Born in the GDR
Page 18
Writing on the day Germany was formally reunited, an anonymous East German diarist declared, ‘A country is erased, just like that, struck out, finished, over, full stop.’60 For those individuals born in the GDR, the Berlin Wall and all it symbolized continued to cast a shadow long after it fell. The collapse of communism was certainly not the end of the story, but rather the start of a new chapter. A quarter of a century later, opinion is still divided about the extent to which East and West have truly merged.61 This collection of contrasting stories shows how one central event affects everyone but is felt differently in each life. There is no one-size-fits-all account for how young East Germans experienced the transition to living in a Western consumer society. However, in hearing from eight of the people caught up in the historic events of November 1989, Born in the GDR both deepens our understanding of why such different memories of the GDR exist and sheds light on the ongoing and complex legacies of communist rule on East German soil.
Notes
Introduction
1. Cf. Hans-Joachim D. interview, February 2013; Matthias S. interview, February 2012; Angelique L. questionnaire, February 2012; Robert Ide, Geteilte Träume: Meine Eltern, die Wende und ich (Munich, 2009), 72.
2. Peter Schneider, Wall Jumper (Chicago, 1983), 119. In his novel, Schneider coined the phrase ‘the Wall in our heads’ predicting that ‘it will take us longer to tear down the Wall in our heads than any wrecking company will need for the Wall we can see’.
3. Juliane Cieslak and Paula Hannaske, ‘Vergangenheit heute: Einblicke in die Arbeit einer ostdeutschen Biografiegruppe’, in Michael Hacker, et al. (eds.), Dritte Generation Ost: Wer wir sind, was wir wollen (Berlin, 2012), 57; Katja Warchold ‘ “So etwas ist in meiner DDR nicht vorgekommen”: Erinnerungen an ein Aufwachsen in der DDR und im vereinten Deutschland’, in Hacker et al. (eds.), Dritte Generation Ost, 69.
4. Peter Erler and Hubertus Knabe, The Prohibited District: The Stasi Restricted Area Berlin Hohenschoenhausen (Berlin, 2008), 9–12; Ruth Hoffman, Stasi-Kinder: Aufwachsen im Ueberwachungsstaat (Berlin, 2012), 33–4; Mary Fulbrook, Dissonant Lives (Oxford, 2011), 378; Ines Veith, Leben und Alltag … der DDR-Flüchtlinge (Kempen, 2010), 34; Anne McElvoy, The Saddled Cow: East Germany’s Life and Legacy (London, 1992), 102–3.
5. The term ‘Stasiland’, famously used by Anna Funder in her book of that name, focuses on the dictatorial elements of life in the GDR, and suggests that the East German secret police, the Stasi, were all-pervasive.
6. Alf Lüdtke, ‘What Is the History of Everyday Life and Who Are Its Practitioners?’, in Lüdtke (ed.), The History of Everyday Life: Reconstructing Historical Experiences and Ways of Life, trans. William Templer (Princeton, 1995), 3–4.
7. Martin Diewald, Anne Goedicke, and Karl Ulrich Mayer, After the Fall of the Wall: Life Courses in the Transformation of East Germany (Stanford, Calif., 2006), 8.
8. This amounted to approximately 1,600 people leaving East Germany every month. For details see Christopher Hilton, The Wall: The People’s Story (Stroud, 2001), 12.
9. Edith Sheffer, Burned Bridge: How East and West Germans Made the Iron Curtain (Oxford, 2011), 10.
10. The states in the communist Eastern bloc were the USSR, GDR, Poland, Czechoslovakia, Hungary, Romania, Romania, Bulgaria, Yugoslavia until the Tito–Stalin split in 1948, and Albania until 1960.
11. As seen in Peter Dittrich’s cartoon, featured in the DDR Museum, Berlin.
12. Cf. Anne Marie B. interview, June 2012.
13. Jürgen Weber, Germany 1945–1990: A Parallel History (New York, 2004), 148; Jonathan Grix, The Role of the Masses in the Collapse of the GDR (London, 2000), 25–6.
