Background
West Germany developed into a Western capitalist country with a social market economy and democratic parliamentary government. With continued economical growth and rising standards of living, many East Germans looked to the West for economic affluence and political freedom.
In the early 1950s, East Germany sealed off the East-West border in response to massive emigration westward by its citizens. However, refugees continued to flee through Berlin. On August 1961, the communists erected the Berlin wall between East and West Berlin and strengthened the barrier around the rest of West Berlin along the East and West German border.
To the world, the Berlin Wall came to symbolize the Iron Curtin between Western Europe and the Eastern Bloc. To the West, the Wall signified the oppressive communist regimes. And to the East Germans, the Berlin Wall became another part of their daily lives in the GDR.
Life in the GDR was similar to that in most Eastern Bloc countries. All affairs, public and personal, were highly regulated by the state through censorship and surveillance. Some described the lifestyle as “drab and dreary” and others described it as “simple and secure.” While the essentials of life such as food, housing, transportation and basic clothing were cheap, most other things were regarded as luxuries which were rare and expensive to obtain. The communist ideology discouraged materialism and worked hard to keep out Western influences. This regulation and forbiddance made Western products even more desirable to the residence of the GDR.
In 1989 the Berlin wall fell. Former citizens of the socialist GDR rushed to embrace West German capitalism. East German products disappeared rapidly from the shelves and were replaced by Western counterparts. However, a few years later, East Germans began to feel nostalgia for their former everyday lives before German unification. This preoccupation with the GDR era was so prevalent, that a term was coined to describe this phenomenon – Ostalgie - a portmanteau of the words Ost (east) and Nostalgie (nostalgia).
Twenty years after reunification, it is said that Ostalgie is still strongly present in society.Research Question and Personal Interest
When I first heard of this Ostalgie phenomenon, it made perfect sense to me. Everyone can think fondly of the past, of how much more simple life was back in the days. But when I thought about it more, especially during my backpacking trip through Eastern Europe and experiencing the prominent negative attitude of many of these cities towards the Soviet communist regimes even to this today, I began to feel uneasy. It was not rare to walk down the street of Prague or Budapest and see an informal memorial as general as “to the victims of the communists,” written on cardboard or carved into stone with candles and flowers lying beneath. I was advised by travel books that the topic of communism in was a touchy subject and should be spoken of sensitively, similar to the topic of the holocaust.
I also have personal experiences that have taught me that communism should not be taken lightly. My great-grandfather offended the communist party and spent most of his short life in prison. My great-grandmother raised their eight children alone in the countryside, without help or support from relatives and neighbors because their family name became blacklisted. My grandmother, the oldest, managed to make her way out into the city, a rare event for those born to the countryside even today in China. Most of my grandmother’s siblings and their off springs are still confined to the country side by politics, economics and the limited opportunities in China today. My grandmother met my grandfather who left the Red for a life as a scholar. My father never once saw eye to eye with communist teachings instilled in the school systems in China and with the first chance he got, he left to study in the states.
Two months before the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989, while protests against communism broke out all over the world, an unforgettable event took place in Tiananmen Square that rattled students everywhere and prompted the US government to immediately issue green cards to Chinese students studying in the states at that time. With my parents guaranteed new future in the States, I joined them shortly from China.
Although my family is not big on politics, I have been influenced by their negative views towards the communist Chinese government. My father did not like it when I sang songs I learned in school praising Mao and the Red Army. Whether it’s discussing current events, reading a history book or touring through a museum, he always added his two cents on his personal perception of the world. And through his smart remarks and short critiques, I inherited his negative views of past communist regimes and I grew to be critical myself.
In Berlin, when touring memorials to the victims of the Nazis, he was sometimes surprised at their existence at all. “Mao was responsible for the death of more than 60 million people – Hitler’s massacre was nothing compared to what Mao did in China, and there is no memorial for the Chinese.” Surprised and speechless I let his message sink into me.
With my history and experiences, you could imagine how surprised and somewhat offended when I arrived in Berlin only to see communist symbols used everywhere. Red and yellow stars on clothing, slogans that say “Red Bang,” on energy drinks advertisements, hammer and sickle in altered forms used in almost every context promoting shoes to rock concerts, and Soviet memorabilia sold on street side stands. Among the Russian fur hats and babushka dolls are gas masks and KGB uniforms.
