No chance to mourn its passing: Ostaglia for the GDR

By Peter Linden and Benjamin Wuttke, Le Monde diplomatique, August 2004

Germany is now in economic distress; the Socialist-Green coalition in power is selling off public assets and dismantling the social welfare system. Unemployment, especially in what was East Germany, is high. No wonder the Easterners are nostalgic for their protected past.

GEORGE Tabori recently staged Gotthold Lessing’s The Jews for the Berliner Ensemble and added a few lines of his own: Ah, the good old days—alas, long gone, by the grace of God. Was he thinking of Ostalgia, the ambivalent nostalgia felt by many former citizens of East Germany (1)?

Marianne Birthler presides over a mound of paper, old files belonging to the Stasi, the state security arm of the former German Democratic Republic (GDR). She says about the Ostalgic movie Good Bye, Lenin!: I have happy memories of particular tunes or objects. But I don’t feel any nostalgia for the GDR. She thinks Ostalgia is a reaction by those who think any criticism of socialism undermines their own life history. Sigmund Jähn, a former cosmonaut who was president of East Germany in Good Bye, Lenin!, sees Ostalgia as the expression of an American-style lack of true culture. They [West Germans] focus on making money . . . leaving East Germans to calm down, stewing in their own juice.

Professor Jens Reich (2) does not dispute his fellow citizens’ attachment to their past but sees it as a passing fad exaggerated by the media. After the fall of the Berlin wall those in favour of democratic transformation of the GDR, including the Greens, only picked up 5% of votes. He adds: The remaining 95%, who wanted an end to communism, shouted us down. He thinks Ostalgia marks the deliberate, collective end of an epoch. The last chance to reform communism had been wrecked in 1968 when Soviet forces crushed the Prague spring.

The writer Thomas Brussig says the GDR disappeared without us having a chance to mourn its passing. Ostalgia is a delayed reaction . . . Nostalgia is part of human nature. Everyone likes to remember their youth. The passing of time makes everything rosier. Particularly as the official line is that there was nothing worth keeping in the GDR besides the green arrow traffic signal (3). Brigitte Rauschenbach, a lecturer at the Freie Universität Berlin, is convinced that mourning will never be complete until former East Germans acknowledge the ambivalence of their feelings about the regime. In 1945 people felt a subconscious mixture of love and hate for Hitler. Ostalgia, she adds, is more like unfocused melancholy.

Jana Hensel had a major success with her book Zonenkinder (4), which she believes helped to bridge the gap between individual and collective memories: her fellow citizens at last realised that their story was not of marginal interest but a key issue. Whether they stayed in the East or moved West, each is trying to find traces of the GDR in songs, food or broadcasts.

Surprisingly Egon Krenz, the last president of the GDR, now out of prison (5), is dismissive. In his modest home on the Baltic coast he starts by emphasising the negative side of Ostalgia. Rather than really testing memories, it is a caricature . . . making fun of life in the GDR. Stefan Arndt, the producer of Good Bye, Lenin!, uses the same term: People caricature things, saying ‘Their cola was awful,’ ‘They never had any bananas’ or ‘That ghastly wallpaper’ but there’s no mention of real life. Krenz acknowledges that there is a good side to Ostalgia: People who lived in the East have experienced two types of society and can compare them. At least 17 million people know there was more to the GDR than Trabants or the Stasi . . . Despite all the things that turned out badly everyone had work, with cheap housing and a good health service free of charge . . . They miss all those benefits.

Peter Ensikat, a cabaret artist, sees the trend as a reaction to what has happened since the wall came down. People in the East threw everything away without thinking . . . All they wanted was to join West Germany, though they knew nothing about it beyond its ads on television.

