8. Jorge Seidel quoted in Heins, The Wall Falls, 336.
9. Peter Erler and Hubertus Knabe, The Prohibited District: The Stasi Restricted Area Berlin Hohenschoenhausen (Berlin, 2008), 18.
10. Fulbrook, Dissonant Lives, 470–5.
11. For a more detailed explanation of the opening of the Stasi files, please see Chapter 5.
12. Cf. Anna-Maria G. questionnaire, February 2012.
13. Cf. Heike K. interview, February 2013.
14. Cf. Thomas J. interview June 2012; Julia Franck, ‘Die Überwindung der Grenze liegt im Erzählen’, in Franck (ed.), Grenzübergänge: Autoren aus Ost und West erinnern sich (Frankfurt am Main, 2009), 20.
15. Cf. Dirk M. interview, December 2011; Matthias S. interview, February 2012; Anna-Maria G. questionnaire, February 2012; Thomas S. questionnaire, November 2011; Thomas J. interview, June 2012; Rusch, Meine Freie Deutsche Jugend, 86.
16. Joanna McKay, ‘East German Identity in the GDR’, in Jonathan Grix and Paul Cooke (eds.), East German Distinctiveness in a Unified Germany (Birmingham, 2002), 24.
17. Cf. Felix R. interview, April 2013.
18. Cf. Thomas S. questionnaire, November 2011.
19. Fulbrook, Dissonant Lives, 487.
20. Rusch, Meine Freie Deutsche Jugend, 124; Cf. Dirk S. interview, December 2011; Angela Kowalczyk, Negativ und Dekaden: Ostberliner Punk Erinnerungen (Berlin, 2003); Mark Fenemore, Sex, Thugs and Rock ’n’ Roll: Teenage Rebels in Cold-War East Germany (New York, 2007), 74–5, 91–2, 132, 151, 170.
21. DTA 1071/1, Anonymous diary, 1988–1989, pp. 31, 82, 86, 103–4, 118; Rusch, Meine Freie Deutsche Jugend, 124; Hans-Jürgen van der Gieth, Leben und Alltag im geteilten Deutschland (Kempen, 2001), 40.
22. Cf. Dirk M. interview, December 2011.
23. Cf. Anne Marie B. interview, June 2012.
24. Cf. Dirk M. interview, December 2011; Thomas S. questionnaire, November 2011; Matthias S. interview, February 2012; Anne Marie B. interview, June 2012; Katharina Furian interview, June 2012; DTA 1071/1, Anonymous diary, 1988–1989, pp. 31, 97, 128, 137; Rusch, Meine Freie Deutsche Jugend, 75.
25. Cf. Anne Marie B. interview, June 2012; Kurt Masur quoted in Heins, The Wall Falls, 229; Roger Willemsen, ‘Ein kleines Winken’, in Franck (ed.), Grenzübergänge, 154; Ernest D. Plock, East German–West German Relations and the Fall of the GDR (Oxford, 1993), 173.
26. Ulrike Poppe quoted in Heins, The Wall Falls, 264; Robert Ide, Geteilte Träume: Meine Eltern, die Wende und ich (Munich, 2009), 28; Timothy Garton Ash, In Europe’s Name: Germany and the Divided Continent (New York, 1993), 343.
27. Cf. Silvio G. interview, January 2013; Hans-Joachim D. interview, February 2013; Heike K. interview, February 2013; Edith Sheffer, Burned Bridge: How East and West Germans Made the Iron Curtain (Oxford, 2011), 244.
28. Cf. Katharina Furian interview, June 2012; Anne Marie B. interview, June 2012; Heins, The Wall Falls, 353; Paul Kubicek, ‘The Diminishing Relevance of Ostalgie 20 Years after Reunification’, in Katharina Gerstenberger and Jana Evans Braziel (eds.), After the Berlin Wall: Germany and Beyond (London, 2011), 88; Elizabeth A. Ten Dyke, Dresden: Paradoxes of Memory in History (New York, 2001), 138–46; Daphne Berdahl, Where the World Ended: Re-Unification and Identity in the German Borderland (Berkeley and Los Angeles, 1999), 169; Anne McElvoy, The Saddled Cow: East Germany’s Life and Legacy (London, 1992), 216.
