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The Paradox of Ordinary Life: East Germans between Reality and
Idealism (By Abir Bouguerra)
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When in November 1989, says Mary Fulbrook in her book The People’s State, the Berlin Wall fell, Westerners were aghast at the state of East Germany: the crumbling housing; the pot-‐holed, cobbled roads; the brown coal dust and chemical pollution in the industrial centers of the south; the miserable offerings in the shops; the relative paucity and poor quality of consumer goods…1 In short, Eastern Germany, or the GDR, had neither political legitimacy nor economic viability.
And yet, once historians, sociologists, and political scientists started to write about East Germany under communist rule, protesting voices began to be raised. People like Miriam Weber, Brigitte Reinmann, Manfred Uschner, Walter Womacka and many others, who might have received a violent treatment and torture at a time, protested the idea of criticizing the communist rule in East Germany. Faced with accounts of repression, complicity, and collusion, says Fulbrook, former citizens of GDR claimed that their own memories and experiences told them otherwise. This paper is going to look at the reasons behind this behavior by taking a close look at the way people led their daily lives in Communist Germany.
For forty years, from 1949 to 1990, the communist Socialist Party (SED) ruled over a rump state—that part of defeated Germany that had come under Soviet control at the end of the Second World War2. Within the time frame of almost forty years, the SED did not only seek to exercise and retain power for power’s sake. The SED actually wanted to do something with their power: to transform society in to what they thought would be a better, more egalitarian, more just society3. Thus, an emphasis on the collective rather than the individual became a fundamental element in the GDR. It was a key feature in all areas of life, from collective potty training in state-‐run crèches and nurseries, through conformity in youth organizations, schools and military service, to the participation in the work brigades, the frequent campaigns and regular public rallies, and mass organizations and bloc parties of adult life4. Even political participation seemed to be well managed by involving a large number of the citizens on the political structures and processes.
One in five adults became a member of the SED. An astonishing number appear to have been willing to act as unofficial informers for the Stasi—the East German secret police that observed and reported on everything. According to Fulbrook, Nearly all-‐working adults were members of the trade union organization, the Freier Deutscher Gewerkschaftsbund (FDGB)5. The vast majority of young people were members of the state youth organizations under the Freie Deutsche Jugend (FDJ) 6. And by the 1970’s, and “despite continuing grumbling over all manner of specific irritations and shortages,”7 as Fulbrook put it, there is much evidence to suggest that
1 Mary Fulbrook, The People’s state: East German Society from Hitler to Honecker, 1990, p 1 2 Mary Fulbrook, The People’s state: East German Society from Hitler to Honecker, 1990, p 2 3 Mary Fulbrook, The People’s state: East German Society from Hitler to Honecker, 1990, p 9 4 Mary Fulbrook, The People’s state: East German Society from Hitler to Honecker, 1990, p 9 5 Mary Fulbrook, The People’s state: East German Society from Hitler to Honecker, 1990, p 4 6 Mary Fulbrook, The People’s state: East German Society from Hitler to Honecker, 1990, p 4 7 Mary Fulbrook, The People’s state: East German Society from Hitler to Honecker, 1990, p 4
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there was widespread acceptance of the general parameters of life, that this was simply the “way things were.”
Thus, within the GDR, new generations grew to maturity that had known nothing else; those who remembered an undivided Germany, those socialized in imperial Germany, the Weimar Republic or the Third Reich, became an ever-‐dwindling minority of the population. Many East Germans were surprised and shocked to hear the revelations of corruption, to learn the extent of Stasi infiltration. Many thought, however, that they were able to lead what they considered to be “perfectly ordinary lives” –or to use the German expression, “ein ganz normales Leben” – in the GDR8. And this is where the concept of Nostalgia, or Ostalgie, comes from, as talking about East Germans’ experiences is usually related to “that sentiment flowering only under the conditions of upheaval and uncertainty in the difficult years after formal political unification.”9
Just by going through this short introduction we can note that the Eastern German experience was not a simple one; it wasn’t one that will either condemn the communist choice or victimize the society for accepting the communist rule. The experience of East Germans was far more complex: the distinctions between a brutal repressive state and a subordinate, repressed, or complicit society cannot be drawn so neatly. The institutionalized denial of human rights was given literally concrete embodiment in the shape of the wall; yet, even so, for a pretty long time—more in some periods than others—10 the GDR came to appear quite “normal,” taken for granted, among large numbers of its citizens.
In this paper I will be looking at the definition of that “normality” that was created in the daily lives of East Germans. I will be addressing the phenomenon of maintaining an “ordinary” life under the paradox of ordinary existence. As this phenomenon was not about normalizing the daily activities of life, like going to the dentist, having a family, buying a car and renting a small house with a white picket fence. The normality for East Germans was about living in an imagined community under the circumstances of reality. The normality was about reimagining that same community when things start to change and shift towards the unknown—and Nostalgia is the tool that helped shape this concept.
Ostalgie, Nostalgia, Paradox, normal, ordinary. These are some of the themes that will be defining and highlighting the East German experience under the rule of communism—Precisely the experience of ordinary people.
Throughout this research, I will be shedding the light on individual experiences; some experiences that could be perceived as unique, yet very ordinary and common. I will be shedding the light on the quality of life that people had in Communist Berlin by defining their daily activities and finding Nostalgia in their way of life.
Thus, this paper is going to address the Eastern efforts to achieve paradise on earth. This paper is going to focus on the ways in which the Easterners’ experiences, 8 Mary Fulbrook, The People’s state: East German Society from Hitler to Honecker, 1990, p 3 9 Mary Fulbrook, The People’s state: East German Society from Hitler to Honecker, 1990, p 3 10 Mary Fulbrook, The People’s state: East German Society from Hitler to Honecker, 1990, p 2
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perceptions and actions contributed to the complex social and political history of their country, which was not purely made by the ruling party’s policies and practices. This paper is simply about the intersections and disjunctions between dictatorial structures and experienced normalities of everyday life.
Her experience; their experiences:
Each epoch in Eastern Germany’s communist history had its own distinguishing characteristics. At some point in time, the notion of the so-‐called Stasiland—that will be elaborated later in the paper—was established and the concept of fear was further embedded in the daily view of life in East Germany. At this point in history, and even though East Germans were very different in character from each other, there was one common element that unified them all: the experience of life under Communism.
Thus, introducing one experience, lived by one character would be the best way to shed the light on the quality of life the different members of the community used to have. For this reason, introducing Miriam in the paper, the East German character that Anna Funder interviewed in her book “Stasiland,” would give us a sense of what East Germans had to deal with in their day-‐to-‐day life. Stasi control, cell tortures, sleep deprivation, false accusations—these are some concepts that people like Miriam had to reflect on, only at the age of sixteen.
At the Brandenburg Gate Miriam Weber was amazed that she could walk right up to the wall. She couldn’t believe the guards let her get that close. But it was too flat and too high to climb. Later she found out that the whole “paraphernalia”11 only started the Wall at the spot. “Even if I had been able to get up there, I could only have put my head over and waved ‘Hello’ to the Eastern guards. I wanted to have a look at the border in a few places. I thought: this cannot be for real, somewhere or other you just must be able to get over that thing.”12
By nightfall the chances were looking slim. “I hadn’t found any holes in it,” Miriam said13. She was cold and unhappy. She sat in the suburban train on her way to Alexanderplatz station to catch the regional line home. “I thought: if I am travelling along here, and there’s this big wire fence right next to me, then West Berlin would have to be just over there on the other side.”14 She got off the train crossed the platform and caught another train back. It was as she had thought: a tall wire fence. She got off again and went back, this time getting out at Bornholmer Bridge station.
At Bornholmer Bridge the border ran, in theory, as Funder put it in her book, along the space between the tracks. In other places in Berlin, the border, and with it the wall “cut a strange wound through the city.”15 The wall went through houses, 11 Anna Funder, Stasiland, 1992, p19 12 Anna Funder, Stasiland, 1992, p19 13 Anna Funder, Stasiland, 1992, p19 14 Anna Funder, Stasiland, 1992, p20 15 Anna Funder, Stasiland, 1992, p20
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along streets, along waterways, and sliced underground train lines to pieces. Here, according to Miriam, instead of cutting the train line, the East Germans built most of the Wall’s fortifications in front of the train line on the Eastern side, letting the Eastern trains run through to the furthest wall at the end of the death strip.