So perhaps the nostalgia is a combination of disappointment with the present and longing for the past. Wolfgang Herr, a journalist, says: The more you get to know capitalism the less inclined you are to wonder what was wrong with socialism. Cynics will comment that this is because he used to work for the communist daily Neues Deutschland. But many Ossis say it wasn’t all so bad then and it’s not that great now. We spoke to two other journalists, Gerhard Leo, 81, and his grandson Maxim, 34. Gerhard thinks Ostalgia reflects the rejection of the new society by a steadily increasing number of East Germans, who are so desperate they forget the shortcomings of the GDR. Maxim justifies a legitimate desire to defend a lifestyle that has disappeared but also refers to memories of a GDR that never existed. Gerhard thinks that the socialist principle of secur ity for all should apply in western society. Maxim disagrees, convinced it came at too high a price in freedom and efficiency: Security rhymes with mediocrity. If you deny people success, you stifle the driving force behind society. If they achieve prosperity it can be redistributed afterwards.

Christian Schletze, a young member of the IG Metall trade union, is still looking for the rosy future promised by Chancellor Helmut Kohl. He says: The economy in my area was destroyed and with the shortage of funds the schools, health service and arts centres no longer work properly. What happened to the 1,250bn invested in the Länder of the former GDR, where there are now only 6m jobs, compared with 9.7m in 1989? Journalist Renate Marschall remembers how people were convinced hard work was all that was needed and how hurt they were to discover the truth. They were told: We don’t need your skills any more. We have no use for you. Instead of the promised 30 years of prosperity and growth they had 10 years of disaster.

Rita Kuczynski has published two collections of interviews with former Ossis (6). She thinks reunification marked the beginning of the end for the welfare state and sees a similarity between the present stagnation of the GDR and the Federal Republic of Germany in the 1980s. That is why there is no justification for Ostalgia: Why did 4 million people move out? It went bankrupt.

Irene Dolling, a teacher at Potsdam University, says of women’s rights: In the East women went out to work; in the West they stay home and mind the kids. In the GDR women had to do much of the housework too, but rising unemployment and the disappearance of many kindergartens has undermined the relative liberation of work: In the GDR 86% of all women worked. Now only 56% do. The birth rate has been halved in 15 years, plummeting to the 1929 level. Stefan Arndt says: Single mothers with kids managed quite well in the GDR. Now they are in danger of falling into the poverty trap. Even if they manage to find a space in a kindergarten, it opens at 9am and closes at 2pm. You can’t make a living working only three or four hours a day.

Reich thinks Ossis miss a peaceful, congenial lifestyle without competition, hinging on the family much more than the welfare system: during morning and afternoon breaks at work everyone had a chance to chat. Wolfgang Engler, lecturer in the sociology of culture at a drama school, explains: East Germans adjusted very well to a collective lifestyle including their workplace and the kindergarten. Their ego could flourish between individual and collective demands, with the group having to strike a balance at all times. Too much pressure from the authorities threatened the group. Too much pressure from below threatened the state. He adds: The awareness of togetherness nourished a sense of solidarity.

And security, adds Pascal Thibault, a French journalist working in Berlin. He believes that because of their history Germans have come to fear the future. He explains: For the French the worst is never certain to happen, for the Germans it’s always a possibility. What Ossis miss most is the tranquillity of the GDR, described by writer Volker Braun as the most boring country in the world. But says Enkisat, it’s a boredom that the homeless, jobless and temporary workers really miss. It was a niche society. Everyone, providing they stayed within limits, could enjoy a safe, mediocre existence without being bothered by the system . . . It was easier then to escape the pressures of bureaucracy than it is now to avoid the pressures of money. Ossis feel just as powerless as before. Enkisat concludes: Of course we can make a fuss, but what’s the point?

Almost no one referred to the wall and the Stasi. Those most hostile to the communist regime talked of a second dictatorship, although the comparison is absurd. (The first dictatorship of the Nazi regime, and the second world war, killed 60 million people, including several million genocide victims.) Birthler’s statistics are impressive, though: drawing on an army of informers (perhaps 2% of the nation), the Stasi compiled some 40m files whose contents covered half the population. There were 250,000 political prisoners.