But there were no swastikas or Third Reich memorabilia, because that would be offensive.
My understanding was that millions of innocent people fell victim to the oppressive rule of the Soviet communist regimes in the Eastern Bloc. In Berlin, Soviet communism and the pre-Wall era is used as a tourist magnet and former East Germans are fondly recalling the days under the GDR regime.
Perhaps the Germans are too preoccupied with being sensitive about their Nazi history to consider whether it is socially acceptable to use communist symbols for the tourism industry and whether it is appropriate to be nostalgic for a regime responsible for the suffering of millions.
After a few quick internet searches on the topic, I realized I was not alone on this view. Since reunification, there have been many articles published that discuss the existence of Ostalgie in Germany. Especially after the 2003 film Good Bye, Lenin! which successfully portrayed general feeling of nostalgia, the world began to discuss the controversy of the phenomenon.
*************************************************************************************
BBC News, 09/09/04: Germany battles the right to reminisce
“As the [nostalgia] phenomenon grows, so does the debate as to whether it is appropriate to be sentimental about life under a regime which shot those who tried to escape its clutches and persecuted those who disagreed with ideology”
It is difficult for many people that the GDR is being glorified in such a way. The nostalgia that became prominent a few years after the collapse of East Germany appears to ignore the censorship, the oppression, and the intimidation.
“history is somehow being rewritten.”
More recently -
Time, 09/09/08: Raising a glass to East Germany
“Victims’ organizations don’t see the joke: They reacted furiously when the pub, situated only yards away from the large gray building complex that used to house the Stasi, opened last month. The Union of Organizations for the Victims of Communist Oppression called for a boycott of the bar, warning that it would “negate the suffering of thousands of former political prisoners or victims of persecution” by turning it into a “fun factor” in order to make profit. Owner Wolfgang Schmelz, not unhappy with the publicity generated by the controversy, dismisses the accusations. “Nothing is being trivialized here, no victims are being mocked,” he insists. “All it is, is satire.””
GDR themed bars, restaurants and communist chic hotels have popped up after German unification almost as if Ostalgie is a new vogue. Visitors and tourists are eating up the “authentic” GDR memorabilia, staying at “Ostel” a hostel decorated in GDR fashion, and taking “Trabi-safari” to tour the landmarks of the communist past of Germany.
"People really seem to think the GDR was a big joke, which results in such crudities as a Stasi pub," says the professor of political science at Berlin's Free University. "What's gonna be next, a Gestapo Inn? It's absurd."
*************************************************************************************
Ostalgie is not without controversy and I became curious in exploring this phenomenon in Berlin.
Purpose
To explore the phenomenon of Ostalgie in present day Berlin, its prevalence in society 20 years after reunification, its roots and its effects on the establishment of a new unified German identity.
More specifically some of the questions I have are:
- What makes the perception of communist rule in Berlin so different from other prior communist states?
- Is nostalgia still prominent 20 years after reunification? What is it stemmed from?
- What kinds of people are nostalgic and what exactly are they nostalgic for?
- Are the post-wall generations affected?
- Is this nostalgia contributing to the infamous “wall in the head” that is contributing to the existing division of East and West?
- IS this phenomenon being addressed within the society? Are there ways in which nostalgic people share their feelings and thoughts with others?
- How is this nostalgia affecting the unified identity of Germany as a whole?
Methods
- Start by visiting the Stasi Museum and DDR museum for an overview of life in Pre-Wall East Germany
- Talk to as many people I can find from both the former East and West about the phenomenon of Ostalgie and discuss with them the preconceived questions
- Visit shops that still carried Ost-products (East products) to see what kind of products have come back, who still buys these products etc.
- Visit GDR themed bars and restaurants, find out what the purpose of these establishments are, whether they are aimed to attract tourists and if it really is a hangout for former East German residence
- Walk through the neighborhoods of former East Germany and see how I feel, whether I can feel this nostalgia, whether I can see a difference between the East and West
Results and Discussion
With a small sample size of n=10, I interviewed former East Germany residents, visited GDR themed restaurants and vintage stores, and spoke with owners and employees. I collected memories, stories and gained different perspectives on how they viewed the GDR, nostalgia and the German identity.
*************************************************************************************
Part I: I began by visiting the Stasi Museum and the GDR Museum to establish a background of life in the GDR era.