“I had a look at the lie of the land and decided: not too bad,” Miriam said16, she could see the border installation, the dissonance of wire and cement, asphalt and sand. In front of where it began, was a hectare or so of fenced-‐in garden plots, each with its own little shed. Miriam climbed through and over the fences, trying to get closer to the wall. “It was dark and I was lucky,” she said17. She got as far as she could go but not to the wall, because there was this “great fat hedge”18 growing in front of it. She searched through someone’s tool shed for a ladder, and found one. She put it against the hedge and climbed up. “I still have the scars on my hands from climbing the barbed wire, but you can’t see them so well now,” said Miriam19.
The first fence was wire net with a roll of barbed wire along the top. “The strange thing is, you know how the barbed wire used to be looped in a sort of tube along the top of the fence? My pants were all ripped up and I got caught—stuck on the roll! I just hung there! I cannot believe no one saw me,” Miriam said.20
She, then, got on all fours and started her way across the path, across the wide street, and across the next strip. The whole area was lit as bright as day. “I just got down on my knees and went for it. But I was careful. I was very slow.” Miriam said21. After the footpath, she crossed the wide asphalt road. She could not feel her body; she was invisible. As Funder put it, “she was nothing but nerve endings and fear.”22 She reached the end of the asphalt and no one came searching for her. There was a cable suspended about a metre off the ground. She stopped. “I had seen it from my ladder. I thought it might be some sort of alarm or something, so I went down flat on my belly underneath,” Miriam said23. She crawled across the last stretch to a kink in the wall and couched and looked and did not breathe. “I stayed there. I was waiting to see what would happen. I just stared,” she said. She was wondering the whole time when would they come for her. Something shifted, right near her. It was a dog. The huge german shepherd pointed himself in her direction. That cable was no alarm: it had dogs chained to it. She could not move. The dog did not move. She thought the guards’ eyes would follow the pointing dog to her. She waited for him to bark. If she moved away, along the wall, he would go for her.
“I don’t know why it didn’t attack me. I don’t know how dogs see, but maybe it had been trained to attack moving targets, people running across, and I’d gone on all fours. Maybe it thought I was another dog,” said Miriam. She and the dog, then, held each other’s gaze for what seemed a long time. Then a train went by, and, unusually, it
16 Anna Funder, Stasiland, 1992, p20 17 Anna Funder, Stasiland, 1992, p21 18 Anna Funder, Stasiland, 1992, p21 19 Anna Funder, Stasiland, 1992, p22 20 Anna Funder, Stasiland, 1992, p22 21 Anna Funder, Stasiland, 1992, p22 22 Anna Funder, Stasiland, 1992, p22 23 Anna Funder, Stasiland, 1992, p22
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was a steam train. The two of them were covered in a fine mist.24 “Perhaps then he lost my scent,” Miriam said. Eventually, the dog walked away. Miriam waited another long time. “I thought he would come back for me, but he didn’t.”25 She climbed the last barbed-‐wire fence to reach the top of the wall bordering the train line. She could see the West—as Funder put it, “shiny cars and lit streets and the Springer Press building.”26 She could even see the Western guards sitting at their sentry posts. The wall was broad. She had about four meters to cross on top of it, and then a little railing to get under. That was all there was. She couldn’t believe it. She wanted to run the last few steps, before they caught her.
“The railing was really only so high,” Miriam said, “all I had to do was get under it. I had been so very careful and so very slow. Now I thought: you had only four more steps, just RUN before they get you. But here…”27
Sirens went off, wailing. The western sentry huts shone searchlights to find her, and to prevent the easterners from shooting her. The eastern guards took her away quickly. “You piece of S***t,” a young one said. They took her to the Berlin Stasi HQ. They bandaged her hands and legs, and that was the first time she noticed her blood or felt any pain. The blood was on her face and in her hair.
Miriam was returned to Leipzig in the back of a paddy wagon. The Stasi officer questioning her told her they had contacted her parents, who no longer wanted anything to do with her.
Miriam was then held in a cell in Dimitroffstrasse, which has been recreated in the nearby Stasi Museum. The cell is two meters by three, and at one end there is a tiny window of dull frosted glass recessed very high up. It has a bench with a mattress, a toilet and a sink. The door is thick, which metal bolts across it, and a spyhole for the guard to watch you.28
Miriam was allowed no telephone calls, no lawyer, no contact with the outside world. She was sixteen and locked in solitary. “When they came to take me to interrogation, at least it was something to do. But that…that is when the whole miserable story really took off.”29
Why East Germany: During the Korean War in the 1950’s, and according to some historians, myths
circulated in Eastern Germany of obscene torture methods practiced on American POWs—or Prisoners Of War. After they were captured, the men would be taken to a camp, reappearing as little as a week later on a platform, mindlessly mouthing their conversion to Communism for the cameras. After the war, it was revealed that, contrary to rumors, the Korean military’s secret was neither traditional not high-‐ 24 Anna Funder, Stasiland, 1992, p23 25 Anna Funder, Stasiland, 1992, p23 26 Anna Funder, Stasiland, 1992, p23 27 Anna Funder, Stasiland, 1992, p23 28 Anna Funder, Stasiland, 1992, p24 29 Anna Funder, Stasiland, 1992, p24
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tech—it was sleep deprivation. As Funder put it, “a hungry man can still spit bile, but a zombie is remarkably liable.”30
The interrogation of Miriam Weber, aged sixteen, took place every night for ten nights for the six hours between 10 PM and 4 AM. Lights went out in the cell at 8 PM, and she slept for two hours before being taken to the interrogation room. She was returned to her cell two hours before the lights went on again at 6 AM. She was not permitted to sleep during the day. A guard watched through the peephole, and banged on the door if she nodded off.31 For the Stasi it was beyond explanation that a sixteen-‐year-‐old with no tools, no training, and no help, could crawl across their “anti fascist protective measure”32 on her hands and knees. The guards who interrogated her wanted to know what sports clubs she was in. she wasn’t in any. But the main point of questioning, night after night, was to extract the name of the underground escape organization that had helped her. They wanted to names of members, physical descriptions. “Ten times twenty-‐four hours,” said Miriam, “in which you hardly sleep. Ten times twenty-‐four hours in which you are hardly awake. Ten days in time enough to die, to be born, to fall in love and to go mad. Ten days is a very long time.”33
Miriam then had to go through a thirty-‐day trial. At the end of that experience the judge gave her one and a half years in Stauberg, the women’s prison at Hoheneck. And at the end of the thirty-‐day trial he said to her, “Juvenile accused Number 725, you realize that your activities could have started World War III.”34
On the first day at Hoheneck, Miriam was required to undress, leave the clothes she came in and take in her hands a blue and yellow striped uniform. She was led naked down a corridor, into a room with a deep tiled tub in it. Two female guards were waiting. Miriam said, this was the only time she ever thought she would die. The bath was filled with cold water. One guard held her feet and the other her hair. They pushed her head under for a long time, they dragged her up by the hair, screaming at her. They held her down again. She could do nothing, and she could not breathe.35 She thought they would kill her. Miriam said the prisoners were brutal to each other too. She said the criminal prisoners received privileges for abusing the political. For eighteen months, she was addressed by number and never by name.36
On the larger scale of society, however, the sixteen-‐year-‐old Miriam Weber was never an isolated case. And the treatment that she received by the Stasi forces was never a unique one. The highly formalized system and the sheer extent of the regularized network of unofficial informers for the East German State Security Service had highlighted the last decades of the twentieth century dictatorships, according to Fulbrook. By way of comparison, the Gestapo employed 7,000 officials for a total population of 66,000,000 in Nazi Germany; the Stasi employed over 91,000full-‐time
30 Anna Funder, Stasiland, 1992, p24 31 Anna Funder, Stasiland, 1992, p24 32 Anna Funder, Stasiland, 1992, p24 33 Anna Funder, Stasiland, 1992, p26 34 Anna Funder, Stasiland, 1992, p30 35 Anna Funder, Stasiland, 1992, p32 36 Anna Funder, Stasiland, 1992, p32
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staff in a GDR population of about 16,400,000 in 1989.37 Unlike the Gestapo, however, that relied heavily on the occasional willingness of many Germans to inform voluntarily on their neighbors “with whom they might have a personal score to settle,” as Fulbrook put it, the Stasi developed a highly organized system of enrolling and directing regular activities of large numbers of citizens, seeking not merely to gain an insight into, but even to intervene actively in the GDR.
What makes the case of East Germany in the Communist era even more interesting to look at and to investigate through ordinary peoples’ experiences is the contradictory behavior that the people have elaborated. Despite going through these experiences of torture and maltreatment, such as Miriam’s, this generation of East Germans—the ones who have grown in Communist Germany between the 40’s and 90’s—has exhibited a great deal of courage and enthusiasm in defending life in Communist Berlin (especially when the media and the rest of the world started criticizing/attacking the system).
What is a better way, then, than looking at the daily life of these people to help us understand the secret behind this paradox?
