East Germans found that their behaviour, too, was quite different from West Germans. Though it would be a gross simplification to say that all East Germans conform to the stereotype of the so-called Jammerossi (moaning Easterner), and not all West Germans conform to the Besserwessi label (arrogant, know-it-all Westerner), in some cases these clichés appear to have had some validity. Katharina recounts one such occasion. In her parish, two new vicars came to work at the church. One was from the West and the other from the East. The first time they were working together, the West German vicar said to her East German colleague, ‘Take that chair away and bring me that book!’ And though the vicars were of exactly the same seniority, the East German vicar silently complied with the orders. Only afterwards did she approach Katharina, saying ‘That Wessi (West German) is unbelievable!’ In this instance, they both conformed to the stereotypes. Behaviour, it seems, can be as much a giveaway of Eastern or Western origins as appearance. And behaviour, which is subconscious as well as conscious, is arguably far more difficult to change.
Though Katharina is without doubt glad that the GDR is no more, she identifies three sources of personal disappointment about reunification. Firstly, she has observed West Germans exploiting the naivety of East Germans to further their business interests. Unlike other East German children who grew up fearing the West due to socialist propaganda, in Katharina’s Protestant circles, West Germans were understood to be ‘the good guys’. ‘We, who had not had a great deal materially and longed for more, opened our doors to West German conmen’, she explains. Katharina felt disappointed that the ‘ruthless capitalists’ from West Germany could not see the human consequences of their exploitation. And while East Germans gradually learned the rules of a Western consumer society in the early years after the Wende, Katharina felt that the West’s relationship with the East was almost colonial in style.
Disintegration of relationships with West Germans which had endured while Germany was divided was the second negative consequence of reunification that Katharina experienced. Perhaps surprisingly, the solidarity across the border between East and West Germans appeared to falter in many cases once the Wall fell. Katharina’s friendships with West Germans forged through the church exchanges seemed to peter out after the transition. She wonders if this is because the West German Christians no longer occupied an inherently superior position, meaning that their friendships with East Germans no longer had a benevolent and charitable purpose. Equally, Katharina’s mixed reaction to unification, which was comprised of some pleasure at the new freedoms but also some critiques of the new regime, led her to fall out with her West German aunt who could not understand why her niece was not greeting the Wende with a big hurrah and instead was unhappy about Kohl’s victory and rapid reunification. When Katharina dared to mention in a letter how West German conmen had been ripping off naive East Germans, her aunt went ballistic, angrily replying: ‘You are a Communist! You are all the same!’ Katharina explains that her aunt simply could not understand why she was not celebrating the reunification more, although she feels that most West Germans were more understanding of the difficulties East Germans faced after 1989.
The failure of the government in reunited Germany to punish Stasi officers and informers is the final major disappointment Katharina mentions in relation to the transition of 1989. She understands the legal difficulty of prosecuting crimes that were not against the law in the GDR. But, like Mario, as someone who suffered as a result of the Stasi, the seeming absence of consequences for their actions seems deeply unsatisfactory. ‘I don’t think we should have to work with people who spied on their colleagues, friends, and relatives for the Stasi,’ she explains. ‘Can we really accept that they thought they were working for the good of the system? Can we really accept that we should let sleeping dogs lie because it was so long ago? I am not convinced.’ In spite of her wish for greater punishment for Stasi workers, she does believe that people can change. A number of former SED supporters have joined her church in the years since reunification—a development that has provoked a mixed and sometimes even hostile reaction from members of the Protestant congregation. Interestingly, Katharina finds that these SED supporters do not see themselves as having been on the other side in the GDR. They present themselves as victims of the regime too, claiming that they were put under pressure to act as informers. ‘How creative the mind can be!’ Katharina remarks wryly as she recounts this tale.
Katharina feels no nostalgia for life in the GDR, but she can understand why some East Germans remember it so fondly. ‘I did not find anything good about it’, she says, ‘but others remember the job security and the material security and the fact that everything was very cheap.’ This security, she explains, came at a price. Everyone also appeared to be more equal in the GDR, she says, but it was a forced equality rather than a voluntary one. Other East Germans have also harked back to a sense of togetherness in the GDR, but in Katharina’s experience this feeling of ‘belonging together’ only counted for those with the correct ideological views.48 Indeed, unlike others who enjoyed the sense of belonging in the Young Pioneers, Katharina was made to feel an outsider at school because she was not a member. Therefore for all of the difficulties inherent in the transition from one system to another, and for all of the flaws in the new system that she sees, Katharina definitely does not want the old system back.
Katharina spent the first twenty-eight years of her life as an outcast in the GDR because of her Protestant background. At the time of interview, this is longer than she has lived in reunited Germany. The shelter and comfort she found within the church during these years of ostracization means that she feels that whatever the future holds, the church will always offer her refuge. And living through the transition of 1989 has made her aware of the fact that all political systems have their downsides. Casting her mind back to life in the GDR, Katharina says she often wonders whether life really was that bad there. ‘There were things that annoyed me. But there are things that annoy me today. There was a lack of freedom. But I did not feel hemmed in or restricted in my daily life.’ Ultimately, she concludes, ‘living in the system was not nearly as bad as outsiders generally seem to think’.