The surveillance equipment at the Stasi Museum seemed slightly ridiculous to me. Large bulky cameras were hidden in tree-stumps, garbage cans and other very day things, as if trying too hard to be sneaky. Never the less, they were surveillance where massive amounts of data were collected for each citizen of the GDR. I decided to start my research here by asking the guide some questions regarding German perception of Soviet communism and the GDR era.
Q: It appears to me that communism here in Germany is regarded almost less negatively, with GDR memorabilia everywhere and nostalgia for East Germany. Why do you think that is?
A: Hmmm… I’m not sure… I think that perhaps communism was done more elegantly here in Germany. I think the Soviet communists did a good job infiltrating the society. Germans felt that their government was their own, German, instead of feeling that an outside regime like the Soviet Union was in charge.
Could it be that the oppression and cruelty of the communist regime was hidden under the elegance so well that when former GDR citizens reminisce, they can easily overlook the bad parts of life?
The entire GDR museum seemed like a make-belief fantasy reality, a utopia that communist and socialist regimes always dream about. Cute Trabi cars, childhood TV heroes, youth organizations, family vacations to the country, full employment. The lifestyle of perfect GDR citizens was perfectly portrayed. With this point of view, it’s difficult not to be nostalgic.
It didn’t show what would happen to you or your family if you were to upset the party, it didn’t show how your neighbors or even wife spied on you behind your back, it didn’t show the censorship or brain washing the GDR government did to maintain a tranquil lifestyle.
It did give me a sense however, of what the GDR lifestyle strived for, equal opportunities, guaranteed education and employment. I can see how someone who has had a lifetime of struggle can easily find comfort in such an environment.
*************************************************************************************
Part II: I wanted to find places where I could still witness nostalgia first hand and see exactly people were nostalgic for. I ended up wandering the streets of Pankow looking for communist chic establishments, vintage stores and markets that still carried “Ost Producte” (East products).
It is difficult for a visitor to spot remains of the GDR just by walking through the neighborhood. There are some well known restaurants, bars and hostels that have opened after reunification decorated with GDR style and nostalgic pieces.
Pankow is a DDR-elite neighborhood with beautiful pastel colored buildings, elaborate carvings in the classical style. Very different from the drab concrete mass produced apartment buildings I am used to seeing from a communist neighborhood. Here in this district, I spent some time chatting it up with people at a GDR themed restaurant and browsing through vintage shops.
Mauerblumenen is a restaurant, decorated with GDR memorabilia from party leader portraits to GDR propaganda posters to East German products. They also claim to serve authentic Germany foods. Take a look:
Here I chatted with anyone at the bar who was willing to talk to me. The waitress was in her early twenties, too young to remember much, she did not seem interested in the subject of GDR era. I ended up having a lengthy discussion with a man in his late 40s from East Berlin who spoke almost no English at all. Through a series of hand gestures, pictures drawn on napkins and half hazard interpretations from the waitress, he managed to tell me that he was nostalgic for Eastern bread -
- Western bread crumbles when you try and cut it, there is no substance. Eastern bread is full and rich and stays in one piece when it’s cut. But it is a big debate still today which bread is better and if the subject is mentioned at a social setting, with the right people around, it can rise into a large argument.
Stiefelkombinat is a vintage clothing shop where I was first introduced to real products from the GDR era. Since the production of some of these products from the daily lives of East Germans stopped, they have become mostly collector items.
I heard that some former East Germans are redecorating their home with GDR style furnishings like the vintage orange lamps I saw there. But mostly these shops suit the taste of young people who may or may not realize what they are wearing and the history behind these clothing and accessories.
VEB Orange is another vintage shop that collects and sells original GDR products. I spent a lot of time with the owner and finally witnessed some nostalgia in his shop.
Ost Kost is a grocery store that still carries Ost Producte, East German foods.
There were candies, cigarettes, dish soap and pickles in this shop that have become symbols of GDR life. I realized here that GDR residents did not just lose their chocolates and their wines, but some lost their jobs, their homes and their securities almost overnight. And though they speak of these food items that they can no longer enjoy on a daily basis there is really much more. These products are proof that their former lives existed beyond that of an oppressive regime. These products are confirmations that their history existed before it was swallowed up by Western capitalism. These products are validations that these people had a very real past, even if it has been reduced to tourist attractions.