Communism: convenient rule: Taking a deep look at history, many experts agree on the fact that a real “social
revolution” took place in East Germany during the 1940’s. This revolution, however, was not a matter of popular rising from below, as envisaged in the Marxist theory of revolutions. Rather, it was in large measure an imposition from above by a relatively small communist party, “massively facilitated by the brute facts of Soviet military occupation and by the total defeat and utter moral disrepute of Nazi Germany,” as Fulbrook put it.38 The political and economic elites of Nazi Germany were rapidly and thoroughly displaced; for over forty years thereafter, a society allegedly on the road of a “classless” utopia was dominated by a small political elite. In May 1945, and as Jürgen Weber, the author of Germany 1945-‐1990 ensured, the “total war” that Joseph Goebbels, Hitler’s propaganda minister and one of the political elites who led the country, guided, came to an end in the complete defeat of the Third Reich.39 This war, that had exhorted the German people in February 1944, led to a military, political, and moral catastrophe that was unique in German history.
For the vast majority of ordinary Germans, the immediate port-‐war priorities were sheer survival and rebuilding their own personal lives out of the ruins. Their history of an innocent birth entailed tales of individual heroism and survival. Civilians crawling out of cellars and air-‐raid shelters were horrified to walk through the ruins of bombed-‐out cities. One anonymous diarist described her impressions of conditions in Berlin on Thursday 10 May 1945:
37 Mike Dennis, The Stasi: Myth and Reality, 2003, p4 38 Mary Fulbrook, The People’s state: East German Society from Hitler to Honecker, 1990, p 23 39 Jügner Weber, Germany 1945-‐1990: A Parallel History, 2004, p1
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“The Kleistpark is a desert. Underneath the arcades there are encampments of rags, mattresses and ripped-‐out car seats. Everywhere piles of excrement, with flies buzzing around…Everything belongs to everyone. The widow and I whispered involuntarily to one another, our throats were dry, the dead city took away our breath. The air in the park was full of dust, all the trees powered over white, shot through with holes and badly damaged. A German shadow hurried past, trailing bedding. At the exit, a Russian grave, surrounded by wire…[I]n between, a flat granite slab, on which it says, painted in chalk, that heroes rest here, fallen for the Fatherland.”40
For German women in Berlin and elsewhere in what became the Soviet Zone of Occupation, the war-‐time experience of living in cellars and air-‐raid shelters gave way to the daily fear and the frequent experience of rape at the hands of Russian soldiers.41
For hundreds of thousands of men,42 the war did not really come to an end in 1945: many remained interned as prisoners of war, often for very long periods and under conditions from which many never recovered; the last survivors to be released from imprisonment in Soviet camps only returned to their home country, Germany, a full ten years after the end of the war.43 Men returning from internment were often barely recognizable, even by their own families and friends. As the East German novelist Brigitte Reinmann, at the time child of twelve, put it in a letter to a friend then living in Western Germany:
“You simply can’t believe how miserable Daddy looked! He had
disgusting old rags and a rough Russian coat on and a dirty Russian cap… Ass to this the skeletal face, the shorn-‐off hair and—the voice! ... [T]he voice repelled me so much, that I simply couldn’t say ‘Daddy’ to him. I can hardly describe to you how it was! So nervous, so ill and—and I don’t know, just so terribly strange! …Naturally he is totally undernourished, had a double lung inflammation, and barely escaped death… He is terribly nervous. But we thank God that He sent Daddy back to us at home at all!”44 Manfred Uschner, later a functionary in the office of Hermann Axen, the
Politburo—the principal policymaking committee of a Communist Party—member responsible for foreign affairs, writes for example of the horrifying scene of the
40 Anon., Eine Frau in Berlin, 2003, p 180-‐181 41 Norman M. Naimark, The Russians in Germany: A History of the Soviet Zone of Occupation, 1995 42 Mary Fulbrook, The People’s state: East German Society from Hitler to Honecker, 1990, p27 43 Mary Fulbrook, The People’s state: East German Society from Hitler to Honecker, 1990, p27 44 Mary Fulbrook, The People’s state: East German Society from Hitler to Honecker, 1990, p27
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“flaming inferno”45 as his home town of Magdeburg was bombed on the night of 16 January 1945. At the time a seven year-‐old-‐boy, as he himself puts it, Uschner was awakened by his grandparents and pulled, along with his then four-‐year-‐old sister, from the collapsing walls of their house. As they rushed through the back courtyard to escape, his grandmother was hit by a combustible bomb. Manfred Uschner and his little sister turned and watched in horror as their grandmother burnt to death before their eyes. The following day they picked their way through the still-‐burning streets of Magdeburg over “mountains of burnt corpses”46 as Uschner puts it in his summary:
This terrifying experience branded us forever. I have never been
able to get over it. And it was the key to the fact that I became political, asked political questions, acted politically. It moved me to become a member of the children’s branch of the FDJ already in 1947, and to become a young pioneer in 1948. As a child, at anti-‐fascist gatherings on the Magdeburg Cathedral Square and in the ‘Crystal Palace,’ I called out with tremulous voice that adults should ensure that a new war and a new catastrophe should never happen.”47
The 1940s changes that the East German community was witnessing, by this
point, had created a sense of apathy as more important concerns were imposed on and prioritized by the people. The political system followed by the state could be said to be one of the last issues that concerned the ordinary citizen in East Berlin, at this point.
This could be seen as the starting point for a long journey—a journey that will introduce the East German citizen to a society of Nostalgic clashes between imagination and reality.
Socialism: Adaptation VS Change: Thus, by this time each of Reinmann’s and Uschner’s cases and experiences
were far from being unique throughout the 40’s and the beginning of the 50’s. These two decades were signaled by instabilities and large social unrest. As Bill Niven ensured in his book “Germans as Victims: Remembering the Past in contemporary Germany,” The 50’s came to a start with the imposition of massive social changes against the will of those adversely affected by them, for the most part with no regard for popular support. The “Building of Socialism,” suddenly announced in 1952, involved the speeding up of industrialization, with the concentration of heavy industry at the expense of consumer goods, alongside the enforced merging of small peasant farms into larger agricultural collectives.48
45 Mary Fulbrook, The People’s state: East German Society from Hitler to Honecker, 1990, p30 46 Translated version of the book, Mafred Uschner, Die zweite Etage, 1995, p29 47 Translated version of the book, Mafred Uschner, Die zweite Etage, 1995, p29 48 Mary Fulbrook, The People’s state: East German Society from Hitler to Honecker, 1990, p34
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As Fulbrook put it, associated political unrest, flights from the land and disruption of food supplies to the towns were exacerbated by the physical strengthening of the inner-‐German border and the forcible relocation of those living within a five-‐Kilometer distance who were not considered politically reliable. Growing popular unrest was demonstrated in part by increased numbers fleeing the GDR for the West in 1952-‐1953; and it exploded into the more visible uprising of June 1953, with widespread popular demonstrations ironically hastened by a sudden reversal of many of these policies with the announcement, under Soviet pressure, of a “New Course.”49 This demonstration was of widespread unrest, eventually quelled by Soviet tanks, put a temporary end to the rapid construction of Socialism that had been announced the previous year, and it diffused the political culture of the ruling elite with “a somewhat paradoxical combination of paranoia and paternalism,” as Fulbrook puts it, “contributing to the simultaneous growth of the repressive forces and consumerist policies, a pattern that proved to be characteristic of the rest of the GDR’s history.”50
When talking about concepts of repressive forces in East Germany it is very necessary to talk about the means of coercion and control in the society at this time: The Stasi and police forces. Although I will be coming back to this point in details later in the paper, I think introducing the concept of the Stasi force at this point is crucial to getting a sense of what it means to be an Eastern German by now.