If you weren’t politically active you never met the Stasi, says Marie Borkowski, the widow of a dissident who spent many years in prison. People were exclusively concerned with their own affairs and knew nothing of what was going on. Kuczynski agrees that it was possible to spend your whole life without problems, providing you played by the rules. Brussig agrees: All you had to do was not attract attention, not tell jokes against the system. According to Herr: Telling jokes about Honecker [Communist party leader for many years] could lead to serious trouble, but calling your foreman at work a fool was OK. Nowadays anyone can call [Chancellor] Schröder names, but not their supervisor, unless they want to get the sack.

Some are amazed anyone hankers after a grey communist past. Birthler remarks: Slaves can’t do anything wrong—and not everyone likes freedom. Brussig theorises: Many people are afraid of freedom. They would rather be safe. He adds that the communist regime suited people you wouldn’t want to talk to for more than half an hour—emotional and intellectual primitives. Iris Radisch, a literary critic, praises Wolfgang Hilbig, the first writer to describe the GDR as it really was—dead, cold and grey (7). The painter Jens Bisky uses the term Duldungstarre to describe the Ossi mindset. It’s an almost untranslatable word used by farmers to describe the look of sows who are paralysed by the pheromones of the hog as they wait to mate (8). Dazed and seduced, perhaps.

Intellectuals, Hensel says, wanted to restore democracy in the GDR and failed. They blame the people. They have no idea what 35% unemployment means, wrecked lives and a country gone bust. Engler thinks the snobs’ scornful attitude to ordinary people is unbearable. As if they wanted to make Ossis pay for their own failure in 1990. They hate the people who didn’t vote them into power, preferring reunification and the Deutschmark (9).

The other peoples of liberated eastern Europe were able to keep their nation states, but not the East Germans. The GDR disappeared and advocates of reunification did their best to remove all trace of its existence. Our country no longer existed and nor did we, says Maxim Leo. His grandfather blames it on the western legal system: A third of Ossis had to leave their homes, re appropriated by someone from the West. But not a single one of us benefited from this law - not even Jews dispossessed by the Nazis.

This is grist to the Ostalgic mill. Anja Weinhold was hurt by the closure of DT64, a popular radio station: In our village it was the only link with the outside world.When it stopped I felt like a foreigner in my own country. Even the Ossis’ favourite chocolate bar, Raider, was renamed Twix. Vincent Von Wroblewski, a philosopher, says: By denying our past, they stole our dignity.

For Michael Gauling, former contributor to the satirical weekly Eulenspiegel, there is a different Ostalgia for each generation: Young people focus on the 1989-90 revolution which failed but left a deep impression. Gerhard Leo remembers those feverish months, torn between the advocates of democracy and their slogan, We are the people and those in favour of reunification, who replied We are one people. The GDR was awash with democratic process, flyers, meetings and demonstrations. Some people still say if only it could have lasted. But, Leo adds, the Deutschmark prevailed over the revolution that so many, including communists, had so long awaited. Kuczynski says many in the West wanted it too: The leftists involved in the student uprisings of the late 1960s were counting on the GDR. When the wall fell, they thought it marked the start of the revolution. After reunification they complained: ‘But why did you sacrifice the alternative society?’

Ostalgia does not only concern the past. We talked to students in a cafe on Rosa Luxemburg Platz. Uwe Lorenz, computer scientist, said: In the East the future looks promising for organisations campaigning for an alternative global market, especially Attac. The new Länder are more active opponents of Schröder’s attempts to dismantle the welfare state than their western counterparts. They are also the first to suffer. In Berlin even Humboldt University, in the East, now has bigger strikes than the Freie Universität. Luigi Wolf, a student of political science, is adamant: the anti-war movement is more radical in the GDR.

