Born in the GDR Read online

  Added to this sense of dissatisfaction with the East German government (run by the Sozialistische Einheitspartei Deutschlands, SED, the Socialist Unity Party) was the advent of a new reforming General Secretary of the Communist Party in the Soviet Union, Mikhail Gorbachev. Taking power on 11 March 1985, he appeared to offer radical reform and the relaxation of strict ideology, especially with his policies of glasnost, which referred to openness and transparency in government institutions, and perestroika, which referred to the easing and restructuring of socialist rule. Gorbachev changed Soviet policy, based on suggestions from a new team of experts who had been studying Soviet–East European relations for some time. They told Gorbachev that Eastern Europe was no longer a strategic necessity for Soviet security and was in fact an expensive drain on resources. Gorbachev’s new policies meant that the Soviet Union was not committed to preserving the status quo as it had been in the past. This made it difficult for communist leaders in the Eastern bloc to continue to block reform, as they could no longer rely on the pretext of Soviet disapproval to justify their actions.14 Gorbachev’s policies promised a more relaxed style of communist rule in the Soviet Union, and this in turn gave hope to ordinary people in the Eastern bloc that there would be improvements to their own daily lives. His new policy of non-interference in the Soviet satellite states also effectively freed reformers within the ruling parties in countries like Poland and Hungary to begin the struggle to change their own political institutions, without fear of Soviet intervention.15 And all of this significantly widened the potential for change in the region.

  In Poland, opposition to the regime had been brewing amongst workers since the start of the 1980s, with the establishment of Solidarity as a national organization of opposition headed by electrician Lech Wałęsa. Though Solidarity operated underground for most of the decade, it attracted more and more support in its mission to reform communist rule in Poland.16 And with further industrial unrest breaking out in August 1988, the government finally agreed to open negotiations with the opposition. Between February and April 1989, round-table discussions took place between them. One of the outcomes of this discussion was that Solidarity was legalized. The biggest decision, though, was to allow non-communist parties to stand in the next election. Ultimately, this led to free elections in June 1989, when Solidarity won a landslide victory and the communists were ousted from power. These developments in the Soviet Union and in Poland certainly encouraged unrest elsewhere.17

  In Hungary, too, popular acceptance of the communist regime waned dramatically in the 1980s. When the Communist Party leader János Kádár responded to the intensifying economic crisis by introducing harsh austerity measures rather than a change in course, opposition to the regime became more vocal as the notion that the state was protecting workers’ interests became increasingly undermined.18 Under mounting pressure, Kádár was removed as leader after nearly thirty-two years in May 1988. In a climate of radical reformism, the half-hearted efforts of Kádár’s replacement, Károly Grósz, were soon dismissed as inadequate.

  Leading the reformist wing in the Hungarian Communist Party was Imre Pozsgay, who argued that the Party’s future could only be assured by working with sections of the cultural and technical intelligentsia. Under his influence, and in response to mounting external pressure, the Hungarian Communist Party agreed to join in round-table discussions with the opposition. Inspired by the Polish model, these talks lasted until September 1989, and it was agreed that Hungary would become a multi-party political system operated through free elections which were set up for spring 1990.19

  From May 1989, the reforms in Hungary had a knock-on effect in East Germany, when a group of Hungarian soldiers, at the direction of both the Hungarian and Austrian governments, began to remove the barbed wire which had previously closed the border between Hungary and Austria as part of the Iron Curtain. This led to an exodus of 130,000 East Germans, who used this border crossing to flee to West Germany between May and November. The sheer scale of departures served to erode the GDR’s authority substantially.20

  Buoyed by developments in the Soviet Union, Poland, and Hungary, thousands of GDR citizens took to the streets campaigning for reform. The so-called Monday Demonstrations in Leipzig in September 1989 drew more and more supporters campaigning for freedom of speech, a relaxation of the travel restrictions, better care of the environment, and peace. In Dresden, Jena, and East Berlin, demonstrators met in the shelter of churches and discussed their demands for reform. Gorbachev’s visit to East Berlin to celebrate the forty-year anniversary of the GDR on 3 October added further momentum to proceedings. He was greeted like a pop star by large crowds which chanted ‘Gorbi! Gorbi!’ and ‘Help us!’ In a speech that day Gorbachev gave demonstrators further hope, declaring that ‘life punishes those who come too late’—a clear message to the East German government that it should implement reforms or risk the consequences.21 At this stage, the desire for change among ordinary East Germans was clear. It was not until 9 November, however, that matters really came to a head. On that day, just before a press conference, Günter Schabowski, a spokesperson for the SED Politburo, was handed a note saying that East Germans would be able to cross the border with proper permission. Since the note had no further details, Schabowski had to improvise when answering questions. When he was unable to give specific details about the new travel arrangements, East Berliners were filled with optimism and flocked in huge numbers to the border crossing points across the city, where confused guards allowed them to pass through. Soon after, the entire Iron Curtain collapsed.22 Few, if any, of the East German protesters had bargained for the reunification of Germany, but that is what transpired over the following year.

