Kati Witt "The most beautiful face of socialism" First of all, it is undisputed that Ms. Witt was an exceptional athlete and the best female figure skater of her time. She richly deserved her many titles, as they were backed by incredibly hard training and above all an unyielding will. But then my praise runs out, because she was not just a follower of the system – like Jens Weißflog, who managed to fly under the radar – but she openly supported the SED regime. Her speech as an FDJ delegate at the SED party congress in 1986 is all too well known, where she spouted the same hollow phrases as all the party hacks there. And this, even though she should have known better, as she was often in the West as a travel cadre and saw how much better life was for the people there. That her closeness to the state and party leadership massively damaged her reputation among the public, she experienced firsthand when she moderated a rock festival in 1988 and was mercilessly booed and whistled at by the audience. Visibly irritated and embarrassingly uncomfortable, she stumbled through the event, and honestly: I enjoyed her being put in her place back then. And of course, she maximally benefited from the system and grabbed whatever she could. The stories about a gifted, fully furnished apartment in Karl-Marx-Stadt are well-known. Also, the fact that she received a Wartburg for her parents, which wasn't so unusual for the "golden children" of the GDR, as she was by no means the only one to be treated so generously by the system. Additionally, her extravagant clothing style made ordinary women beside her look like Cinderella. Dressed in prohibitively expensive clothes from the West, envy and hatred were practically guaranteed, which she probably didn't understand or didn't want to see. However, the full extent of her misdeeds only came to light with her Stasi file, which documented how many "benefits" she received from the Stasi. And not just like that; she actively demanded these "gifts." For example, she wanted a VW bus from the West, which they couldn't provide for her. So she was consolationed with a VW Golf. The "golden girl" had to be kept in line since she could have easily stayed in the West during her many trips there. One can give her credit for apparently not being an informant for the Stasi. All in all, "The most beautiful face of socialism" is, in my eyes, a dud from a purely human perspective, who supposedly didn't understand what was happening during the change. With her many trips to the West, very unbelievable, and so I want to leave it at that. Today, you hardly hear anything from her. She enjoys her millions, occasionally does some advertising to earn a little pocket money, and otherwise, there is silence. (translated)