*************************************************************************************
Part III: Interviews
The difficulty of interviews is that I don’t speak a word of German, and most people who were born early enough to have personal memories from the GDR don’t speak very much English. I conducted both formal and informal interviews with a random people, and would like to share the two that I found gave me the most insights.
Madeleine Helinski, student. Born: 07. April, 1988 in East Berlin.
Madeleine is a 21 year old student who grew up in East Berlin. She did not have any personal memories of the GDR since she was born a year after the fall of the wall. Her father faced unemployment after reunification (no details given) and other than that her parents never spoke much about the GDR era. She only remembers her mother complaining a bit about the new school system after reunification. She does not feel that nostalgia is very present, although she sees that former GDR fashion is returning , including clothing and hair styles. In general, this topic is not something she has thought about, not prevalent in her life at all and not brought up within her family friends. (Thanks to Toby for the interpreting)
Through this interview I realized how disconnected some people from the post-war generation are from their parents. I also realized that for whatever reason former East Germans don’t always like to talk about their past, and therefore may not pass on their experiences to their children. This led me to think that perhaps this nostalgia phenomenon may not be around much longer when the pre-wall generation is gone.
Cornelia Krell, Student at Humbolt. Born: 1981
Cornelia was born in East Germany and was 6 when the Wall fell. Although she has very limited personal memories of pre-wall East Germany lifestyle, she has an older sister and parents that have passed some of their experiences down to her. She gave me a list of foods, products and music that disappeared after the fall of the wall that were missed around the house. She told me stories of her mother’s attachment to the old kitchen appliances and her mother’s view on the new school system. She says her mother still offers her bananas repeatedly when she goes home, like bannanas can still dissapear and she can't get enough of it.
Much of the conversation was focused on Cornelia’s mother, like how she always made her own clothes. Cornelia still remembers when he mother made a jacket for Cornelia so that she did didn't have to wear the same jacket as everyone else in her glass. There were only a few different styles back then, and everybody knew how to sew and made their own clothes to find a bit of personality in a world of conformity.
This led me to think about the identity crisis of youth today. In the socialist era where conformity was the goal, people were more pressured to find their own identity. Some of the most unique fashions came out of the underground during GDR era. Today, in a world of free market where originality is promoted everywhere, there seems to be less uniqueness, but more of a mass identity. In this capitalist society where cooperation has taken over, everything is becoming the same again. Globalization of the world is dulling our personal identities. When you can find the same fast food joints and clothing brands all over the world, massed produced so that everyone can afford it, what is left? It seems to come full circle. A desire to escape the clutches of forced conformity has only lead to a new world of uniformity. Given the freedom to be whoever you want in this capitalist society, people are choosing to go back East Berlin, shop for vintage clothes of the GDR era and look in private boutiques to find that originality that seems to have disappeared.
It appears to me that Cornelia’s mother is perhaps more nostalgic than her father, which leads me to think about the women’s role more in the GDR era. Communism teaches that everyone is equal, everyone must work. These ideologies gave women great benefits in society through childcare, pregnancy leave and equal pay. Although at the end, the Party was still ran by men, women enjoyed a sense of equality with men that vanished with the assimilation of the East into the West. In the new competitive capitalist society, women lost their childcare programs, faced gender discrimination in the work force, and saw the stability of their family unit fall apart.
I asked Cornelius about her understanding of the GDR era, and after thinking about it for a long time, she looked t me and replied that she didn’t know. She realized that while WWII and Nazi Germany was covered in greay detail in her years of schooling, the Cold War and GDR history was barely touched upon. Her sister, a few years older than her, is a high school teacher in Berlin. When her sister showed the movie Good Bye, Lenin! in class, she had to repeatedly pause the movie to explain things to her students. Cornelius sister, having grown up in the GDR, is also upset that the curriculum she teaches has so little substance about that history.
TIME 09.09.2008: Raising a Glass to East Germany
Schroeder is the author of a recent study about how little German youngsters today actually know about the GDR. He and his colleagues surveyed over 5,000 students aged between 15 and 17, and found that many, especially those actually living in areas that formed part of East Germany, have an extremely distorted view of the GDR. More than half of the respondents, for example, believe that the GDR was "not a dictatorship," and that the Stasi was an intelligence service like any other, deployed mostly against people of other countries rather than against its own citizens. The figures are slightly lower among respondents in western Germany. The study also found that students tend to remember the social policies of the GDR in a very positive light, often ignoring the repressive character of the system.