  The opening of the Wall was met with euphoria across both Germanys. West Berliners greeted East Berliners with glasses of champagne as they crossed the border, most of them for the first time in their lives. In the excitement, strangers embraced, overwhelmed by the enormity of what they were witnessing. The party atmosphere continued all night in downtown Berlin. In other parts of the city, Germans awoke the following morning to hear the news on the radio or from neighbours rapping on the door, eager to tell them what had happened. At this stage, the collapse of the GDR was in no way inevitable and many East Germans expected the border to be resealed. However in the months that followed, with more and more Easterners flocking westwards, it became clear that there was no going back.

  In stark contrast to the other countries in the Eastern bloc, the GDR—the so-called ‘jewel in the USSR’s Eastern European Empire’23—had a prosperous Western counterpart, which had the wherewithal to subsidize East Germany’s transition into an operational democratic system.24 In March 1990, there were free elections in East Germany for the first time since 1933. Rather than voting based on Party allegiances, East Germans voted to choose their preferred vision and timetable for reunification. Helmut Kohl’s party, the Christian Democratic Union (CDU) offered reunification as quickly as possible, the idea being that the GDR would be divided into states (Länder) that could then apply to join the West German Federation of States (Bundesländer). The Social Democratic Party (Sozialdemokratische Partei Deutschlands or SPD) argued for a slower process with more protracted discussions about how to create a new Germany. Other parties, such as Alliance ’90/The Greens (Bündis 90/Die Grünen), which represented East German dissident movements, and the Party of Democratic Socialism (Partei des Demokratischen Sozialismus or PDS), which was the successor to the SED Party, were more sceptical about reunification and offered alternative programmes instead. In March 1990, East Germans voted overwhelmingly in favour of the quickest available option. Though the decision to unite was clear from the election results, putting reunification into practice was far from straightforward. Each country had its own flag, its own national anthem, its own armed forces, and critically its own military allegiances, with the GDR committed to the Warsaw Pact and the FRG to NATO. There were other problematic differences too, such as a different
legal code, a different educational system, a different approach to health care, and a different method of taxation. Deciding how to deal with this was logistically very difficult.25

  Replacement, it seems, was the theme of the Wende (the name given to the political changes prompted by the fall of the Wall). Whatever one might think about whether an alternative approach was feasible, in many respects reunification ended up being a wholesale takeover by the West, much to the disappointment of many of the dissidents who had first taken to the streets of East Germany in 1989. Once the protests became a mass movement the original protestors, who had sought a more democratic form of socialism through reform from within, were drowned out by growing calls for the end of the GDR per se.26 This, perhaps, accounts for why the celebrations of reunification in October 1990 were far more muted than the festivities in November 1989.

  After forty years of division, East and West Germany had evolved into very distinct societies. That the differences were so marked surprised Germans from both sides, and presented enormous challenges to feeling a genuine sense of unification as one nation. In 1980, for example, only 6 per cent of West Germans lived in communities of fewer than 2,000 inhabitants in contrast to nearly 25 per cent of East Germans.27 The GDR was grounded in the ideology of Marxism-Leninism, and therefore committed to eradicating class differences, while the West was a capitalist consumer society. The overall standard of living was higher in the West, but so too was the difference between rich and poor. All of this meant that at the moment the Wall was torn down, East and West Germans looked, thought, and behaved very differently.28 Perhaps even more challenging than adapting to new systems for employment and welfare, was the apparent need for East Germans to shed a set of behaviours that had been developed subconsciously by living in a socialist state.29 As many East Germans found, including those who were keen to blend in with West Germans as quickly as possible, it simply was not that easy to erase the experiences of forty years and start from scratch.30

  When the structures, organizations, leisure activities, shops, and customs of the GDR effectively disappeared and were replaced by West German ways over the course of the transition, many East Germans experienced a loss of their sense of self, of their sense of identity.31 Identity can be shaped by a variety of factors including ideology, belief, or allegiance, but it is also rooted in everyday behaviour: the newspapers people read, the food they eat, the buildings that surround them, the travel choices that are available. A sense of identity relates to where a person is from and this certainly colours where that person is going. It is also linked to expectations.32 Decades of living under the GDR undoubtedly informed the attitudes and mindsets of ordinary East Germans. The vast majority of citizens there participated in the communist system and through that involvement they were themselves changed. The extent to which they had internalized the values of the system was far greater than many had thought. The fall of the Wall and comparison with their Western compatriots brought into stark relief how much they had been part of that system.33 And with rapid reunification, suddenly East Germans were confronted with the fact that many of their habits, the practices of daily life that they had developed unconsciously, were at odds with the way West Germans behaved. West Germans were foreigners to East Germans, they just happened to speak the same language. And in this context East Germans could not simply shrug off their past or the fact that they were, in many senses, products of the circumstances they had been living in.34