The visible organs of coercion in the country were directed inwards and outwards. The East German army the Nationale Volksarmee (NVA), was founded in 1956 and constituted a highly important element in the Soviet bloc military alliance, the Warsaw Pact, to which it was officially subordinated51. “Conceived and presented as the ultimate defensive force,” as Fulbrook puts it, “protecting the workers’ and peasants’ state against all enemies abroad, the NVA participate din the prevailing friend/foe mentality that which was as quick to perceive enemies within as enemies without.”52
Less visible but more insidious and even more frightening, however, was the State Security Service (Staatssicherheitsdienst, or Stasi, as it was popularly known).53 Here, as many historians have proven, reputations and careers were smashed in an instant once Stasi connections were so much as reported, let alone proven. The Stasi was established by a law of 8 February 1950—exactly four months after the foundation of the GDR itself. Until the uprising of 17 June 1953, the Stasi employed around 4,000 people. By 1955, however, its size had more than doubled to 9,000 employees.54 In the Richtlinie Nr. 1/58 (Guideline no. 1/58) of 1958, the Stasi’s central function was defined very precisely: “The monastery of State Security is entrusted with the task of preventing or throttling at the earliest stages—using whatever means and methods may be necessary—all attempts to delay or to hinder the victory of
49 Mary Fulbrook, The People’s state: East German Society from Hitler to Honecker, 1990, p34 50 Mary Fulbrook, The People’s state: East German Society from Hitler to Honecker, 1990, p34 51 Mary Fulbrook, Anatomy of Dictatorship: Inside the GDR 1949-‐1989, 1995, p45 52 Mary Fulbrook, Anatomy of Dictatorship: Inside the GDR 1949-‐1989, 1995, p45 53 Frederick Taylor, The berlin wall: A world Divided 1961-‐1989, 2006 54 Mary Fulbrook, Anatomy of Dictatorship: Inside the GDR 1949-‐1989, 1995, p47
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Socialism.”55 As, mentioned before, however, I will be coming back to this point later in the paper with more illustrations of the role the Stasi played in the society.
This could give us a sense of the way life was shaped for the ordinary East German citizen at this time. The intervention in peoples’ daily life crossed the boundaries of social, however, to reach the shaping of mentality—simply by “molding” the educational values conveyed to the people by a specific system.
Education and life: a question of illusion: Besides the introduction of the New Economic system and the emphasis on
science and technology in the 1960’s, East Germany has witnessed a number of reforms and initiatives with respect to education—we could even say culture. Women and young people were introduced with widespread publicity and well-‐controlled debate, signaling some hope for the construction of a more equal and fair society for those who remained behind the wall.56 The role of the family was included even in the law on the Unified Social Education System in 1965, in which parents and the family were mentioned as being given “a new moral and educational role.”57 As Alexander Abusch, Deputy Prime Minister and Chair of the State Commission for formation of a Unified Socialist Education System, put it in his introductory remarks on the new law:
“Here [bei uns], the interests of the family and of society are not
in contradiction to one another…Our socialist society, surely like good family, wants to bing up and educate young people as well as possible for a secure, peaceful and happy future. The higher ethical-‐moral significance of the family as the smallest cell of our new society results from the fact that it has been liberated from the destructive influences of capitalism.”58
Education in this era, however, was not merely about instilling political
conformity, and serving political ends, but also about producing a highly skilled workforce for a modernizing industrial society. As Fulbrook confirms it in her book “People’s state,” ever closer links were to be developed with the world of work and industry through “twinning” agreements between schools and industrial enterprises (Patenschaften), and through the annual Messe der Meister von Morgen (“Fair of Tomorrow’s Masters”), the first of which took place in Leipzig in 1958, and which continued to play a major role right through to the late 1980’s.59 While this latter
55 Mary Fulbrook, Anatomy of Dictatorship: Inside the GDR 1949-‐1989, 1995, p47 56 Mary Fulbrook, The People’s state: East German Society from Hitler to Honecker, 1990, p38 57 Mary Fulbrook, The People’s state: East German Society from Hitler to Honecker, 1990, p117 58 Mary Fulbrook, The People’s state: East German Society from Hitler to Honecker, 1990, p118 59 Mary Fulbrook, The People’s state: East German Society from Hitler to Honecker, 1990, p122
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seems to have encouraged many young people into careers as engineers, technical experts, or “investors in the widest sense, the twinning arrangements seem to have been somewhat more mixed in their consequences. Children were taken to their partner economic enterprises not merely to gain exposure to the atmosphere of adult life “and to encourage a sense of positive identification with the heroised industrial worker,” as Fulbrook puts it, “but also to give real assistance in reaching production targets.”60 Recent research suggests that while on the one hand teachers were often happy to gain additional materials (and even food) from the enterprises with which their classes were “twinned,” reactions among schoolchildren on occasion consisted of boredom, disillusionment and a degree of shocked surprise at the dirty conditions and prevalent drunkenness that were characteristic of some East German workplaces61. Yet this act of exposing children to some laborers’ working conditions and encouraging them into certain future careers was seen in a rather more positive light, according to many historians.
One last characteristic that marked the 60’s in East Germany was the rising of the so-‐called “Berlin Wall.” Reporting the incident from the German Easterners’ point of view would be the best way to get real sense of the experience. As John Dornberg, author of the book “The two Germanys” put it:
“At 1:11 A.M. Sunday, August 13, 1961, East Berliners were
jolted out of their sleep by the clatter of tanks, the rat-‐tat-‐tat of motorcycles, and the deep rumble of the truck engines in the dark and empty cobblestone streets. Those who peeked from Behind their curtains saw convoys of grim-‐faced People’s policemen, or Vopos, and steel-‐helmeted troops of the National Peoples’ Army moving toward the 28-‐mile-‐long frontier that divides East from West Berlin.”62
The wall that blocked all hopes: East Germany questions its identity: By the early 70’s, hopes for a better future were revived in East Germany with
international recognition of the GDR following Ostpolitik63 and the acknowledgment of human rights in the Helsinki agreement of 1975.64 This, however, did not last for
60 Mary Fulbrook, The People’s state: East German Society from Hitler to Honecker, 1990, p122 61 Emmanual Droit, Research paper delivered at a conference of the Centre Marc Bloch, March 2005 62 John Dornberg, The Two Germanys, p19 63 Ostpolitik (German for Eastern Policy) is a term for the "Change Through Rapprochement" policy—as verbalized by Egon Bahr in 1963—the efforts of Willy Brandt, Chancellor of the Federal Republic of Germany (West Germany), to normalize his country's relations with Eastern European nations (including the German Democratic Republic, or East Germany). [http://www.princeton.edu/~achaney/tmve/wiki100k/docs/Ostpolitik.html] 64 Helsinki Accords, also called Helsinki Final Act, (August 1, 1975), major diplomatic agreement signed in Helsinki, Finland, at the conclusion of the first Conference on Security
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long. The second major period of instability began during the 1970s, and gathered strength in the course of the 1980s. From the mid-‐to later 1970’s, there were rising real problems facing an apparently inflexible and ageing leadership in East Berlin.65
For many, in one way or another like Miriam Weber, the impact of Stasi surveillance and interference with their lives was devastating.66 In the case of members of the dissident political scene, as Fulbrook ensures, a classic Stasi ploy was to initiate the breakup of previously harmonious relationships by sowing the seeds of mutual suspicion and distrust; the reputations of morally upright dissidents (such as pastors) might be destroyed by casting suspicion over fidelity; the children and relatives of dissidents might be subjected to harassment and personal disadvantage. As Fulbrook also indicated, attempts to come together and discuss lyric poetry or other writing critical to the state, to listen or play whatever was designated as politically subversive music, to engage in organized protests, could land an individual in prison for indefinite periods of time without any apparent possibility of restoring to legal rules or appeals to human rights.67
At the extreme, according to some historians like Fulbrook, there are suspicions that the Stasi not only initiated well-‐attested murders and attempted murders of a number of individuals but also attempted more subtle methods of causing long-‐term ill-‐health and death from less easily identifiable causes, such as cancers caused by exposure to sustained high levels of radiation.68 The subsequent serious illnesses and premature deaths of dissidents such as the novelist Jürgen Fuchs, and the author of the critical analysis of The Alternative in Eastern Europe, Rudolf Bahro, have been linked by some to the suspicion of exposure to extraordinarily high and sustained levels of X-‐rays while waiting for interrogations, and being strapped to unpleasant chairs in small prison cells in front of mysterious closed boxes—boxes that, along with their mysterious apparatus, curiously disappeared after the collapse of the SED system.69 There have also been suspicions that symptoms of metal illness were actually created by “medical” treatment, as in the case of Pastor Heinz Eggert. This latter, who fell ill while on a family vacation at the Baltic in the summer of 1983, sought medical help for a depressive psychiatric illness and was treated in a closed and Co-‐operation in Europe (CSCE; now called the Organization for Security and Co-‐operation in Europe). The Helsinki Accords were primarily an effort to reduce tension between the Soviet and Western blocs by securing their common acceptance of the post-‐World War II status quo in Europe. The accords were signed by all the countries of Europe (except Albania, which became a signatory in September 1991) and by the United States and Canada. [http://www.britannica.com/EBchecked/topic/260615/Helsinki-‐Accords] 65 Mary Fulbrook, Anatomy of Dictatorship: Inside the GDR 1949-‐1989, 1995, p37 66 Mary Fulbrook, The People’s state: East German Society from Hitler to Honecker, 1990, p245 67 Mary Fulbrook, The People’s state: East German Society from Hitler to Honecker, 1990, p245 68 This is abstracted from two of Fulbrook’s books (Anatomy of a dictatorship, The people’s state). Many other historians also focused on this issue, and for more detailed information, see the suggested reading in Rainer Eppelmann, Bernd Faulenbach and Ulrich Mählert. 69 Mary Fulbrook, The People’s state: East German Society from Hitler to Honecker, 1990, p245
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psychiatric institution by a doctor who was also a Stasi informer.70 His later fears that medications administered actually produced and exacerbated the symptoms of illness have, on further investigation, proved to be without adequate foundation; the Stasi’s crimes in this case consisted rather of persistent harassment of family and friends while Eggert was ill, and breaching of medical confidentiality to report on his illness and thus to discredit him.71
According to some experts in the matter, like Fulbrook, it appears to be difficult to assess the impact of reporting on those who were subject to routine surveillance, or who simply knew they might be reported on if they stepped too far out of line. Where no apparent damage was done by inoffensive situation reports, and where the vast majority of the population was aware of the existence of the Stasi, it appears to have been simply taken for granted as a fact of life, in light of which certain precautions had to be taken—which for some individuals undoubtedly meant major restrictions on their activities, whereas for others the impact barely registered.72 The codes of secrecy and manipulation had an effect on the character of inter-‐personal relationships, but, nevertheless, trust and friendships were still possible for most people most of the time. The personal consequences of Stasi informing in these cases were often proved infinitely more explosive in the 1990’s, once the files were opened and the identities of the former informers were revealed.73
Based on some historians’ research, however, it was not only friendships that might be broken by post-‐unification revelations from the files. A much deeper concern was established. Interestingly, the fear also existed that one’s own biography might be presented in such a totally alien light that one’s very identity was challenged. As the dissident Lutz Rathenow put it, the unwillingness on the part of a former acquaintance, Frank Wolf Matthies, to look at his Stasi files was based on “the fear that one’s whole life would in retrospect appear to have been steered from outside.”74 This challenged the very conception of the self-‐made life, so central to the post-‐Enlightenment thinking about the individual, as Fulbrook ensured.
