The twilight of the idols: East German memory and material culture

Journal of Modern History

Volumn 72, Issue 3, 2000, Pages 731-765

  Betts, Paul ^a  

^a UNIVERSITY OF SUSSEX   (United Kingdom)

Author keywords

[No Author keywords available]

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EID: 0041396490     PISSN: 00222801     EISSN: None     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1086/316046     Document Type: Article

References (201)

1. Jean Cohen and Anthony Arato, Civil Society and Political Theory (Cambridge, 1992);
2. Zbigniew Rau, ed., The Emergence of Civil Society in Eastern Europe and the Soviet Union (Boulder, Colo., 1991);
3. Michael Roskin, The Rebirth of Eastern Europe (Upper Saddle River, N.J., 1997);
4. Francis Fukuyama, The End of History and the Last Man (New York, 1992).
5. Harold James and Maria Stone, eds., When the Wall Came Down: Reactions to German Unification (New York, 1992);
6. Robin Blackburn, ed., After the Fall: The Failure of Communism (London, 1991).
7. Among the most important contributions are Charles Maier, Dissolution: The Crisis of Communism and the Collapse of the East German State (Princeton, N.J., 1997);
8. Philip Zelikov and Condoleezza Rice, Germany Unified and Europe Transformed: A Study in Statecraft (Cambridge, 1995);
9. Heinrich Potthoff, Die 'Koalition der Vernunft': Deutschlandpolitik in den 80er Jahren (Munich, 1995);
10. Konrad Jarausch, The Rush to German Unity (New York, 1994);
11. Michael Huelshoff, Andrei Markovits, and Simon Reich, eds., From the Bundesrepublik to Deutschland: German Politics after Reunification (Ann Arbor, Mich., 1993);
12. Timothy Garton Ash, In Europe's Name (New York, 1993);
13. Hans Joa and Martin Kohli, eds., Der Zusammenbruch der DDR (Frankfurt, 1993);
14. Elizabeth Pond, Beyond the Wall: Germany's Road to Unification (New York, 1993);
15. Jeffrey Gedmin, The Hidden Hand: Gorbachev and the Collapse of East Germany (Washington, D.C., 1992);
16. Gert-Joachim Gläsner and Ian Wallace, eds., The German Revolution of 1989: Causes and Consequences (Oxford, 1992).
17. Journalistic accounts include Jane Kramer, The Politics of Memory: Looking for Germany in the New Germany (New York, 1996);
18. Tina Rosenberg, The Haunted Land (New York, 1995);
19. Wolfgang Kenntemich, ed., Das war die DDR: Das Buch zur ARD-Fernsehserie (Berlin, 1993);
20. Robert Darnton, Berlin Journal, 1989-1990 (New York, 1991);
21. Timothy Garton Ash, The Magic Lantern (New York, 1990);
22. Klaus Hartung, Neunzehnhundertneunundachtzig (Frankfurt, 1990).
23. Jost Hermand and Marc Silberman, eds., Contentious Memories: Looking Back at the GDR (New York, 1998);
24. Thomas Lahusen and Evgeny Dobrenko, eds., Socialist Realism without Shores (Durham, N.C., 1997);
25. Thomas Hoscislawski, Bauen zwischen Macht und Ohnmacht: Architektur und Staedtebau in der DDR (Berlin, 1991);
26. Martin Damus, Malerei der DDR (Reinbek bei Hamburg, 1991);
27. David Bathrick, The Power of Speech: The Politics of Culture in the GDR (Lincoln, Nebr., 1995);
28. Julia Hell, Postfascist Fantasies: Psychoanalysis, History and the Literature of East Germany (Durham, N.C., 1997);
29. Arthur Williams et al., German Literature at a Time of Change, 1989-1990: German Unity and Identity in Literary Perspective (Bern, 1991);
30. Lawrence McFalls, Communism's Collapse, Democracy's Demise? The Cultural Context and Consequences of the East German Revolution (New York, 1995);
31. Manfred Jäger, Kultur und Politik in der DDR, 1945-1990 (Cologne, 1995);
32. Friederike Eigler and Peter Pfeiffer, eds., Cultural Transformations in the New Germany (Columbia, S.C., 1993).
33. Daphne Berdahl, Where the World Ended: Transition and Identity in the German Borderland (Berkeley, 1999);
