nostalgic for what
East Germany.
The realities of East Germany were poverty, oppression, and what may have been the most invasive police state in history. The German Democratic Republic also housed the most tangible symbol of communist control - the Berlin Wall. When it, and the nation it represented, collapsed into history in 1989, a generation of East Germans became Ossies - Germans who weren't quite German, suddenly thrust into a modern, democratic Europe that bore little resemblance to the nation in which they grew up.
With over a decade for the memory of GDR brutality to fade, the cultural artifacts of the former communist nation have become all the rage. What were once indicative of the failings of socialist ideology are now something of a kitcshy novelty. Trabants, Ersatzkaffee (fake coffee), and the ill-fitting clothing produced in government factories are hot sellers. Director Wolfgang Becker's "Goodbye, Lenin!", a comedy set in the former East Germany shortly after the fall of the communist government, is one of the highest grossing films in German history. Not one, but three new television shows chronicle life in the GDR in order to, as host of "The GDR Show" Katarina Witt put it - show a "winking look at the GDR, to show that it wasn't all bad."
This fascination with East Germany is surely a temporary fad, nevertheless, it is distressing to hear a former Olympic skater attempt to portray the GDR as something other than it was: a nightmare perversion of its western sister - where your friends, neighbors, and family were reporting on you to their secret police handlers - and you were reporting on them. In Witt's case, she can almost be forgiven as simply being ignorant. As a successful international athlete she was granted some freedom to travel, provided with a relatively nice apartment, and enjoyed amenities other citizens of that egalitarian workers' paradise never saw. Had Witt lived the life of an average East German, perhaps her remembrance of her former country would be less giddy.
The merger of East and West Germany has not quickly produced a true union. The region that was East Germany is still backward in many ways, still economically depressed, still suffering from decades of communist malaise. By focusing on the trivial distinctions between East and West rather than the important ones, Germans might be hoping to simply avoid the numerous cultural complications brought on by unification. Either that, or shows about useless products produced by a corrupt and inefficient economic system are just the sort of thing to enchant the German sense of humor.
10.10.2003 © ljr