Those who lived through this one era in East Germany, aside from witnessing the establishment of the so-‐called Stasiland, they have experienced the deep and sudden focus on the concept of “liberation” of women.
By the 1970’s, and according to Peter Molloy, author of The Lost World Of Communism, East Germans had decided that sex and the body were areas where they would carve out a degree of freedom, especially for women. By this time, the role of women became a key factor in the sexual culture that developed in the country. After
70 Mary Fulbrook, The People’s state: East German Society from Hitler to Honecker, 1990, p245 71 Mary Fulbrook, The People’s state: East German Society from Hitler to Honecker, 1990, p245 72 This was based on many readings of many authors including Jürgen Weber and Frederick Taylor 73 This was based on many readings of many authors including Jürgen Weber and Frederick Taylor 74 Mary Fulbrook, The People’s state: East German Society from Hitler to Honecker, 1990, p247
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the Second World War, women in the Soviet zone of occupation heavily outnumbered men, due to the heavy male casualties sustained during the conflict. Consequently, East German women were in great demand in the labor market.75
Allied to this was a Marxist belief in the need for the “emancipation”76 of women in accordance with collective aims. According to Molloy, the equal status of women was established in the 1949 constitution, which said that men and women had equal rights, including the right to work and equal pay for equal work. In 1950 the Law for the Protection of Mother and Children and the Rights of Women introduced measures of practical support. The provision of crèches and various childcare facilities, improved hospital and medical care, and rights to work, along with increased financial support, all underlined state support for women.77
In practice, this “emancipation” of women was only achieved to a degree. Nevertheless, the fact that some East German women found themselves in roles of responsibility and power at work, and that some men could accept women as their superiors at work, and that some men did stay at home and do housework, all helped redefine the relationship between male and female.78 This highly contributed in creating the phenomenon of a sex-‐focused-‐community. According to Molloy, sex advice became a growth industry in the mid 1960’s as marriage and sex counseling centers were established, and women became highly active in this area.
The alleged “emancipation of women” in the GDR was for all sorts of reasons at best uneven and partial, according to Fulbrook. There were very radical changes in the public roles and professional aspirations of women, and only minimal changes in assumptions about what was “normal” for men. This analysis introduced a pair of problematic terms under the light of which the roles of women were discussed: “emancipation” or “double burden” (Doppelbelastung). Closer inceptions of people in the society, however, suggested that there was far more at stake here than simply a pair of alternatives. The notion of “double burden” instantly reveals one aspect of the problem: that the roles of only half the population, namely females, were subject to close scrutiny, and that for women, traditionally male tasks were simply added on to traditionally female roles.79 As Fulbrook ensured, male roles were not subject to the same scrutiny, and there was no comparable degree of rethinking the division of labor in the domestic sphere (except for some exceptions).
As time passed by, according to many experts like Fulbrook, the society of East Germany started to realize that what would constitute “emancipation” is in any event a far wider issue than that of the simple notion of freedom of choice for individuals,
75 Peter Molloy, The Lost World of Communism: An Oral History of Daily Life Behind the Iron Curtain, 2009, p230 76 Peter Molloy, The Lost World of Communism: An Oral History of Daily Life Behind the Iron Curtain, 2009, p230 77 Peter Molloy, The Lost World of Communism: An Oral History of Daily Life Behind the Iron Curtain, 2009, p231 78 Peter Molloy, The Lost World of Communism: An Oral History of Daily Life Behind the Iron Curtain, 2009, p231 79 This part is concluded from Fulbrook’s chapter about women (Chapter 7, Part 1) in her book, The Peoples’ state.
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however fundamental a human right this belief may be held to be. As Fulbrook, again, noted in her book The People’s State, the complexities related to this issue were rooted partly in the fact that individuals live in social communities where –as it is often formulated—“your freedom ends where my nose begins,” a point noted both in the liberal tradition of J. S. Mill, in which freedom should not extend to areas where one person’s actions might cause harm to others, and in the Marxist notion that true “emancipation” is only possible in a fundamentally equal society in which the “condition for free development of each is the condition for free development of all.”
Thus, sculpting the social status of women and discussing women’s roles generally, was in fact a part of a bigger and larger set of issues concerning the social construction of gender, more broadly, including men’s roles, as Fulbrook ensured it; issues of power and conceptions of freedom; and the social shaping of individual aspirations and choices.
Socialism between acceptance and resistance:
The East German society at this point in history was fundamentally aware of the
larger picture that should be captured and the bigger issues that should be tackled, rather than the simple task of providing women with their freedom to choose. The questions that people ask at this point was a rather fundamental one, and even a complicated one: how to improve the structural composition of the regime, and so the society, from within?
It is usually a false dichotomy, as Fulbrook put it, to suggest that states are either based on coercion, or on consent, and that to point areas of the latter is to deny the former. Far greater differentiation is needed, especially if we are trying to understand the peoples’—East Germans’—paradox. There were varying mixtures at different times, and for different people in different areas of their lives. To speak of the ways in which the vast majority of East Germans felt they could live what they saw as “perfect ordinary lives,”80 at least for most of the time, is not to deny the present dissatisfaction with the acts of brutality and the concept of determination that resided in peoples’ thoughts to “change” the fundamental structure and implementation of Communism as an applied regime and adopted life style.
The East German regime, generally speaking, never succeeded in quelling dissent, discontent, or dissatisfaction. What was new about the 1980s was not the growth of opposition—as many may argue—nor even the growth of discontent, but rather a combination of other more fundamental factors. These include, as many historians may agree: the changing organizational forms and cultural orientations of a growing minority of political activists, who were seeking, not to overthrow the regime, nor even to escape from GDR, but rather to improve it from within. As Fulbrook put it:
80 Mary Fulbrook, The People’s state: East German Society from Hitler to Honecker, 1990, p293
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“[What is special about this era in the East German history is] the changing domestic political context of their actions, including both the growth of structural within which to act, and the changing responses of the state to what they denigrates as ‘hostile-‐negative forces (feindlich-‐negative Kräfte)’ and finally, changing aspects of the international contexts.”81
All of these aspects together formed the needed platform for East Germans to
stand up and raise fundamental question to change the structure of their society. The path of change was first signaled by the meeting that Honecker, on 6 March 1978, with church leaders, at least as far as the structural context of political action was concerned.82 In the years that followed, the state consciously used the Church leadership as an indirect means of seeking to control dissident activities. At the same time, and as Fulbrook ensured it in her book Anatomy of a Dictatorship, dissidents themselves used the free spaces provided by the church for more open discussion, and for experimentation with new forms of debate and organization.
