Eastern Germany 20 Years After Past, Present and Future?

The fall of the Berlin Wall on November 9, 1989 put an end to over 25 years of separation between East and West Germany, eventually leading to the unification of both German states on October 3rd, 1990. East Germany has literally become a foreign country belonging to the past, but it is by no means a forgotten country. Now, 20 years after the historical event of the Wende, the past seems actually to be playing an increasingly prominent role. Sentiments such as those expressed by the young inhabitant of Chemnitz, who himself has no first-hand experience of East German socialism, can easily be interpreted in terms of Ostalgie. However, Ostalgie is but one side of the story, and it is necessary to examine the broader contexts and developments in order to get an accurate image of Eastern Germany today. This also applies to other stereotypes that are frequently evoked in connection with Eastern Germany: not only the longing for an idealised GDR-past, but also depopulation, high unemployment rates, xenophobia, secularism and a-religiosity. The former German Democratic Republic presents a far more multi-dimensional picture than the one usually depicted in mass media and by quantitatively oriented studies. The feeling of nostalgia is not a uniquely East German phenomenon; it has been observed in all postsocialist countries of Central and Eastern Europe (cf. Svašek 2006). A play on words has led to the concept of Ostalgie in the case of Eastern Germany: nostalgia about the East (Ost). The phenomenon has been widely debated in intellectual, scientific, political and media discourse. According to Neller (2006) it has become a cult word actually used more in the West than in the East. It certainly refers to the feeling of disorientation caused by a “loss of identity” (Svašek 2006). Ostalgie is, however, less about identification with the former GDR state but “an identification with different forms of oppositional solidarity and collective memory.” (Berdahl 1999a: 203). While such broader definitions also include values and knowledge, most authors interested in Ostalgie mainly point to the consumerist aspect: the “desire to re-experience oneself as a GDR citizen through the consumption of GDR products, and by seeing television programmes which strongly idealise life under communism” (Svašek 2006: 12). While locals initially rejected everything East German immediately after unification, embracing Western products, they soon experienced disappointment and returned to the familiar. Disenchantment with market economics ensued when it turned out that people started losing their jobs, and the atmosphere in companies changed (Müller 2007). The consumption of Western products was seen as a betrayal (Berdahl 1999a; Veenis 1999). The appearance of shops selling GDR products points, however, not only to the existence of “ostalgic” sentiments among the local population, but also demonstrates the economic viability of such goods, which attract Western tourists with a higher purchasing power. One notable example are the Trabi-tours through Berlin, organised specifically for tourists (this idea has been copied in other post socialist cities, for example in Kraków, Poland). It is ironic that the resistance against Western consumerism and consumer products has resulted in the commercialisation of Eastern German-ness. Simultaneously, commercialisation and folklorisation also create room for serious debate about GDR-history. In this regard, Rethman (2009) has rightly pointed out that in addition to reflecting trauma and resistance, Ostalgie –at least in its commercialised form- may be understood as a form of self-irony. The wave of Ostalgia reached a height in the late nineties and in the early years of the new millennium. This sentimentality was well illustrated in the popular film Goodbye Lenin (2003), in which a son undertakes every effort to …