Actor Devid Striesow (49) is still influenced in some ways by his East German origins. "I was 16 when the turning point came. I can still feel it today when I walk into a full supermarket and it still overwhelms me, this oversupply of things," he told Berlin's Tagesspiegel. "I still don't understand why you need so much. [...] I'm still strongly influenced by the East."

Striesow was born on the island of Rügen and grew up in Rostock. In the current feature film "When will it finally be like it never was" based on an autobiographical novel by Joachim Meyerhoff, he plays the director of a psychiatric ward.