to their ideas and refused to give in to the pressure. Frau Paul for example was ready to give up seeing her son rather than give up the name of those who wanted to help them escape from the country. While she and her family suffered because of this, they were ready to make the sacrifices needed to protect their fellow citizens from the Stasi.
Manipulation and oppression
The Stasi were masters of manipulation and they did everything they could to ensure they maintained their power. Anna has the opportunity of talking with people who worked for the Stasi and she found from them what strategies the Stasi used to control and manipulate their people. Apart from scaring them into submission and imprisoning the people who disagreed with them, the Stasi also used propaganda to make the people believe the other states wanted to hurt them and stop the country from progressing. While for many coming from outside this was a bogus statement, for the Germans who had no contact with the outside world it was a believable statement and many grew to hate the countries outside the Communist bloc.
History
Both Anna and the people she meets are interested in the history of the country. There are many characters however who refuse to think about the past, claiming it will impact their future in a negative way. There are many characters who refuse to think about what happened to the Jews in the country during the Second World War and who refuse to admit something bad happened during the time the Stasi were in power. Their argument is that they can solve the problems they face by ignoring them rather than dealing with them and they criticize every person who wants do to something else. Anna and the rest of the people she interviews do not agree with that attitude, knowing that if they refuse to acknowledge what happened in the past, they will most likely repeat it. Because of this, they want to make their stories known.
