Mommy!! Daddy!! You made me an egocentric!!!

In the book "Heroes like us" by Thomas Brussig, Klaus Uhltzscht (try to pronounce that!) opens up everything about how the Stasi, the German secret services, and all of their "dirt" to Mr. Kitzelstein, a correspondent of the New York times. He doesn't only say many of the secrets of the Stasi but he also says that it is his fault that the Berlin wall came down, ending communism in East Germany. He says that such event was caused by him in an accident, which also shortened the size of his genital.

Klaus is a very egocentric man. His tone, as he speaks to Mr. Kitzelstein, seems as if Klaus is superior to him, which brings up the question, "Is he telling the truth or is he exaggerating things?". Before that question can be analyzed, the book must be read to a further extent.

There's another question that must be analyzed, "What made his ego so large?". His mother is a "hygiene goddess", as Klaus likes to call her, who always expected perfection from her son. For example, Klaus urinates in a sitting position, with the toilet seat up, without touching the borders of the toilet because he is disgusted to touch the toilet and afraid he might miss and urinate where he shouldn't. This is because of all the pressure his mother put on him throughout his life to be a perfect, clean person.

There's also his father, who worked for the more "undercover" Stasi, the one with all the dirt. He never praised his son's achievements and always treated him as if he was nothing. This behavior that Klaus' father practiced lead to Klaus always trying to be better in order to impress his father, until he started to believe that his father actually envied him.

With his parents overprotection he also failed to have any relationships with the other people. This type of protection and his pursue to always be better lead him to think that he was better than anyone else, since he didn't really know how good others were. He believes that the Berlin wall fell because of him because he believes that he is the only one good enough to have caused such event. Also, he reveals the secrets of the Stasi because he also thought to be better than them, and that there is nothing they could do to him.