14. Mark Pittaway, Eastern Europe 1939–2000 (New York, 2004), 189; George Schöpflin, Politics in Eastern Europe (Oxford, 1993), 233–4.
15. Peter Grieder, ‘ “To Learn from the Soviet Union is to Learn How to Win”: The East German Revolution, 1989–1990’, in Kevin McDermott and Matthew Stibbe (eds.), Revolution and Resistance in Eastern Europe: Challenges to Communist Rule (Oxford, 2006), 164–6.
16. Bartosz Kaliski, ‘Solidarity, 1980–1981: The Second Vistula Miracle?’, in McDermott and Stibbe (eds.), Revolution and Resistance in Eastern Europe, 134.
17. Mark Pittaway, Eastern Europe 1939–2000 (New York, 2004), 175–6, 193–4; Schöpflin, Politics in Eastern Europe, 236–7.
18. Pittaway, Eastern Europe 1939–2000, 184.
19. Pittaway, Eastern Europe 1939–2000, 189–91; Schöpflin, Politics in Eastern Europe, 237.
20. DTA 1071/1, Anonymous diary, 1988–1989, p. 129; Cornelia Heins, The Wall Falls: An Oral History of the Reunification of the Two Germanies (London, 1994), 198.
21. Grieder, ‘ “To Learn from the Soviet Union is to Learn How to Win” ’, 167, 171; Michael Gehler, Three Germanies: West Germany, East Germany and the Berlin Republic (London, 2011), 202.
22. Heins, The Wall Falls, 183–5, 195, 223; Eva Kolinsky (ed.), Between Hope and Fear (Keele, 1995), 229.
23. Charles Krauthammer, ‘Bless Our Pax Americana’, Washington Post, 22 March 1991.
24. Konrad H. Jarausch (ed.), After Unity: Reconfiguring German Identities (Berghahn, 1997), 16; David Childs, The Fall of the GDR: Germany’s Road to Unity (Edinburgh, 2001), 22; Chris Flockton and Eva Kolinsky (eds.), Recasting East Germany: Social Transformation after the GDR (London, 1999), 1; Diewald, Goedicke, and Mayer, After the Fall of the Wall, 316.
25. Konrad Jarausch, The Rush to German Unity (Oxford, 1994), 160.
26. Roger Willemsen, ‘Ein kleines Winken’, in Julia Franck (ed.), Grenzübergänge: Autoren aus Ost und West erinnern sich (Frankfurt am Main, 2009), 154; Ernest D. Plock, East German–West German Relations and the Fall of the GDR (Oxford, 1993), 173; Claudia Rusch, Meine Freie Deutsche Jugend (Frankfurt am Main, 2003), 75.
27. Mary Fulbrook, The Divided Nation (Oxford, 1991), 223.
28. Fulbrook, The Divided Nation, 245; Paul Kubicek, ‘The Diminishing Relevance of Ostalgie 20 Years after Reunification’, in Katharina Gerstenberger and Jana Evans Braziel, After the Berlin Wall: Germany and Beyond (London, 2011), 87; Ulrich K. Preuss, ‘Political Institutions and German Unification’, in Peter C. Caldwell and Robert R. Shandley (eds.), German Unification: Expectations and Outcomes (London, 2011), 150.
29. Kristina Matschat quoted in Heins, The Wall Falls, 321.
30. Walter Momper quoted in Heins, The Wall Falls, 320; cf. Angelique L. questionnaire, February 2012.
31. Ide, Geteilte Träume, 13.
32. Jonathan Grix and Paul Cooke (eds.), East German Distinctiveness in a Unified Germany (Birmingham, 2002), 1, 5, 11.
33. Corey Ross, The East German Dictatorship: Problems and Perspectives in the Interpretation of the GDR (London, 2002), 3.