29. Cf. Hans-Michael S. interview, April 2012.
30. Stefan Wolle, Die heile Welt der Diktatur (Berlin, 2001), 344.
31. The East German population was approximately 17 million when the GDR formed, but this had shrunk to nearer 16 million by the 1980s.
32. Cf. Hans-Michael S. interview, April 2012; Paul Cook, Representing East Germany: From Colonization to Nostalgia (Oxford, 2005); Linda Bunckenburg and Susan Muecke, ‘Jugend im Aufbruch: Wendejugendliche erinnern sich an ihren Herbst 1989’, in Michael Hacker et al. (eds.), Dritte Generation Ost: Wer wir sind, was wir wollen (Berlin, 2012), 44.
33. Jana Wessendorf and Anne Wessendorf, ‘Wendekinder: Zwei Schwestern im Gespräch’, in Hacker et al. (eds.), Dritte Generation Ost, 88.
34. Berdahl, Where the World Ended, 198; Dyke, Dresden, 251.
35. Cf. Mike M. interview, April 2013; Felix R. interview, April 2013.
36. Ide, Geteilte Träume, 88; Wessendorf and Wessendorf, ‘Wendekinder’, 81; Esther von Richthofen, Bringing Culture to the Masses: Control, Compromise and Participation in the GDR (New York, 2009), 1; Fenemore, Sex, Thugs and Rock ’n’ Roll, xiii; Andreas Glaeser, ‘Why Germany Remains Divided’, in Todd Herzog and Sander L. Gilman (eds.), A New Germany in a New Europe (New York, 2001), 179–80.
37. DTA 1071/2, March 2002, p. 50.
38. Cf. Anna-Maria G. questionnaire, February 2012; Andreas S. interview, April 2012; Claudia S. interview, June 2012; Hacker et al. (eds.), Dritte Generation Ost, 12; Adriana Letrari, ‘Potenziale der Dritten Generation Ostdeutschland: Nicht entweder oder, sondern sowohl als auch’, in Hacker et al. (eds.), Dritte Generation Ost, 178; Johannes Stämmler, ‘Wir, die stumme Generation Ost’, in Hacker et al. (eds.), Dritte Generation Ost, 213.
39. Eva Kolinsky (ed.), Between Hope and Fear: Everyday Life in Post-Unification East Germany (Keele, 1995), 33, 231, 234; Uta Starke, ‘Young People: Lifestyles, Expectations and Value Orientations since the Wende’, in Kolinsky (ed.), Between Hope and Fear, 155–75, at 162; Andreas Glaeser, Divided in Unity: Identity, Germany and the Berlin Police (Chicago, 2000), 350.
40. Heins, The Wall Falls, 319–20.
Chapter 7
1. Michael Gehler, Three Germanies: West Germany, East Germany and the Berlin Republic (London, 2011), 200.
2. After December 1991, when East Germans were granted access to their individual Stasi files, the man in the mining society discovered that Mirko’s father had informed on him. Mirko’s father said that he had agreed to do so because he regarded him as a friend and wanted to protect him from further problems with the regime. Accepting this version of events, the friend did not reject Mirko’s father and they have been close friends ever since.
3. Many East Germans cut off contact with their Western relatives either because they knew the SED frowned upon it or because it was a condition of their job that they sign a document agreeing to do so.
4. Cf. Hans-Joachim D. interview, February 2013; Silvio G. interview, January 2013.
5. Cf. Hans-Michael S. interview, April 2012.
6. Ruth Hoffman, Stasi-Kinder: Aufwachsen im Überwachungsstaat (Berlin, 2012), 8, 9, 26, 61.
7. Cf. Claudia S. interview, June 2012.
8. Cf. Lisa E. interview, June 2012.
9. Cf. Anne-Marie B. interview, June 2012; Thomas J. interview, June 2012; Hoffman, Stasi-Kinder, 58; Edith Sheffer, Burned Bridge: How East and West Germans Made the Iron Curtain (Oxford, 2011), 169.