  ‘I didn’t move a metre but I suddenly lived in a new world’, observed one East German.35 How acutely individuals felt the loss of their old GDR world was undoubtedly related to how successful a transition they made into living in the new reunited Germany. East Germans could simultaneously feel both freer and frustrated.36 Those former East Germans who continue to buy familiar Eastern products may well simply be seeking out the comfort of the familiar from their old lives as GDR citizens. Overall, their feelings of disorientation were captured by the East German journalist and writer Andreas Lehmann, who wrote in 1993 that ‘they [politicians leading the reunification process] are asking us for a complete renunciation of the old and a cheerful subordination to the culture of the West, which above all does not translate into the surrender of some “ideals” (political or otherwise), but, worse, into a total loss of one’s own biography’.37

  Essentially, after the end of the GDR, East Germans continued to exist as East Germans but in an environment that had seen fundamental changes. The stories that follow look at how, despite the end of a state and the failure of an ideology, the values and mindsets that these produced, in both conformist and oppositional variants, lived on. All of this helps to explain why in the initial period of transition, and indeed in the years that followed, ‘Germany was no longer two nations, but it certainly was not yet one’.38

  The changes wrought by German reunification reached far into the daily lives of all East Germans.39 Yet the different ages and stages of life which people were at when the Wall fell meant that East Germans were affected unevenly by the changes. Adults nearing retirement age were often forced to stop working early since it was not obvious to Western employers how their skills could be put to good use in rapidly modernizing and labour-saving industries. Some, decades into building a career, had to retrain to fit in with the modern, capital-intensive modes of production, often taking a pay cut and a drop in professional standing to do so. Others, of course, were successful, building new businesses in the wake of reunification. But whether successful or otherwise, reunification brought huge changes to the day-to-day. And many had to cope with this transition while also caring and providing for a family in a markedly more expensive world.40 In this context, it would be easy to assume that young people, who had spent the least time building their lives under socialist rule, would adapt much more easily to the new state of affairs than their older counterparts. The world was already changing and getting bigger for adolescents anyway, so in many respects the Wende was just another layer of change.41 Certainly this group, who had most or all of their adult lives ahead of them, was best placed to profit from the new educational freedoms which allowed individuals far greater choice about what they studied and pursued as a career—choices that were based on ability and interests rather than political conformity. At the same time, however, these children and young people had been born into the GDR, and had no experience of another system. And just as they were about to launch themselves into the real world as adults, the rules of the game changed drastically. Older East Germans certainly struggled to adjust to life in unified Germany, with all of the attendant changes to daily life. But younger people, who had been subject to SED propaganda their entire lives, also had a lot of readjusting to do, as they tried to work out what they themselves thought as the system they had grown up in was discredited and displaced by its once-reviled Western rival.42

  This book will focus on the experiences of East Germans who were born into the GDR after the Berlin Wall was put up on 13 August 1961. This group had known nothing other than growing up in communist East Germany. To understand what young East Germans went through following German reunification, it is essential to look back on their experiences under the SED. Just as the Nazi dictatorship had tried to indoctrinate young people with their way of thinking in the Hitler Youth, so too had the GDR through its equivalent youth groups—the Young Pioneers, the Thälmann Pioneers, and the Free German Youth—which occupied much of the free time of youths aged between 6 and 25. Young people represented the future of socialism in the eyes of the SED leadership and it was therefore a top priority to turn them into socialist personalities. What did this entail? Above all, it meant belief in the socialist world view, and a commitment as a collective to working towards a better society. In 1958, Erich Honecker’s predecessor as East German leader of the SED, Walter Ulbricht, tried to encapsulate the essence of the ideal socialist man by penning the ‘Ten Commandments for the New Socialist Human’. These commandments were phrased like the Ten Commandments
in the Bible and formed an established part of the SED Party Programme between 1963 and 1979. They give a flavour of what was expected of citizens, both young and old, in the GDR:

  1. You shall always campaign for the international solidarity of the working class and all working people and for the unbreakable bond of all socialist countries.

  2. You shall love your fatherland and always be ready to deploy all your strength and capabilities for the defence of the workers’ and farmers’ power.

  3. You shall help to abolish exploitation of man by man.

  4. You shall do good deeds for socialism, because socialism leads to a better life for all working people.

  5. You shall act in the spirit of mutual help and comradely cooperation while building up socialism, and also respect the collective and heed its critique.