I have no quarrel with that; I certainly was not trying to whitewash the GDR. Perhaps in the days of Brexit we should recall that one of the significant contributory factors that was responsible for the loss of popular domestic support for the GDR was the denial of its people's right to free movement over frontiers. Given the artificial nature of the state, the enormous disparity in economic strength in East and West Germany, and the decline of the Soviet Union (economic and political) it's hard to see how the GDR could have survived.
I see that there is a new (2015), German TV series based on Bruno Apitz's "Naked Among Wolves", which was originally filmed in the GDR. Has anyone on this list seen it? I'm interested to hear what its political position is. I have had Bill Niven's book "The Buchenwald Child" (2007) unread on my shelf for a long while; I must make an effort to read it. It is an exhaustive account of the real history of the boy in Apitz's novel.