10. Anne McElvoy, The Saddled Cow: East Germany’s Life and Legacy (London, 1992), 156.
11. Cf. Dirk L. interview, March 2013; Hans-Joachim D. interview, February 2013; Heike K. interview, February 2013.
12. Robert Ide, Geteilte Träume: Meine Eltern, die Wende und ich (Munich, 2009), 83–4.
13. Cf. Ide, Geteilte Träume, 104; Elizabeth A. Ten Dyke, Dresden: Paradoxes of Memory in History (New York, 2001), 169–70.
14. Hoffman, Stasi-Kinder, 56.
15. Cf. Ide, Geteilte Träume, 104.
16. Cf. Felix R. interview, April 2013.
17. See the permanent exhibition at the GDR Museum, Berlin and
18. Cf. Hanno H. interview, January 2013; Felix R. interview, April 2013.
19. Ide, Geteilte Träume, 16; Johannes Stämmler, ‘Ich entdecke den Osten neu: Ein Interview mit dem Chefredaktuer der SUPERillu, Robert Schneider’, in Michael Hacker et al. (eds.), Dritte Generation Ost: Wer wir sind, was wir wollen (Berlin, 2012), 167.
20. DTA 1071/2, Anonymous diary, 28 February 2006, p. 162.
21. Cf. Silvio G. interview, January 2013; Linda Bunckenburg and Susan Mücke, ‘Jugen
d im Aufbruch: Wendejugendliche erinnern sich an ihren Herbst 1989’, in Hacker et al. (eds.), Dritte Generation Ost, 40.
22. Anja Görnitz in Hacker et al. (eds.), Dritte Generation Ost, 25–6.
Chapter 8
1. Cf. Mike M. interview, April 2013.
2. Cf. Thomas J. interview, June 2012.
3. Cf. Claudia S. interview, June 2012; DTA 1071/1, Anonymous diary, 1988–1989, pp. 44, 96.
4. Cf. Anna-Maria G. questionnaire, February 2012; Felix R. interview, April 2013; Kristina Matschat quoted in Cornelia Heins, The Wall Falls: An Oral History of the Reunification of the Two Germanies (London, 1994), 233; DTA 1071/1, Anonymous diary, 1988–1989, p. 147.
5. Michael Gehler, Three Germanies: West Germany, East Germany and the Berlin Republic (London, 2011), 200.
6. Cf. Robert Ide, Geteilte Träume: Meine Eltern, die Wende und ich (Munich, 2009), 62.
7. Cf. Dirk L. interview, March 2013.
8. Cf. Petra Bläss interview, June 2012.
9. Felix R. interview, April 2013.
10. Silvio G. interview, January 2013; Andreas Glaeser, Divided in Unity: Identity, Germany and the Berlin Police (Chicago, 2000), 44.
11. Ide, Geteilte Träume, 121.
12. Romy Koehler and Susanne Herrmann-Sinai, ‘Denken in Grenzen’, in Michael Hacker et al. (eds.), Dritte Generation Ost: Wer wir sind, was wir wollen (Berlin, 2012), 185.
13. Cf. Hanna K. interview, December 2011; Angela H. interview, October 2011; Nina Benedict, Böse Briefe über Deutschland (Schkeuditz, 1993), 62.
14. Benedict, Böse Briefe über Deutschland, 62.
15. Daphne Berdahl, Where the World Ended: Re-Unification and Identity in the German Borderland (Berkeley and Los Angeles, 1999), 58.
16. ‘High German’ is a term used for formal German, most often used in written German, and frequently associated with the Hanover region in Western Germany.
17. Cf. Dirk L. interview, March 2013.
18. Cf. Felix R. interview, April 2013.
19. Franz Kafka quoted in Heins, The Wall Falls, 102.
20. Claudia Rusch, Meine Freie Deutsche Jugend (Frankfurt am Main, 2003), 76.
21. Hans-Michael S. interview, April 2012; DTA 1071/2, Anonymous, June 2002, p. 58; Anne Schreiter, ‘Bin ich ostdeutsch? Vom Umgang mit den kleinen Unterschieden’, in Hacker et al. (eds.), Dritte Generation Ost, 79; Juliane Cieslak and Paula Hannaske, ‘Vergangenheit heute: Einblicke in die Arbeit einer ostdeutschen Biografiegruppe’, in Hacker et al. (eds.), Dritte Generation Ost, 49.