6
Robert ~ Supporting the Idea of Socialism
The way people recall life in the GDR is just so different that it is surprising to find that they lived in the same country.1 The constant hounding by the Stasi drove Mario to an escape attempt, landing him in prison and leaving him with a lifetime of psychological scars. It is understandable, then, that the Stasi features prominently in his memories of the GDR. In Katharina’s case, her experience of discrimination by the state on account of her faith helps to explain why stories of Stasi intimidation also form a significant part of her testimony about life in the GDR.2 For some East Germans, however, who had little or no contact with East Germany’s state security apparatus, the Stasi forms little part in their recollections of living under socialism. Robert, who spent the first fifteen years of his life growing up in communist East Germany, is one of these. Looking back now, he feels that the GDR has been totally demonized by histories that are overly focused on Stasi activities. It creates a false impression, he explains, of what life was like.
Sensationalist media interest in the Stasi has portrayed the GDR as a highly regulated surveillance society in which freedom of speech and freedom of travel were severely curtailed. Not so, says Robert. As the son of a Free German Youth (FDJ) functionary Robert grew up in Berlin-Marzahn in a family that believed in the proclaimed goals of a socialist state: eliminating inequalities and working together collectively for the overall good of the GDR. Robert’s father was one of the leading figures in the Org-Büro, the events management department of the FDJ, and, though he sometimes criticized the reality of East German politics, on the whole he believed in the principles of communism. Growing up in a family which supported the state and not holding views that clashed with the Party’s ideology, Robert did not feel many constraints on
his freedom of speech. ‘After all,’ he explains, ‘I was a child, and most of my friends in Berlin-Marzahn came from families which supported the system.’
Nor were travel restrictions a significant problem for Robert’s family. Within the bounds of what was possible for GDR citizens, Robert and his family went on many trips abroad, visiting Hungary, Poland, Bulgaria, and Czechoslovakia. All of this meant that Robert and his family were not knocking up against the state’s boundaries of acceptability. They felt to some degree free.
In fact, in contrast to the portrayals of the GDR as strictly regimented, Robert insists that there was actually plenty of scope to do your own thing and that it would be wrong to overemphasize the influence of the Stasi in day-to-day life. East Germans adapted their behaviour to conform where necessary, for example not shouting out criticism of the system on the street. And this was obviously more easily done if you supported the regime. But within the bounds of cautionary, sensible behaviour, Robert recalls, there were ways of sidestepping state control.3 Like many others who lived in areas of the GDR where FRG broadcasts could be received, Robert watched Western TV daily—for instance American detective and action series such as The Fall Guy, Magnum PI, Airwolf, and MacGyver, which gave him an impression of life on the other side of the Iron Curtain.4 Robert’s cousins, however, were part of a wider group of people in Dresden and its surrounding villages who lived in the reception black spot where the TV aerial did not pick up West German television. This area was known as the Tal der Ahnungslosen—the Valley of the Clueless—as the people there had even fewer ways than most to learn about life beyond the Eastern bloc. Consequently, when his cousins came to stay in Berlin during the holidays, Robert remembers that they sat glued to the television, so keen were they to make up for what they could not access at home. It was not actually forbidden to watch Western TV in the 1980s, but the regime frowned upon it, especially if the viewers in question were political functionaries like Robert’s father.5 In the Cold War context, showing any interest in the West—the enemy—was considered a betrayal of the GDR. There were ways of getting around this, however. One way was not to talk about watching Western TV outside the home. Another way was to close the blinds to hide the screen when watching Western programmes but to open the blinds when watching Eastern programmes, so that anyone looking into the apartment would see that you were loyal to the Party.6 There was only a small compromise when it came to watching TV in Robert’s house: he and his brother were allowed to watch Western programmes, but their parents made them turn off the sound during the breaks so that they would not be caught off-guard, humming the tunes to Western adverts at school or in other public places. Through being a bit flexible and innovative, he contends, East Germans could and did retain a certain amount of freedom.7
figure 18 Robert’s membership card for the socialist Young Pioneers Organization (Pionierausweiss).
Courtesy of Robert S.
Even if you knew someone was an informer for the Stasi, you were simply more careful than normal when talking about politics and you would alter your behaviour, Robert explains. He describes one such incident: in July 1989, Robert’s father went to the communist International World Youth Meeting in Pyongyang to run the GDR pavilion and to represent the FDJ. Quite naturally, on a few occasions, Robert’s father rang home to speak to his family. On the way to school one day, his best friend Alex came up to Robert and said, ‘Your father is in North Korea. I know because my father listened in to your parents’ phone conversation last night.’ This is how Robert and his family learned that their telephone was tapped. A shocking revelation, and cause, one might think, for Robert to break off his friendship with Alex. Not so. Robert already knew that Alex’s father had been working for the Stasi. As a result of the incident, however, Robert’s mother cautioned him again not to talk about politics with Alex, and told him not to speak to Alex on the phone at all. ‘This was easy, though,’ Robert recalls. ‘We didn't really talk about politics anyway and in any case I supported the regime.’