The Ossis, explains Lorenz, can draw on a clearer identity than people in the West, having experienced a form of socialism. If they think up another form, everything will change. Schelze interrupts, saying that they know what kind of socialism they want having been subjected to Stalinism . . . My grandfather used to say: ‘The GDR isn’t a socialist state.’ It’s yet to be achieved. We thought it could be done in 1989 and we are still fighting for it. He is convinced that, with their experience, Ossis have huge potential. Lorenz rejects any comparison of Stalinism and capitalism, explaining: The GDR was a bureaucratic workers’ state, but it was also more egalitarian.

Weinhold is less optimistic. On the basis of past experience, only 2% of Ossis think they can exert any influence on politicians. The communist regime did not listen to them, and its capitalist successor has turned them into second-class citizens. Ostalgia, she adds, helps them to regain confidence, rehabilitating the parts of their past that deserve to be saved and defended by collective action: I know what I feel proud of and want to win back, but also what I don’t want any more. Lorenz is not so sure: Another world is possible, but how is it to be achieved? There are only a few answers to such questions and any reference to Eastern bloc countries is taboo.

Someone shouted: We should reconcile the movement of emancipation and our utopian ideals. Von Wroblewski has no intention of giving up his socialist ideals but you have to make it clear what can and can’t be done. Commenting on the speed with which Ossis have matured, he says: History has cheated them so many times they have no illusions left. Resignation, a complete lack of interest in politics, and xenophobia are dominant attitudes. And what does he think of the 25% of the electorate who vote for the Party of Democratic Socialism (PDS), the rebranded Communist party? He believes that it reflects the social malaise, rejection of change and longing for the past. Lacking a plausible alternative, even intellectuals focus all their energy on careers, trying to find a cosy niche and adapt to the system. If anything, he suggests, Ostalgia is a flight from reality for lack of an alternative.

Engler thinks an alternative is taking shape: My optimism has grown out of the present crisis. More and more people are going to refuse to accept the consequences. He is convinced of the need for radical social reforms, unthinkable under the present system, and sees the GDR’s good points as a utopian possibility based on the satisfaction of human needs (10). That is why the memory of 1989-90 is important, a time when everyone—workers, farmers and intellectual—discussed everything. As the former cosmonaut Jähn says: Doesn’t everybody want a country providing work and justice for all? He misses its humanism and dreams of a society based on social justice, devoted to education and culture, without any exaltation of violence. He adds: We are further away from that goal now than we were. Dieter Borkowski, a dissident, says, No one likes to say goodbye to the dreams of their youth.

Bertolt Brecht wrote in a 1953 poem, Der Radwechsel: I am sitting beside the road/ The driver is changing a wheel/ I don’t like where I am/ I don’t like where I am going/ Why do I watch the changing of the wheel/ With impatience?

Notes

(1) As in Ost Deutschland. Its citizens are still called Ossis.

(2) Co-founder of New Forum Political Movement in 1989 and member of parliament until German unification in 1990.

(3) For vehicles filtering right at traffic lights.

(4) Zone kids, a reference to the Soviet zone, as the GDR was often called.

(5) He was found guilty, without proof, of giving the order to fire on people trying to escape from the GDR and was sentenced to six and a half years in prison. He served four, the last two in a day-release centre. He owes the state500,000.

(6) Die Rache der Ostdeutschen (The vengeance of East Germans) and Im Westen was neues? (What’s new in the West?), Parthas, Berlin, 2002 and 2003.

(7) Literaturkritik.de, nÂ° 3, March 2002

(8) Berliner Zeitung, Berlin, 11 March 2004.

(9) The Berlin wall fell in November 1989. In the elections in March 1990 the eastern branch of Kohl’s Christian Democrat party, in favour of reunification, won an easy majority, defeating the civil rights activists who advocated a separate, but democratic state. The first pan-German elections were held in December.

(10) In the East the most highly rated values are order, security, justice, freedom, solidarity and equality. See Wolfgang Engler, Die Ostdeutschen als Avantgarde, Aufbau-Verlag, Berlin, 2002.