By this time, the generation of 20 to 40-‐year-‐olds—metaphorically, the children of Ulbricht, not Hitler—were at the forefront of the new political initiatives, which became increasingly prominent from the late 1970s. Specific policy issues—peace, the environment, and human rights—engaged the attention of a growing minority of young adults, according to Fulbrook. A new generation was coming to maturity, young adults who had been born and raised in the GDR, and who increasingly questioned NOT the right to existence of a separate East German state, “but rather the quality of life in a continuing GDR,” as Fulbrook put it.83
Among those, a significant minority had refused to conform, even while at school: they had resisted pressures to undergo the Jugendweihe (a religious youth ceremony), or to participate in the Free German Youth; they have sought alternative service as Bausoldaten (soldiers in construction units), or refused conscription altogether; they had uttered remarks critical of the regime, or shown too much interest in the Western media or Eastern European reform movements.84 Since the penalty for non-‐conformity was often non-‐admittance to institutions of higher education and the restriction of career opportunities, many such young adults had found that the only educational paths they had open to them were within the Church.85
Thus, the regime itself was producing a distinctive generational cluster of nonconformities who, as Fulbrook put it, “for structural reasons, very often came
81 Mary Fulbrook, Anatomy of Dictatorship: Inside the GDR 1949-‐1989, 1995, p201 82 Mary Fulbrook, Anatomy of Dictatorship: Inside the GDR 1949-‐1989, 1995, p201 83 Mary Fulbrook, Anatomy of Dictatorship: Inside the GDR 1949-‐1989, 1995, p203 84 This information was based on the analysis provided by Fulbrook in her book “Anatomy of a Dictatorship” 85 This information was based on the analysis provided by Fulbrook in her book “Anatomy of a Dictatorship”
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together on common ground, in a common cultural space, in the penumbra of East German Protestantism.”86
Given the political circumstances, it was virtually impossible to separate critiques of specific policies from a critique of the whole nature of social life and the pressures for conformity operative in the East German dictatorship. As an open letter of students at the Katechetischen Oberseminar Naumburg of January 1981 put it:
“In our society, images of the enemy are constantly being created in
order to arouse hatred and readiness to engage in violence. This hinders a positive attitude towards peace. Thoughtlessly going along with all this for reasons of fear or for personal advantages furthers this trend and makes us accomplices. Therefor we support all attempts to point out that, through such behaviors…[we]…withdraw from their responsibility for society.”87
It was above all a deep sense of moral and social responsibility, and the courage to speak out and to seek realistic changes and improvements, which characterized the emerging generation of 1980’s East Germany.
The mid 1980s—perhaps from 1984 to 1987—form a transitional period. The state appeared to have achieved much of what it was aiming for: the demoralization of the peace movement, the exile of many dissidents, the co-‐option of a compliant Church leadership prepared to adopt a conciliatory role. But, at the same time, new unplanned for currents started to emerge: the rise to power of Mikhail Gorbachev in the USSR gave new heart to those yearning for reform in Honecker’s GDR, and dissident spirits began to bridle against the conservatism and caution of some of the country’s leadership.88 Grass-‐roots groups for reform began to proliferate, to create organizational networks and new forms of publicity, in what can be viewed as an emerging, although limited, “civil society.”89
One detail highlighted by historians at this time was the establishment of the concept of “controlled ventilation of dissent,”90 under which protests and relatively open discussions could take place within the context of religious meetings on Church premises. The state, however, had impressed on Church leaders the importance of restricting the influence of these gatherings and ensuring that they did not breach certain clearly defined rules.
It is important now to distinguish between a number of different aspects of what just been referred to as “the state.” As far as appearances were concerned there were three different instances of authority, intervention, and control: first, the state
86 Mary Fulbrook, Anatomy of Dictatorship: Inside the GDR 1949-‐1989, 1995, p203 87 Mary Fulbrook, Anatomy of Dictatorship: Inside the GDR 1949-‐1989, 1995, p205 88 This information was based on the analysis provided by Fulbrook in her book “Anatomy of a Dictatorship” 89 This information was based on the analysis provided by Fulbrook in her book “Anatomy of a Dictatorship” 90 Mary Fulbrook, Anatomy of Dictatorship: Inside the GDR 1949-‐1989, 1995, p206
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functionaries proper—those holding governmental offices at the national, regional, or local levels; secondly, the closely related SED hierarchy; and thirdly, the—less visible—of the Stasi—that we have thoroughly talked about earlier in the paper.91 As Fulbrook put it, “there was a circuitous route of observation, intimation, and ultimately veiled intimidation, culminating finally in meeting of Church leaders with dissidents to seek to deflect their original intentions or to exert some control over the events which did take place.”92
These early years of the 1980s also saw the beginning of the politicization of the peace movement, with individuals beginning to link whole society problems with the question of peace. And from 1980 onwards, peace weeks (Friedensdekaden) became a regular annual event. These were usually regional gatherings, with programs of activities lasting for ten days, with a predominantly religious flavor but clear political overtones and implications. They served to provide continuities within the unofficial peace movement, and to facilitate networks and contacts among activists in different areas of the GDR. As Fulbrook put it, these celebrations “performed a very important organizational function, which was to distinguish the political activism of the 1980s from the disparate discontents of previous decades.”93
There were also some individualistic initiatives that characterized the course of social and political activism at this time. Individual events included planned demonstrations on specific occasions. Some were suppressed before they could begin: in March 1982, for example, the Junge Gemeinde in Jena planned activities to commemorate the anniversary of the bombardment of Jena. Appropriate state pressures were put on Bishop Leich, who was persuaded to forbid the planned commemorative service.94 A more successful unofficial demonstration did, however, take place the following year on the occasion of the 38th anniversary of the bombardment of Jena on 18 March 1983.
Similarly, demonstrations were planned for the anniversary of the Hiroshima bombing on 6-‐7 August 1983. Actions were planned for Jena, Berlin, Halle, Schwerin, Neubrandenburg, Karl-‐Marx-‐Stadt, and elsewhere. The final comment which follows the Stasi’s analysis of the plans is very revealing of the modus operandi, and demonstrates yet again the role of the Stasi as the center of the state at this particular time in East Germany’s history: “Measures were introduced in all affected districts and areas to investigate these plans further and, in conjunction with the relevant state organs and social forces, either to prevent the planned activities, or to exert influence in such a manner as to ensure that the course of events unfolded without any disturbance, or to reduce them to purely religious activities.”95
Throughout this time, the political activism had been a force for destabilization and change within the GDR, and especially in the last couple of years (between 1987 and 1989). A convenient starting date for this last period of destabilization is
91 This information was based on the analysis provided by Fulbrook in her book “Anatomy of a Dictatorship” 92 Mary Fulbrook, Anatomy of Dictatorship: Inside the GDR 1949-‐1989, 1995, p207 93 Mary Fulbrook, Anatomy of Dictatorship: Inside the GDR 1949-‐1989, 1995, p212 94 This was ensured by the analysis of many historians. 95 Mary Fulbrook, Anatomy of Dictatorship: Inside the GDR 1949-‐1989, 1995, p214
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provided by a particular incident, which nicely illustrates the change in climate after the moment of hope in 1987.96 On 24 November 1987, a raid by the Stasi was carried out on the Umweltbibliothek97 (UB). This was to be what is conventionally called a “set-‐up:” the Stasi had arranged, through an IM, that a copy of Grenzfall98, the publication of the non-‐church based IFM99, would be printed that night, illegally, on the church-‐owned printer of the UB. Then, when the premises of the UB were raided, this illegal material would be found and appropriate charges brought. The raid, as Fulbrook, ascertained it, went ahead as planned: unfortunately for the state, however, the Trabi which was to bring the incriminating material to the UB premises—owned by the Stasi informer, but clearly more sympathetic to the dissidents’ cause—broke down on the way and failed to deliver the material in time.100 The UB and the IFM publicized the raid, which proved to be more embarrassing than helpful to the SED and the Stasi.101
The consequences were to shift the relations between state and activists into a new gear. Activists mounted public demonstrations of support for those who have been arrested, including Mahnwachen (vigils of warning). The immediate effect was the return of church property and the release of those who had been arrested.102
In a climate of increasing tension, some individuals involved in the, by now incipient citizens’ movement (Bürgerbewegung) determined to make use of the annual Luxemburg-‐Liebknecht parade in January 1988 to demonstrate their concern and for greater freedom in the GDR. The problem of demonstrating for change within the GDR was, however, increasingly complicated by the associated movement of those seeking a fast exit to the West, who were to some extent hijacking dissident activities for their own ends. The former, according to Fulbrook, sought, through subtle tactics of pressure and demonstration, to effect change within the GDR, while the latter had a vested interest in more dramatic gestures designed to have themselves arrested and exiled—the most rapid means of successfully leaving to the West.