34. Wolfgang Engler, Die Ostdeutschen: Kunde von Einem Verlorenen Land (Berlin, 1999);
35. Konrad Jarausch, ed., Dictatorship as Experience: Towards a Socio-Cultural History of the GDR (New York, 1999);
36. Alf Lüdtke and Peter Becker, eds., Akten, Eingaben, Schaufenster: Die Erkundungen zu Herrschaft und Alltag (Berlin, 1997);
37. Johannes Huinink and Karl Ulrich Mayer, eds., Kollektiv und Eigensinn: Lebenslaüfe in der DDR und danach (Berlin, 1995);
38. Mary Fulbrook, Anatomy of a Dictatorship: Inside the GDR, 1949-1989 (Oxford, 1995);
39. Hartmut Kaelble, Juergen Kocka, and Hartmut Zwahr, eds., Sozialgeschichte der DDR (Stuttgart, 1994);
40. Elizabeth Boa and Janet Wharton, eds., Women and the Wende: Social Effects and Cultural Reflections of the German Unification Process (Amsterdam, 1994);
41. Armin Mitter and Stefan Wolle, Untergang auf Raten: Unbekannte Kapitel der DDR-Geschichte (Munich, 1993);
42. Alfons Silbermann, Das Wahn-Erlebnis in Ostdeutschland (Cologne, 1993);
43. Siegrid Meuschel, Legitimität und Parteiherrschaft in der DDR (Frankfurt, 1992);
44. Ina Merkel, . . . Und Du, Frau an der Werkbank: Die DDR in den 50er Jahren (Berlin, 1990);
45. Hans-Joachim Maaz, Der Gefühlsstau: Ein Psychogramm der DDR (Berlin, 1990).
46. See, e.g., the debated poll results reported in "Stolz aufs eigene Leben," Der Spiegel (July 3, 1995), pp. 40-52;
47. for an earlier scholarly analysis, see Ulrich Becker, Horst Becker, and Walter Ruhland, Zwischen Angst und Aufbruch: Das Lebensgefühl der Deutschen in Ost und West nach der Wiedervereinigung (Düsseldorf, 1992).
48. Christian von Ditfurth, Ostalgie oder linke Alternative: Meine Reise durch die PDS (Cologne, 1998).
49. Marc Fischer, After the Fall: Germany, the Germans and the Burdens of History (New York, 1995), p. 144.
50. East German intellectuals were often equally caustic in speaking of this "banana republic": "the population that, after years of subordination and escape, had summoned up its strength and taken its fate into its own hands, and that only yesterday appeared to strive nobly toward a radiant future, was transformed into a horde of the possessed who, pressed back-to-stomach, mobbed [the West German department stores] Hertie and Bilka in pursuit of the golden trinket." Stephan Heym, "Aschenmittwoch in der DDR," Der Spiegel (December 4, 1989).
51. Jonathan Osmond, "The End of the GDR: Revolution and Voluntary Annexation," in German History since 1800, ed. Mary Fulbrook (London, 1997), pp. 454-72.
52. See, e.g., Frederic Jameson, Postmodernism, or the Cultural Logic of Late Capitalism (Durham, N.C., 1992);
53. Andrew Ross, ed., Universal Abandon? The Politics of Postmodernism (Minneapolis, 1988).
54. Matthew Kraljic, ed., The Breakup of Communism: The Soviet Union and Eastern Europe (New York, 1993);
55. Stephen White, ed., The Politics of Transition (Cambridge, 1993).
56. Jeffrey Herf, Divided Memory: The Nazi Past in the Two Germanys (Cambridge, 1997).
57. Alan Nothnagle, "From Buchenwald to Bismarck: Historical Myth-Building in the German Democratic Republic, 1945-1989," Central European History 26, no. 1 (1993): 91-113.
58. For a good discussion of right-wing violence in East and West Germany, see Michael Schmidt, The New Reich, trans. Daniel Horch (New York, 1993).
59. Jürgen Habermas, "Der DM-Nationalismus," Die Zeit (March 30, 1990).
60. A good example of the short-lived Reunification euphoria can be found in the collection of East and West German poetry inspired by the removal of the Wall; Karl Otto Conrady, ed., Von einem Land und vom andern: Gedichte zur deutschen Wende, 1989-1990 (Leipzig, 1993).
61. Meuschel (n. 5 above), pp. 273-82; and Marc Silberman, "Problematizing the 'Socialist Public Sphere': Concepts and Consequences," in his edited What Remains? East German Culture and the Postwar Public (Washington, D.C., 1997), p. 13.