34. ‘Spiegel Spezial, Vereint aber Fremd’, Der Spiegel, 1 (1991), 32–48; Elizabeth A. Ten Dyke, Dresden: Paradoxes of Memory in History (New York, 2001), 114–15; Andreas Glaeser, Divided in Unity: Identity, Germany and the Berlin Police (Chicago, 2000), 332–3.
35. Hans-Joachim D. interview, February 2013.
36. Dirk M. interview, December 2011.
37. Dirk Philipsen, We Were the People: Voices From East Germany’s Revolutionary Autumn of 1989 (London, 1993), 333.
38. Charles S. Maier, Dissolution: The Crisis of Communism and the End of East Germany (Princeton, 1997), 286.
39. Fulbrook, Dissonant Lives, 449.
40. Hans-Joachim D. interview, February 2013; Heike K. interview, February 2013; Claudia S. interview, June 2012; Anna-Maria G. questionnaire, February 2012; Thomas S. questionnaire, February 2012; Diewald, Goedicke, and Mayer, After the Fall of the Wall, 313; Thomas Scharf, ‘Older People: Coping with the Challenges of Everyday Life’, in Kolinsky (ed.), Between Hope and Fear, 211; Juliane Cieslak and Paula Hannaske, ‘Vergangenheit heute: Einblicke in die Arbeit einer ostdeutschen Biografiegruppe’, in Hacker et al. (eds.), Dritte Generation Ost, 54; Ide, Geteilte Träume, 13.
41. Matthias S. interview, Febru
ary 2012.
42. Fulbrook, Dissonant Lives, 348, 359, 464; Sheffer, Burned Bridge, 167; Jeannette Z. Madarasz, Conflict and Compromise in East Germany, 1971–1989 (Basingstoke, 2003), 15.
43. Hans-Jürgen van der Gieth, Leben und Alltag im geteilten Deutschland (Kempen, 2001), 33, 44.
44. Claudia Rusch, Meine Freie Deutsche Jugend (Frankfurt am Main, 2003), 47; Joanna McKay, ‘East German Identity in the GDR’, in Grix and Cooke (eds.), East German Distinctiveness in a Unified Germany, 15–16.
45. Thomas J. interview, June 2012; Mirko Sennewald interview, April 2012.
46. Mark Fenemore, Sex, Thugs and Rock ’n’ Roll: Teenage Rebels in Cold-War East Germany (London, 2007), 63, 70, 78, 102, 239.
47. Ide, Geteilte Träume, 102.
48. Jana Hensel, After the Wall: Confessions from an East German Childhood and the Life that Came Next, trans. Jefferson Chase (New York, 2004), 5–11; cf. Angelique L. questionnaire, February 2012.
49. Grix and Cooke (eds.), East German Distinctiveness in a Unified Germany, 11.
50. Günter Gaus, Wo Deutschland liegt: Eine Ortsbestimmung (Hamburg, 1983), 156–7.
51. Geoff Eley, ‘Forward’, in Lüdtke (ed.), The History of Everyday Life, viii.
52. Anna Saunders, Honecker’s Children: Youth and Patriotism in East(ern) Germany, 1979–2002 (Manchester, 2007), 136.
53. Hensel, After the Wall, 175.
54. Three of the thirty participants in this project answered the same questions as a questionnaire rather than in person: Thomas S., Anna-Maria G., and Angelique L.
55. Lüdtke, ‘What Is the History of Everyday Life and Who Are Its Practitioners?’, 5–6.
56. Lüdtke, ‘What Is the History of Everyday Life and Who Are Its Practitioners?’, 174.
57. Fenemore, Sex, Thugs and Rock ’n’ Roll, 8; Dyke, Dresden, 252, 256.
58. Paul Cooke, ‘Literature and the Question of East German Cultural Identity since the Wende’, in Grix and Cooke (eds.), East German Distinctiveness in a Unified Germany, 164.