In the event in January 1988 a somewhat uncomfortable quotation from Rosa Luxemburg—“Freedom is always the freedom to think differently (Freiheit ist immer
96 This moment of hope was signaled by the limited space of freedom that was given to some people. The political activists had been a force for destabilization and change within the GDR; in the closing two years, their voices were heard more forcibly. Many other people were easily getting visas to leave to the West, and the whole situation was simply getting more open and confrontational. 97 Umweltbibliothek (UB, or Environmental Library), founded in the summer of 1986 in the East Berlin Zionsgemeinde 98 Previous quasi-‐political publication, such as the ten page “information paper” Schalom, been produced under the auspices of the of the church and stamped with the censorship-‐evading mark, “only for inner-‐church-‐use.” 99 Initiative Frieden und Menschenrechte (IFM|), formally founded in January 1986. The IFM conceived itself as the first truly independent political group, outside the church. It was also perceived as the first group to openly articulate its role as a political opposition. 100 Jones, East German Environmental Movement, p252-‐254 101 Mary Fulbrook, Anatomy of Dictatorship: Inside the GDR 1949-‐1989, 1995, p236 102 This was abstracted from many historians’ analyses of the situation in East Germany at this time.
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die Freiheit der Andersdenkenden)”— 103which was excluded form the official SED canon of the communist heritage was nevertheless displayed on a dissident banner. Despite the state’s extensive preparations, to ensure that the demonstration was not subject to any unwanted political disturbance, the dreaded Öffentlichkeitswirksamkeit104 (public impact) of dissident activities was achieved. But the repressive response was massive. Large numbers of people were arrested; many were held without charges being brought for considerable periods of time, and the most prominent dissidents were sent into exile, willingly or unwillingly.105
As Fulbrook put it, “this was the beginning of the end.”106 Ever larger numbers of people became involved in organized, non-‐violent demonstrations of sympathy and solidarity with the dissidents who had been treated so hardly on this occasion. So many different methods of demonstrating opposition to the state took place: concerts, long nights in churches, “candlelit” meetings… In Leipzig, for example, Monday prayer services became an important regular event—long before they were to become the highly public starting point for street demonstrations in the autumn of 1989.107 There was a growing feeling all over the GDR that, somehow, there would have to be changes; and that people were ready to organize, fight, discuss, and even pressurize for change.
At this point, in late summer of 1989, and as we have clarified, there have occurred many different forms of popular response to the regime.
“There was the very small minority of activists, engaged in their
discussion groups and mini-‐campaigns for changes on particular issues; the retreatists who were prepared to take the risks entailed in applying for exit visas or seeking some means of more rapid escape, including, of course, those seeking to leave for the West in increasing numbers as the borders became more permeable; and the very much larger numbers of essentially passive subjects, who made do with a grumbling quiescence and constrained conformity.”108
The commotion of change, however, was glanced in late September 1989. The voice of dissident groups began to raise the bread of the largely subordinate masses, slowly at first but with a rising strength over the following weeks. Unspoken taboos, internalized self-‐censorship, inner-‐fears and constrains were over come in a process of learning, as the Germans put it, an aufrechten Gang—learning to walk upright, one’s head held high. A new element entered East German politics and the societal mind-‐
103 Mary Fulbrook, Anatomy of Dictatorship: Inside the GDR 1949-‐1989, 1995, p238 104 Mary Fulbrook, Anatomy of Dictatorship: Inside the GDR 1949-‐1989, 1995, p238 105 Mary Fulbrook, Anatomy of Dictatorship: Inside the GDR 1949-‐1989, 1995, p238 106 Mary Fulbrook, Anatomy of Dictatorship: Inside the GDR 1949-‐1989, 1995, p239 107 This information was ensured by the analyses of many historians including Jürgen Weber and Frederick Taylor. 108 Mary Fulbrook, Anatomy of Dictatorship: Inside the GDR 1949-‐1989, 1995, p246
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set: increasing numbers of Germans began to change from being passive subjects to active citizens.
Even those who had served, through their positions, to sustain the regime in an official capacity began publically to articulate the need for more open debate. The Evangelical Synod meeting in Eisenach emphasized, in its closing declaration of 19 September, the urgency of dialogues: “In order not obstruct the way into a just, democratic, internally and externally peaceful and ecologically sustainable society, an open dialogue involving the whole of society has now become urgent. This entails also an opening up of currently existing political structures.”109
On the occasion of the peace prayers on 25 September, a new phenomenon developed. As on many previous occasions, those who wanted a rapid exit from the GDR started to demonstrate, chanting “we want out!” (Wir wollen raus!).110 But, on this occasion, a new chant was raised against the voices of those seeking to leave, by those proclaiming, “We are staying here!” (Wir bleiben hier!).111 Those who were choosing to stay, however, according to historians, were at the same emphasizing the need for the party to listen to the people, not to suppress them and expect unquestioning obedience to the “diktat” of the party.
The paradox of ordinary life: Nostalgia VS Ostalgia: Coming to this point, and reflecting on the different developments that East
Germans have been through, it became clear to most historians that the roles of different elements and historical actors at different phases of the GDR’s collapse have contributed to the complexity of the debate over whether or not the GDR, as Fulbrook put it, “has experienced a revolution from below, an implosion from above, or a collapse from without.”112 More importantly, coming to this point has framed the question of “Nostalgia” that I have highlighted at the beginning of this paper and made it more specific: What kind of Nostalgia are we talking about? And who’s Nostalgia is it?
The easy way to go for answering these questions would be by picturing the big idea of the East German society at this era: the people played a very active and important role in shaping their own lives and manufacturing their own futures in the circumstances in which they found themselves. And to quote Karl Marx: people made their own history, but they made it not in conditions of their own choosing.
This big idea, however, has many layers into it. At one end of the spectrum there were those who never came to terms with the
regime, and lived their lives in conscious retreat and withdrawal into alternative lifestyles, or who actively tried to appose or alter the structures of power. At the 109 Mary Fulbrook, Anatomy of Dictatorship: Inside the GDR 1949-‐1989, 1995, p249 110 This information was ensured by the analyses of many historians including Jürgen Weber and Frederick Taylor 111 This information was ensured by the analyses of many historians including Jürgen Weber and Frederick Taylor 112 Mary Fulbrook, Anatomy of Dictatorship: Inside the GDR 1949-‐1989, 1995, p239
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other, however, there were those who came to collude in “acts that by virtually any standards have to be seen as inherently immoral, manipulative, deceitful, and utterly antipathetic” as Fulbrook put it113, to any notion of human rights. The vast, and most important majority of the people, however, fit neither of these two extreme categories.
Miriam Weber, as a leading example in this paper for the East German persona under Communism, not necessarily as a young girl but in the proceeding years of her life, could be the best illustrator for this direction. She was one of many East Germans who devised strategies for seeking to improve their own personal situations, and for navigating the rules, procedures and constrains of their circumstances. People like Miriam, were not afraid to speak up and speak out; most learnt the unwritten rules of what to say where and in what form; many internalized the norms and discourse or at least spoke and acted as if they had. These people were simply inheriting what I would call the silent concept of active resistance, where they focus on creating their own personal favorable circumstances of living without loudly opposing to the rules.
People, at this point however, as we have previously seen (especially in the last couple of decades of the 20th century) were prepared to argue at public meetings and “discussions;” to refuse their signatures on declaration of support for one development or another or action of the regime.
Such “pressures from below” as Fulbrook called them, were both supported and carried upwards by functionaries of the regime, who also played at times a genuinely representative role. Thus, the structure of the “top-‐down” accounts had a great contribution in reinserting “ordinary people” as active participants in making themselves and creating their own history.
What spread the first seeds of growing the “nostalgia” phenomenon, however, was the concept of “normality” created under the circumstances that the people had to live through. And this is where the main paradox of nostalgia was established.
“The normality,” or relatively wide spectrum of consensus, that we are talking about here was, of course, we should keep in mind, played out within a context that was anything but “normal:” behind the watchtowers of and death strip of the wall, and under the hidden surveillance and malign, manipulative intervention of the Stasi—that let to the point of questioning one’s own identity. It was only when citizens hit up against these literal and metaphorical margins that the boundaries of “normality” became painfully evident, as I have previously outlined in the paper. For those active opponents of repression who fought and suffered, and for those who lived in fear or whose lives were deformed by the constrains of the system, the repressive aspects of the regime were terrifyingly obvious; but it is important also to notice just how many people never had the chance to hit against these boundaries, and genuinely felt that they were able to live and lead “perfectly ordinary lives.” These people constituted the majority. These people were the ones who witnessed the experience of Nostalgia, when the pressure of creating a “normal” life for one’s self under the extreme abnormal circumstances has disappeared. These people are the ones who suffered from the psychological “paradox of ordinary life.” 113 Mary Fulbrook, The People’s state: East German Society from Hitler to Honecker, 1990, p296
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The outlines of this phenomenon were quite obvious, if we try to take a closer look at the society, especially after the demolition of the wall—precisely during the 90’s.