62. Günther Grass, Two States - One Nation? trans. Kristina Winston (London, 1990);
63. Jürgen Habermas, "Yet Again: A Unified Nation or Angry DM-Burghers?" in James and Stone, eds. (n. 2 above), pp. 86-102.
64. For the liberals, see Robert Leicht, "Ohne Patriotismus geht es nicht," Die Zeit (January 29, 1993);
65. Klaus Härtung, "Die Nation gehört nicht den Rechten," Die Zeit (October 22, 1993);
66. Ulrich Övermann, "Zwei Staaten oder Einheit: Der 'dritte Weg' als Fortsetzung des deutschen Sonderweges," Merkur 492 (February 1990): 91-106.
67. For the conservatives, see Karl-Heinz Böhrer, "Why We Are Not a Nation - and Why We Become One," in James and Stone, eds., pp. 60-70;
68. Botho Strauss, "Anschwellender Bockgesang," Der Spiegel (February 8, 1993);
69. Heimo Schwilk and Ulrich Schacht, eds., Die selbstbewusste Nation (Berlin, 1996).
70. Konrad Jarausch, "Normalization or Renationalization? On Reinterpreting the German Past," in Rewriting the German Past: History and Identity in the New Germany, ed. Richard Alter and Peter Monteath (N.J., 1997), pp. 23-39.
71. Rosmarie Beier, ed., Aufbau West, Aufbau Ost (Stuttgart, 1997);
72. Christoph Klessmann and Georg Wagner, Das gespaltete Land: Leben in Deutschland, 1945-1990 (Munich, 1993);
73. Wolfgang Kaschuba and Ute Mohrmann, eds., Blick-Wechsel Ost-West: Beobachtungen zur Alltagsgeschichte in Ost- und Westdeutschland (Tübingen, 1992);
74. the special "Deutschland, Deutschland" issue of Kursbuch 109 (September 1992).
75. It should be noted that this nostalgia has not been confined to East Germany. For sentimental reminiscences about the "Bonn Republic," see Otthein Rammstedt and Gert Schmidt, eds., BRD Ade! Vierzig Jahre in Rück-Ansichten (Frankfurt, 1992).
76. Olaf Georg Klein, ed., Plötzlich war alles ganz anders (Cologne, 1994);
77. Dirk Philipsen, We Were the People: Voices from East Germany's Revolutionary Autumn of 1989 (Durham, N.C., 1993);
78. Lutz Niethammer, Alexander von Plato, and Dorothee Wierling, eds., Die eigene Volkserfahrung: Eine Archäologie des Lebens in der Industrieprovinz der DDR (Berlin, 1991);
79. John Borneman, After the Wall: East Meets West in the New Berlin (New York, 1991);
80. Hans Mayer, Der Turm von Babel: Erinnerung an eine Deutsche Demokratische Republik (Frankfurt, 1991).
81. See Christoph Stözl's "Vorwort" to Stephan Moses's Abschied und Anfang: Ostdeutsche Porträts, 1989-1990 (Ostfildern bei Stuttgart, 1991), pp. 7-8.
82. One observer even argued that the new attention toward GDR everyday culture represented an ironic "victory of the Party insofar as East German everyday life was finally taken seriously." Andreas Ludwig, "Vorwort," in his Tempolinsen und P2: Alltagskultur der DDR (Berlin, 1996), p. 9.
83. Haus der Geschichte der Bundesrepublik Deutschland: Zeiträume, Konzept, Architektur, Ausstellungen (Berlin, 1994);
84. Hermann Schäfer, "Alltagsgeschichte im geteilten Deutschland: Zur Konzeption und Darstellung im Haus der Geschichte der Bundesrepublik Deutschland," in Probleme der Musealisierung der doppelten Nachkriegsgeschichte, ed. Bernd Faulenbach and Franz-Josef Jelich (Essen, 1993), pp. 47-54.
85. Georg Bertsch and Ernst Hedler, SED: Schönes Einheit Design (Cologne, 1994), pp. 7 and 27.
86. One journalist from the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung reviewing the exhibition made a similar point in remarking: "Spott und Schadenfreude bleiben dem Besucher allerdings schnell in Halse stekken. Die gnadelose Härte und Widerspenstigkeit der Objekte erinnern an Hans Magnus Enzenbergers Bonmot, der reale existierenden Sozialismus sei das höchste Stadium der Unterentwicklung." Quoted in Michael Andritzky, "Karge Charme und bunte Üppigkeit: Ein Ost-West Vergleich," in Vom Bauhaus bis Bitterfeld: 41 Jahre DDR-Design, ed. Regine Halter (Giessen, 1991), p. 134.