Robert was well aware that fellow East Germans were shot at and sometimes killed trying to flee the GDR. At the time, though, Robert explains, he was just a teenager, and like most others in his social environment, he accepted the state’s view that these people were enemies, trying to damage the borders of the GDR, and he therefore thought it was right that they should be punished. Robert’s acceptance of the state and its values is echoed in the experience of Jorge Seidel, who worked for the Stasi in his twenties. Looking back, he explains,
When I worked for the Stasi, I was absolutely convinced of the political need for my work. I was also absolutely convinced of the evil of the western bloc countries. When I read American documents, I saw them as being tools of the devil. Today I’m not proud of it, but until the very end I was convinced that I was serving my country and protecting it.8
All of this creates a strikingly different picture to the one put forward by Mario, and helps to explain why Robert is insistent that the GDR cannot be compared to Hitler’s dictatorship. As a historian specializing in Nazi concentration camps, Robert cannot relate the brutality and inhumanity meted out by the Nazis to what he experienced or what he learned later about the GDR:
For someone like me who researches National Socialism, I look at places like Hohenschönhausen [prison] and by comparison it is like my school. I do not want to belittle it [what happened at the prison]. It is important that there are tours of the prison, but one should not compare the two [Nazi Germany and the GDR] because they are completely different things.
From the outside, there are certainly some obvious parallels between the organization and function of the two dictatorships, with ostentatious military displays, state-run institutions for social control, and the repression of opposition. There are also some obvious differences between the ideological aims of the NSDAP and the SED, and between the targets of state-sanctioned violence. Robert is keen to emphasize that the scale of discrimination and violence used by the Nazis was far more widespread. Comparing the number of Germans incarcerated under the two regimes, he says, the higher level of persecution under the Nazis becomes evident. In twelve years of power, the Nazis imprisoned 3.5 million political prisoners versus 225,000 during the forty years of SED rule.9 ‘How’, he asks, ‘can one compare 138 victims of the Berlin Wall to the 6 million murdered Jews? The GDR never ran extermination camps, nor attacked and destroyed countries all over Europe.’
Robert has become a defender of a differentiated view of the GDR, because he feels that since reunification Westerners see nothing more to his old country than it being the home of the Stasi.10 ‘When I do tours in the GDR Museum [in Berlin]’, Robert explains, ‘and I tell stories from my life in the GDR, I notice that Westerners come in with the expectation of learning about the baddies, the Stasi. Yes, it did exist, but the GDR was much more than this.’ This perception has perhaps been perpetuated by the opening-up of Stasi files showing the extent to which East Germans spied on each other.11 Tabloid newspapers in the 1990s gave a great deal of coverage to stories of scandal and betrayal from the GDR. Unsure about whether he wanted his happy memories of childhood spoilt, Robert did not apply for his file initially. Finally, curiosity won out and he applied to see it … only to find out that he did not have one. He was, after all, only 15 when the Wall fell. His father incidentally, recently discovered that he had a file, and is waiting to see a copy of it. Robert says that some people were desperately disappointed not to have a file, since in the new context of reunited Germany, it would show how much they had resisted the regime. He also believes that ‘in some senses, it [the opening up of the Stasi files] has created pointless work. Around 2,000 people have had legal cases brought against them for contravening human rights in the GDR.’ In moving forward, in seeking to build a joint future for the two Germanies, the legal authorities were faced with a serious dilemma about how to deal with such cases. Robert says, ‘Only a couple of people have been found guilty, but they say we must do this
to face up to the second dictatorship.’ It is clear why people like Mario might want to seek justice, but from the perspective of Robert, it seems that overemphasizing the importance of the Stasi is a political strategy to reinforce a wholly negative Western view of the GDR. For Robert, who supported the regime’s goals and had no direct contact with the Stasi, their existence gave him no cause to question the regime.12
Above all, Robert is extremely exercised about the ignorance and assumptions of West Germans about the former East. ‘Were you starving?’ some ask. ‘November 1989 must have been such a relief for you. You could finally escape.’13 ‘No!’ Robert wants to shout from the rooftops with frustration! ‘We may not have had as much choice about what to eat, but we always had enough to eat. And no—I didn’t want to escape the GDR: it was my home!’ Westerners assume that everything in the GDR was awful, he finds, and that all Easterners wanted to leave.14 ‘Being anti-communist and being anti-GDR had been a key preoccupation of the FRG. The GDR was an evil enemy whom they presented in a bad light, saying, for example, that everyone was poor there,’ Robert asserts. ‘So it is impossible for anyone from the FRG to think that there was anything good about the GDR because the basic point of departure of the FRG was anti-communism.’
Born in the GDR Page 12