As some historians, like Jonathan Bach, have noted, ten years after German reunification, a relic from the past appeared in an industrial corner of what was once East Berlin: an original “Intershop.” Part of a chain of state retail establishments set up by the GDR for hard currency sales, the Intershop had formerly served as a type of duty-‐free store for Western time travelers on their rare visits to the world of the East. In socialist days, these stores stocked scarce consumer and luxury items such as chocolate, electronics, and perfume. According to Bach these shops were a constant reminder of not only the material failings of the GDR economy, but also the incongruity of the socialist ideal with the state’s own hard currency–seeking activities.
Today’s Intershop, however, is a distorted commentary on the events of the last ten years: old GDR products are offered that, in some cases, are now almost equally as scarce as the Western goods once were. The rebirth of the Intershop can be traced to a 1999 exhibition, conceived by two western Germans, on everyday life in the socialist East. The decision to house the exhibit in an old Intershop worked in accordance with the show’s emphasis on design, as the structure was essentially a kind of transportable barracks, easily assembled or stored and easily recognizable to Easterners and Westerners alike.114
Many experts believe that the new Intershop arrived on a wave of Ostalgia, by now a household word for the perceived nostalgia for the East (Ost) that presents itself in the form of theme parties, newly revived products, and a general flowering of eastern “things.” If, shortly after unification, East Germans famously abhorred anything made in the East (even milk and eggs) in favor of items from the West, ten years later the situation is substantially reversed. Ostprodukte (East products)—everyday items from the GDR that are still or once again available—have been making a comeback. These goods consist especially of foodstuffs (e.g., chocolate, beer, mustard) and household products such as the beloved dishwashing detergent “Spee.” Some of these items are available in GDR specialty shops, others in ordinary grocery stores displaying the sign “we sell East products,” and most can be found on the Internet.
F6, a former East German Cigarette brand, that has been available in the market till 2012 is one example of the kind of products people were longing for. When asked about f6 and the Nostalgia phenomenon, Phillip Morris, the owner of this cigarette brand, said:
“The f6 stands for what’s good and trusted from days past and
helps with the self-‐conscious articulation of East German identity. The f6 does not stand for a misunderstood conservatism; rather, this cigarette represents a part of East German cultural history that has
114 Jonathan P. G. Bach, “The taste Remains: Consumption, (N)ostalgia, and the production of east Germany, 2002, p545
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come to stand for a significant portion of identity building for the citizens in the new federal lands.”115 The highlight of this phenomenon of paradox in people’s every day life is not
only noted in the reappearance of these Intershops or Eastern products but also in the approach of East Germans to life nowadays.
“At one time there were plans for a mini East Germany theme park,
Ossie World. Travel agencies ran and still run, Ostalgia tours. There is a cachet about East German design and communist kitsch—communist condoms, Vita Cola (East Germany’s answer to Coca Cola) and the canned aroma of Trabant fumes have all been marketed by the purveyors of Ostalgia. An East-‐German-‐themed youth hostel, Ostel, opened in berlin in 2007.”116
Most importantly, right after the demolition of the so-‐called “Iron Curtain,”
people started to speak out and express their feelings and thoughts regarding life in the Eastern part of Germany—especially when the media started to shed light on the quality of life under communism.
East German actress Corinna Hartfouch put it like this: “ I cannot recognize my country from the way it is depicted in the press and media. We didn’t just have autumn and winter. We had spring and summer too. Life wasn’t just about the Stasi.”
East German singer Chris Doerk, who shares the same feelings of “Ostalgia” put it just as strongly, when he defends the ides of Ostalgie, or Nostalgia for the good “Osty” days.
“It makes me angry when the GDR is often reduced to the Stasi and I don’t know what more. Sometimes people talk about the country in such a strange way: ‘in the GDR the bigwings feasted and the people starved to death in the streets.’ I ask myself, ‘did I live in a different country?’ Because where I lived such things didn’t happen. I am not immersed in nostalgia, I live in the here and now, but there are many things I miss about the GDR. The social network, the day-‐care centers; working mothers could leave their children in kindergartens, art and culture had a much higher value then. Many people say they are worse off nowadays. All right they can travel, but when you’re on the dole and can’t earn money you cannot travel. These are the things that make our people angry. I didn’t lead a bad life in the GDR.”117
115 Jonathan P. G. Bach, “The taste Remains: Consumption, (N)ostalgia, and the production of east Germany, 2002, p552 116 Peter Molloy, The Lost World of Communism: An Oral History of Daily Life Behind the Iron Curtain, 2009, p304 117 Peter Molloy, The Lost World of Communism: An Oral History of Daily Life Behind the Iron Curtain, 2009, p305
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Many other former East German citizens share this strong opinion about defending life under communism back at the time. Social life, however, is not the only element that was subject to this kind of emotions and highlights of Nostalgia.
Many other areas were also highlighted by East Germans, today, when it comes to understanding the phenomenon of nostalgia, or what I called the paradox of ordinary life—areas that wouldn’t necessarily cross our minds when thinking of life in the GDR. Walter Womacka, a distinguished Socialist Realist artist, laments “the loss of subsidy that was typical of the GDR.”118
“Art was a big concern in East Germany. A lot of money was spent on
it, and the effects of that investment were clearly visible. Nowadays, East Germans used to seeing public art, paintings, sculpture, concerts, theatre, are very disappointed with what has happened. For example, today theatre tickets are very expensive and so only an elite few can afford them.”119
After focusing on his domain of specialty, Womacka talked about the more
general view of Nostalgia and the reason behind this feeling, that, in his opinion, most East Germans share today.
“Nobody was happy about the Wall. But it was a means to an end.
No one expected it disappear the way it did, and so fast too. It was one of those moments in history, which can either be used to one’s advantage or to one’s disadvantage…I certainly miss the way people used to live together. Living side by side was good in the GDR. Most former GDR citizens miss that today. Money matters were of no importance back then, whereas nowadays they are more important than anything, because everything depends on money. The good thing about East Germany was the way people trusted one another, and even told their competitors about their business. That would be impossible today. These are the things that I miss.”120 Decades after the fall of communism in Eastern Germany, a rose-‐tinted view of
the past persists in certain places. In today’s unified Germany, the concept of Nostalgia is even experienced by those too young to remember life under communism. Such feelings were reinforced by the success of films such as the 2003 comedy Goodbye Lenin. As a result, a whole community and a new industry were established to be completely devoted to exploring this phenomenon and trying to understand—and even reflect on—developed memories of the communist past.
118 Peter Molloy, The Lost World of Communism: An Oral History of Daily Life Behind the Iron Curtain, 2009, p305 119 Peter Molloy, The Lost World of Communism: An Oral History of Daily Life Behind the Iron Curtain, 2009, p305 120 Peter Molloy, The Lost World of Communism: An Oral History of Daily Life Behind the Iron Curtain, 2009, p306
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As Ann Arbor put it in her book Socialist Modern, however, the GDR is not the subject of wistful recollection. Neither its secure workplace, state childcare, nor subsidized cultural undertakings are the stuff of nostalgia, “since they mainly served the state’s economic interests and added too little sparkle to everyday existence. The Ostalgie wave that has recently suffused the media cannot obscure this fact. In this way, Ostalgie is not to be confused with Nostalgia proper, because it’s not about a misty-‐eyed longing for a harmonious past but is rather a form of identity politics that is better understood as a protest against the way in which dominant interpretations of GDR history have robbed the GDR past of its subversive potential.”121
Coming to this point, we can ensure that East Germany was a country of common people (Kleine Leute). These people were the ones who drew the ability to reflect on realities in many different ways showing experts, readers, and viewers—usually of history—how the daily life, with its paradoxes and inconsistencies, could be interpreted from different perspectives and using different personal capabilities. At times, Communist East Germany seemed to us like a very “normal” society where people maintained an “ordinary” life, and at other times, it sounded like a utopian complex society where people were either in the pole of “being controlled,” or in the pole of “being victimized.” At this point, however, it should be clear that the complexity and mystery behind the different aspects of the East German society were simply what created the concept of existence for the people in their everyday life—it’s simply the paradox of ordinary life.
121 Ann Arbor, Socialist Modern: East German Everyday Culture and Politics, 2008, p324
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