22. Erich Honecker speaking at the IXth SED Party Congress, 17–21 November 1986.
23. Cf. Mike M. interview, April 2013; ‘Alle wollen an die Ostsee reisen’ [Everyone Wants to Travel to the Baltic Sea], Der Tagesspiegel, 23 May 1963.
24. Cf. Mike M. interview, April 2013.
25. Cf. Felix R. interview, April 2013.
26. Walther Ulbricht quoted in Molly Wilkinson Johnson, Training Socialist Citizens: Sports and the State in East Germany (Brill, 2008), 2.
27. Joanna McKay, ‘East German Identity in the GDR’, in Jonathan Grix and Paul Cooke (eds.), East German Distinctiveness in a Unified Germany (Birmingham, 2002), 18; Wilkinson Johnson, Training Socialist Citizens, 64, 203.
28. Cf. Angela H. interview, October 2011; Anna-Maria G. questionnaire, February 2012; Stuart Parkes, Understanding Contemporary Germany (London, 1997), 95.
29. Cf. Lisa E. interview, June 2012; Jürgen 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), 27–8.
30. Cf. Angela H. interview, October 2011.
31. Cf. Angelique L. questionnaire, February 2012; ‘Bin ich ostdeutsch? Vom Umgang mit den kleinen Unterschieden’, SUPERillu, 30 (2012), 13; Edith Sheffer, Burned Bridge: How East and West Germans Made the Iron Curtain (Oxford, 2011), 227; Anne McElvoy, The Saddled Cow: East Germany’s Life and Legacy (London, 1992), 221.
32. Thomaneck, ‘From Euphoria to Reality’, 27–8.
Chapter 9
1. Hans-Joachim Maaz quoted in Anne McElvoy, The Saddled Cow: East Germany’s Life and Legacy (London, 1992), 219.
2. Hans-Hermann Hertle, Konrad Jarausch, and Christoph Kleßmann, Mauerbau und Mauerfall (Berlin 2002), 299; Hagen Koch and Peter Joachim Lapp, Die Garde des Erich Mielke—Der militärisch-operative Arm des MfS—Das Berliner Wachregiment ‘Feliks Dzierzynski’ (Aachen 2008).
3. 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; McElvoy, The Saddled Cow, 102–3.
4. Cf. Robert S. interview, December 2011; Lisa E. interview, April 2012; Petra Bläss interview, April 2012; Peggy M. interview, January 2013.
5. Katherine Pence and Paul Betts (eds.), Socialist Modern: East German Everyday Culture and Politics, (Michigan, 2008), 9; Jonathan Grix, The Role of the Masses in the Collapse of the GDR (London, 2000), 23–4, 38, 62; Daphne Berdahl, Where the World Ended: Re-Unification and Identity in the German Borderland (Berkeley and Los Angeles, 1999), 60–1.
6. Jeannette Z. Madarasz, Conflict and Compromise in East Germany, 1971–1989 (Basingstoke, 2003), 7.
7. Mary Fulbrook, Anatomy of a Dictatorship: Inside the GDR, 1949–1989 (Oxford, 1995), 143.
8. Mary Fulbrook, The People’s State: East German Society from Hitler to Honecker (Oxford, 2008), 292.
9. Pence and Betts (eds.), Socialist Modern, 5, 9; Stuart Parkes, Understanding Contemporary Germany (London, 1997), 7.
10. Konrad Jarausch, The Rush to Germany Unity (Oxford, 1994).
11. Jonathan Grix and Paul Cooke (eds.), East German Distinctiveness in a Unified Germany (Birmingham, 2002), 1.
12. Matthias S. interview, February 2012; Andreas Glaeser, Divided in Unity: Identity, Germany and the Berlin Police (Chicago, 2000), 117, 176; Wolfgang Seibel, ‘The Quest for Freedom and Stability: Political Choices and the Economic Transformation of East Germany, 1989–1991’, in Peter C. Caldwell and Robert R. Shandley (eds.), German Unification: Expectations and Outcomes (London, 2011), 99; Emine Sevgi Oezdamar, ‘Lieber Besson’, in Julia Franck (ed.), Grenzübergänge: Autoren aus Ost und West erinnern sich (Frankfurt am Main, 2009), 138.