"What people remember is not the real GDR, but a fictitious country that never existed," says Schroeder
So how is it that a political system that many remember only for the pain and trauma it inflicted is a source of nostalgia for others? Schroeder is sure that parents and teachers are to blame. "The older people are aware of what the GDR really was like, but they don't say it," he says. "People generally tend to have a blurred vision of their own past lives. And the public and schools have failed to act as a counterbalance."
*************************************************************************************
It appears to me that many former East Germans are now living in a fast moving world and feeling that their past is being left behind. Their history is either lumped together with the rest of Soviet communist dictatorships or romanticized for the sake of tourism in Berlin. Their accustomed daily products are no longer being produced, disappearing from their lives into vintage shops and becoming collectors’ items behind glass shelves. Their children, growing up in this Western capitalist society do not live by the same work ethics and morals, do not understand a world far removed from materialism. And worst of all, their country has silently decided their history in the GDR is not important enough to be passed down in schools. It is far more important to forget about the past, the division, and become a reunified Germany so that it is possible to step into the future.
No wonder there is nostalgia.
Conclusion
I think I can conclude that if you dig deep enough in Berlin, nostalgia is still very prevalent twenty years after reunification. Whether it is appropriate or offensive, whether it trivializes the oppressive GDR regime, I cannot say because it depends and it differs greatly from case to case. After four weeks in Berlin, I have only touched the surface of this topic of Ostalgie, and have already discovered so many new questions. Like all social complications and dilemmas, there is no right or wrong view points, and definitely no simple way of resolving the issue. In general though, I believe that before Germany can establish this new unified German identity, it needs to take a even closer look into its not so far behind past, and include it in its building of a future.
Challenges
The first and major challenge I came across was the language barrier. I found though it was relatively easier to talk to students that can speak English, it was their parents and people over 30 with firsthand experience of the GDR that was most useful. However, the older generations typically did not speak very much English. So my interviews became limited. Deep thoughts on personal nostalgia was reduced single English verbs such as “bread” “wine” and “comrade” along with series of hand gestures and facial expressions and sketches on napkins. Interviews with German students became a series of speculations of what their parents were like after unification, memories of some of the things their parents might have mentioned or complained about. But these interactions were precious. At the end I feel that both parties gained something .
Translation to stage
Initially, it was very difficult for Amy, Daniel and I to find a theme to tie our projects together. When something finally clicked and made sense, It made me realize that everything is connected in society, no matter how different the topics seem to be, everything is intertwined just like everyone is intertwined. There is no direct cause and effect, one thing affects another, changed by another, and can be seen through the perspective of another.
Our themes were nostalgia, capitalism and busking.
With a white bed sheet, we tied the tree topics together with a common symbol and tied everything together on stage. There is no distinct meaning of the white sheet, it can almost be interpreted as anything. It is what ties people together, east and west, past and future. At the same time, it is the conflict that separates people, the border that separates the east and west, the past from the future. Something that can so easily break people apart but also something that can pull people back together.
Initially the white sheet serves as a border between the East and West, past and future, with the busker straddling the line, nostalgia to the East and capitalism to the West.
On stage, a brief presentation of the existence of nostalgia and its controversies are presented through quotes, images and music as shown below.
Capitalism enters cutting short the East's reminiscence, advertising for its consumer goods and cooperation such as fast food chains and coffee shops that have infiltrated Germany.
The buskers plays his music at a street corner, at a park, where residence of both side meet to chat, to walk, it is a public space shared by unified Germany.
At the end, the struggle and pull between the East and west is translated on stage into a tug of war of the white sheet. The music intensifies and stops.At the end, it was the musician, the artist, the public space that pulls the white sheet forward and exists off stage as both the East and West follows closely behind.
I guess at the end, there is hope for reunified Germany to reach a new identity, who knows who will be pulling forward and leading this change. The art community of Berlin is becoming global, using art to portray the past and present turmoil f this country with a heavy past. Perhaps it will be through art and culture that the two walls in the heads will fade away and join together for a new German future.
No comments:
Post a Comment