'Ostalgia' spreads as decades pass

10 Nov 2009, 2:20 pm   -   Source: Bryony Jones, SBS
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Visitors to Berlin can stay in the Ostel, a GDR-themed hotel decorated in 1970s style (Getty)

Visitors to Berlin can stay in the Ostel, a GDR-themed hotel decorated in 1970s style (Getty)

In Berlin, you can holiday in a Communist era hotel and even take tours in a Trabant, but does the fashion for 'Ostalgia' hide a darker, more dangerous trend?

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In Berlin, you can holiday in a Communist era hotel and even take tours in a Trabant, but does the fashion for 'Ostalgia' hide a more darker, more dangerous trend?

Twenty years ago the barriers between East and West Germany were lifted for the first time in three decades, and people from both sides of the divide joined forces to pull down the Berlin Wall with their bare hands.

On the night of November 9, thousands of East Berliners poured through the crossings at Bornholmer Street, Glienicker Bridge and Checkpoint Charlie, eager for their first taste of life on the other side of the wall.

Many had shouted "We'll come back!" as they waited to cross the border.

But as the months went on, more and more left for the west and did not return, drawn by the promise of a better lifestyle, work opportunities, or the chance to be closer to friends and family.

East Germany was seen as quaint and old-fashioned - a land of mullet haircuts, odd clothes, food shortages and out-of-date political ideas.

Rose-tinted view of GDR life

And then something happened. The old became new again, and what had been deeply untrendy became painfully hip once more.

Trabi cars, once consigned to the scrapheap, were reconditioned and driven proudly around the streets. East German food brands such as Vita-Cola were stocked on supermarket shelves again.
 
And any attempt to 'Westernise' GDR era icons, such as Ampelmaennchen, the distictive East German figure used at pedestrian crossings, was met with angry campaigns.

It may have begun with films such as Goodbye Lenin! and Sonnenallee. Set in the communist era, they offered a rose-tinted view of life behind the wall, with little mention of the darker aspects of those days.

Suddenly, teenagers who had not even been born in November 1989 were extolling the virtues of everything East German.

Kathrin Furmanek, who grew up in Berlin and Dresden before the fall of the Wall, finds such enthusiasm for the old East decidedly odd - but says she thinks she understands it.

Teens' search for an identity

"My students in Dresden were deeply into that kind of nostalgia for the old East, and I asked them - you were born in 89 or 90 - what is it?

"And I think part of it is they were searching for an identity, and the whole society in East Germany was still between east and west, people are still in their thoughts and behaviour a bit different."

Even Furmanek - who fought for an end to the Communist regime in 1989 - can identify with some aspects of the apparent longing for the 'old days'.

"I was young, you know, and I was in love and I had friends and I had fun, and it is part of my identity - part of my identity belongs to the time in the GDR. So there is a little 'Ostalgia'.

"For the generation like me, or my parents, it is normal, because you had everyday life, normal life, going on alongside the political regime.

"You live your life, and it has happy parts and they are related maybe to the little Trabi car, or to certain products, or a smell or a taste, and I think that's part of the Ostalgia."

Resentment over job losses

Others though, aren't so sure.

"I certainly wouldn't wish the old GDR back," insists Torsten Schulz, who lived in East Germany in the 1970s and 80s.

Schulz, now a teacher living in Melbourne, says the older generation's enthusiasm for the GDR, with its jobs for life, subsidised childcare and cheap housing, is related to their economic troubles since the 1989.

"I think most people who think clearly don't want it back - though they have their resentments. It is still tough for some people.

"If you have a look at the unemployment rates - in Leipzig it is 20 per cent or so, and that usually hits those people who had their jobs safe in East Germany, and have never found a chance to get back to work."

Bad memories wiped out

Furmanek, now based in Sydney, agrees - but worries that the trend for Ostalgia risks wiping out memories of the terrible things done in the name of the GDR.

"It is very dangerous only to see 'Eastalgia' and block out the political part of the regime - both sides belong to that country that doesn't exist any more.

"That is difficult to understand for some people - they think 'nothing happened to me, I had a nice life, I still had work there, and I had my apartment for very little money and so on,' but that is not all - that's true, but you had to pay a certain price for that.

And she is convinced that even the strongest proponents of that nostalgia for the days of East Germany would soon change their minds when reminded of the grimmer aspects of the GDR: the Stasi, the food shortages, the lack of freedom to travel, to vote, to have a say.

"If there was a time machine and you could send people back to that time, after four weeks they would decide 'no, no, no, it's better to live with open walls, not behind the wall'," she says.

 

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Your Comments

Die Mauer, die DDR

Ludwig - from Port Pirie, 3 years ago

Zur Zeit der Fall der Mauer arbeitete ich in Ostdeutschland. Man konnte spät am abend durch unbeleuchtete Straßen gehen, ohne Angst. Man musste nicht an seinen Arbeitsplatz bangen. Was wertvoll war - Oper, Theater, Bücher - war erschwinglich. Ja, es war vorgeschrieben, was man denken und sagen durfte, aber ist es jetzt anders? Wir haben Meinungen, die als "richtig" oder "politisch korrekt" gelten, und wer anderer Meinung ist kommt sogar ins Gefängnis. Sind unsere Meinungen wirklich so perfekt?

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