13. Marianne Birthler, ‘Epilogue: The End of Dictatorship and Its Aftermath: Personal Reflections of the Federal Commissioner for the Records of the State Security Agency of the German Democratic Republic’, in Caldwell and Shandley (eds.), German Unification, 175; Kristen Ghodsee, Lost in Transition: Ethnographies of Everyday Life after Communism (Durham, NC, 2011), 186–7.
14. Cf. Petra Bläss interview, June 2012; Hanna K. interview, December 2011.
15. Elviera Thiedemann, Es kame in langer lichter Herbst: Tagebuch der Wendezeit 1989/90 (Berlin, 2000), 46–7; Berdahl, Where the World Ended, 2–3.
16. Paul Kubicek, ‘The Diminishing Relevance of Ostalgie 20 Years after Reunification’, in Katharina Gerstenberger and Jana Evans Braziel (eds.), After the Berlin Wall: Germany and Beyond (London, 2011), 86.
17. Derek Lewis, ‘The GDR: Wende and Legacy’, in Lewis and John R. P. McKenzie (eds.), The New Germany: Social, Political and Cultural Challenges of Unification (Exeter, 1995), 55; Caldwell and Shandley, German Unification, 6.
18. Cf. Dirk L. interview, March 2013; Hans-Joachim D. interview, February 2013; Heike K. interview, February 2013.
19. ‘Jahresbericht des Bundesregierung zum Stand der Deutschen Einheit 2013’, published on 20 November 2013:
20. Jarausch, The Rush to German Unity, 153; Fulbrook, Dissonant Lives, 461; Mike Dennis, ‘The East German Family: Change and Continuity’, in Chris Flockton and Eva Kolinsky (eds.), Recasting East Germany: Social Transformation after t
he GDR (London, 1999), 89; Jürgen Weber, Germany 1945–1990: A Parallel History (New York, 2004), 237; Frithjof H. Knabe, ‘Unemployment: Developments and Experiences’, in Eva Kolinsky (ed.), Between Hope and Fear (Keele, 1995), 74, 84.
21. Werner Smolny, ‘Wage Adjustment, Competitiveness and Unemployment: East Germany After unification’, Jahrbücher für Nationalökonomie und Stastistik, 229/2–3 (2009), 130–45, at 133.
22. ‘Jahresbericht des Bundesregierung zum Stand der Deutschen Einheit 2013’, published on 20 November 2013:
23. Frithjof H. Knabe, ‘Unemployment: Developments and Experiences’, in Kolinsky (ed.), Between Hope and Fear, 74, 84.
24. Cf. Mirko Sennewald interview, April 2012; Carola Koehler interview, June 2012; Robert S. interview, December 2011; Anne-Marie B. interview, April 2012; Peggy M. interview, January 2013.
25. Wolf von Holleben quoted in Cornelia Heins, The Wall Falls: An Oral History of the Reunification of the Two Germanies (London, 1994), 166; Dr Kristina Matschat quoted in Heins, The Wall Falls, 267; cf. Matthias S. interview, February 2012.
26. 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), 160; 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), 32.
27. Alice Kahl, ‘Housing and the Quality of Urban Living’, in Kolinsky (ed.), Between Hope and Fear, 140; Hans-Jürgen van der Gieth, Leben und Alltag im geteilten Deutschland (Kempen, 2001), 20–2.
28. Berdahl, Where the World Ended, 2–3.
29. Judd Stitziel, ‘Shopping, Sewing, Networking, Complaining: Consumer Culture and the Relationship between State and Society in the GDR’, in Pence and Betts (eds.), Socialist Modern, 253.
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