59. Lynn Abrams, Oral History Theory (Oxford, 2010), 103, 105.
60. Abrams, Oral History Theory, 53, 97; Cooke, ‘Literature and the Question of East German Cultural Identity since the Wende’, 164.
61. Paul Thompson, The Voice of the Past (Oxford, 1988), 122, 148; Mary Fulbrook, ‘Re-presenting the Nation: History and Identity in East and West Germany’, in Fulbrook and Martin Swales (eds.), Representing the German Nation: History and Identity in Twentieth-Century Germany (Manchester, 2000), 186; Ross, The East German Dictatorship, 109–10.
62. Fulbrook, Dissonant Lives, 462, 479.
63. Pavel Seifter, ‘Foreword’, in McDermott and Stibbe (eds.), Revolution and Resistance in Eastern Europe, xiii.
64. Full names are used in the case of Petra Bläss, Mario Röllig, Katharina Furian, Carola Koehler, and Mirko Sennewald. All the other interviewees have been anonymized.
65. Francis Meehan quoted in Heins, The Wall Falls, 320.
Chapter 1
1. For other recollections of the night of 9 November 1989 see Claudia Rusch, Meine Freie Deutsche Jugend (Frankfurt am Main, 2003), 75.
2. David Childs, The Fall of the GDR: Germany’s Road to Unity (Edinburgh, 2001), 84; Jonathan Grix, The Role of the Masses in the Collapse of the GDR (London, 2000), 136.
3. Andreas Glaeser, Divided in Unity: Identity, Germany and the Berlin Police (Chicago, 2000), 110.
4. Jürgen Weber, Germany 1945–1990: A Parallel History (New York, 2004), 211; Childs, The Fall of the GDR, 86–8; Anne McElvoy, The Saddled Cow: East Germany’s Life and Legacy (London, 1992), 206.
5. McElvoy, The Saddled Cow, 207–8.
6. There were several other political parties in the GDR but they were all collected under the SED-dominated National Front for Democratic Germany. These other parties included the East German branch of the Christian Democratic Union, the Liberal Democratic Party, and the National Democratic Party.
7. Throughout the book, where the protagonist’s opinions or experiences have been shared by other interviewees, this will be indicated by ‘cf.’ in the notes. Cf. Silvio G. interview, January 2013.
8. Mike Dennis, ‘The East German Family: Change and Continuity’, in Chris Flockton and Eva Kolinsky (eds.), Recasting East Germany: Social Transformation after the GDR (London, 1999), 85.
9. Isabel Hempel, ‘Zukunft ist kein Schicksalsschlag: Frauen machen Neue Länder’, in Michael Hacker et al. (eds.), Dritte Generation Ost: Wer wir sind, was wir wollen (Berlin, 2012), 172.
10. Cf. Thomas J. interview, June 2012; Anne Marie B. interview, June 2012.
11. Cf. Claudia S. interview, June 2012.
12. Childs, The Fall of the GDR, 105; Glaeser, Divided in Unity, 110; Weber, Germany 1945–1990, 224–5.
13. Ernest D. Plock, East German–West German Relations and the Fall of the GDR (Oxford, 1993), 174–5; Timothy Garton Ash, In Europe’s Name: Germany and the Divided Continent (New York, 1993), 346; Childs, The Fall of the GDR, 77; Michael Gehler, Three Germanies: West Germany, East Germany and the Berlin Republic (London, 2011), 211.
14. Glaeser, Divided in Unity, 110; McElvoy, The Saddled Cow, 210.
15. Peter Grieder, ‘ “To Learn from the Soviet Union is to Learn How to Win”: The East German Revolution, 1989–1990’, in Kevin McDermott and Matthew Stibbe (eds.), Revolution and Resistance in Eastern Europe: Challenges to Communist Rule (Oxford, 2006), 168–9; Edith Sheffer, Burned Bridge: How East and West Germans Made the Iron Curtain (Oxford, 2011), 246; McElvoy, The Saddled Cow, 1992, 212.
16. For further description of this period of hiatus see Rusch, Meine Freie Deutsche Jugend, 90.
17. Juergen A. K. Thomaneck, ‘From Euphoria to Reality: Social Problems of Post-Unification’, in Derek Lewis and John R. P. McKenzie (eds.), The New Germany: Social, Political and Cultural Challenges of Unification (Exeter, 1995), 23.
18. Cf. Anne Marie B. interview, June 2012; Robert S. interview, December 2011.
19. Weber, Germany 1945–1990, 252.
20. Cf. Mario Röllig interview, December 2011; Carola Koehler interview, June 2012. Grix and Cooke (eds.), East German Distinctiveness in a Unified Germany, 10.
21. Daniel Hough, ‘East German Identity and Party Politics’, in Jonathan Grix and Paul Cooke (eds.), East German Distinctiveness in a Unified Germany (Birmingham, 2002), 101, 109, 113; cf. Felix R. interview, April 2013.
22. Daphne Berdahl, Where the World Ended: Re-Unification and Identity in the German Borderland (Berkeley and Los Angeles, 1999), 169.
23. DTA 1071/1, Anonymous diary, 1988–1989, p. 136; Berdahl, Where the World Ended, 158.
24. Berdahl, Where the World Ended, 164; Robert Ide, Geteilte Träume: Meine Eltern, die Wende und ich (Munich, 2009), 38, 45.
25. Rusch, Meine Freie Deutsche Jugend, 75.
26. DTA 1071/1, Anonymous diary, 1988–1989, p. 154; Cf. Heike K. interview, February 2013; Katharina Furian interview, June 2012; Thomas J., interview June 2012; Sheffer, Burned Bridge, 243–4.
27. Glaeser, Divided in Unity, 110.
Chapter 2
1. Christopher Hilton, The Wall: The People’s Story (Stroud, 2001), 114, 252, 260, 305; Edith Sheffer, Burned Bridge: How East and West Germans Made the Iron Curtain (Oxford, 2011), 197; Ines Veith, Leben und Alltag … der DDR-Flüchtlinge (Kempen, 2010), 22, 40; Dr Wulf Rothenbächer quoted in Cornelia Heins, The Wall Falls: An Oral History of the Reunification of the Two Germanies (London, 1994), 123; Robert Ide, Geteilte Träume: Meine Eltern, die Wende und ich (Munich, 2009), 82.
2. Werner Filmer and Heribert Schwann (eds.), Alltag im anderen Deutschland (Düsseldorf, 1985).
3. Cf. Thomas J. interview, June 2012; DTA 1071/1, Anonymous diary, 1988–1989, p. 126; DTA, Reg. Nr. 2166,1, Anonymous diary entry from 1989; Elizabeth A. Ten Dyke, Dresden: Paradoxes of Memory in History (New York, 2001), 172; Ruth Hoffman, Stasi-Kinder: Aufwachsen im Überwachungsstaat (Berlin, 2012), 57, 269, 284; Veith, Leben und Alltag … der DDR-Flüchtlinge, 16
; Arbeitsgemeinschaft Jugend und Bildung e.V. (ed.), Wir in Ost und West—Jugend, Alltag, Freizeit (Wiesbaden, 1986), 21.
4. Cf. DTA 1071/1, Anonymous diary, 1988–1989, p. 128.
5. Daphne Berdahl, Where the World Ended: Re-Unification and Identity in the German Borderland (Berkeley and Los Angeles, 1999), 154.
6. Hoffman, Stasi-Kinder, 268.
7. David Childs, The Fall of the GDR: Germany’s Road to Unity (Edinburgh, 2001), 17, 31–2; cf. Hans-Michael S. interview, April 2012.
8. Ralph H. interview, June 2012.
9. Claudia Rusch, Meine Freie Deutsche Jugend (Frankfurt am Main, 2003), 129, 133.
10. Cf. Matthias S. interview, February 2012; Ide, Geteilte Träume, 81.