87. In the words of one East German writer: "Not to have to walk the treadmill of capital, not to have to produce, sell, consume, take care of things ASAP: that too, is the freedom of the East . . . and this different quality of time, this half-sleep time, practically undisturbed by occasional campaigns to raise workers' productivity, this East-Time, according to the current exchange rate, is worth only an eighth of West-Time. Because it is worthless, it can be passed by unused, unobserved, unnoticed, just like children's time, which is not yet measured in hours and minutes, but rather by what chances and moods happen to produce in the way of experience . . . the East exists in a nature preserve for scientific and technical backwardness" (Martin Ahrends, "The Great Waiting, or The Freedom of the East: An Obituary for Life in Sleeping Beauty's Castle," in James and Stone, eds. [n. 2 above], pp. 158-60).
88. Gert Selle, "Die verlorene Unschuld der Armut: Über das Verschwinden einer Kulturdifferenz," in Halter, ed., pp. 54-66.
89. Ilja Srubar, "War der reale Sozialismus modern? Versuch einer strukturellen Bestimmung," Kölner Zeitschrift für Soziologie und Soziopsychologie 43 (1991): 415-32.
90. See also Zbiegniew Brzezinski, The Grand Failure: The Birth and Death of Communism in the Twentieth Century (New York, 1989).
91. Hans-Joachim Maaz, Behind the Wall: The Inner Life of Communist Germany, trans. Margo Bettauer Dembo (New York, 1995), p. 86.
92. According to another observer, "West German empty shampoo bottles were lined up in [East German] bathrooms like icons for guests to see" (Ina Merkel, "Consumer Culture in the GDR, or How the Struggle for Antimodernity Was Lost on the Battleground of Consumer Culture," in Getting and Spending: European and American Consumer Societies in the Twentieth Century, ed. Susan Strasser, Charles McGovern, and Matthias Judt [Cambridge, 1998], p. 284).
93. See also Reinhard Koch, "Alltagswissen versus Ideologie? Theoretische und empirische Beiträge zu einer Alltagsphänomenologie der DDR," Politische Vierteljahresschrift 20 (1989): 114-15.
94. Der Spiegel 43:50 (December 11, 1989).
95. Fischer (n. 8 above), pp. 146-48.
96. Becker, Becker, and Ruhland (n. 6 above), p. 56.
97. Consider the words of one student demonstrator from Leipzig: "Auch stirbt bei mir jeder alten Weinsorte, jeder Zigarettenmarke, die hier verschwindet, ein Stück meiner Identität. So seltsam das klingen mag, aber es hat einen realen Hintergrund: Durch die Art und Weise des Beitrittes wurde nicht nur das zerrüttete System der DDR beseitigt, sondern wurden auch Biographien, Identitäten und Hoffnungen ausgelöscht." Bernd Lindner and Ralph Grüneberger, eds., Demonteure: Biographien des Leipziger Herbst (Bielefeld, 1992), p. 241,
98. quoted in Rainer Gries, "Der Geschmack der Heimat: 'Hurra, ich lebe noch!': Bausteine zu einer Mentalitätgeschichte der Ostprodukte nach der Wende," in 'Ins Gehirn der Masse Kriechen!': Werbung und Mentalitätsgeschichte, ed. Rainer Gries, Volker Ilgen, and Dirk Schindelbeck (Darmstadt, 1995), p. 214.
99. Ralf Bartholomäus, "Gegenstand, mein Liebling," in Halter, ed., p. 47.
100. Note the founding of the newsletters SuperTrabi and Du und Dein Trabi, along with the book by Andreas Kämper and Reinhard Ulbrich, Wir und unser Trabant (Berlin, 1995);
101. Güdrun Brandenburg, "Die Treue kommt oft zu spät: Was nach der Wende auf dem Sperrmüll landete, is heute Objekt nostalgischer Begierden," Berliner Morgenpost (May 7, 1993);
102. Anke Westphal, "Mein wunderbarer Plattenbau, Hoppla, Wir Leben Noch," Die Tageszeitung (August 25, 1995), pp. 15-16;
103. Heide Riedel, ed., Mit uns zieht die neue Zeit: 40 Jahre DDR-Medien (Berlin, 1994);
104. Andreas Michaelis, ed., DDR Souvenirs (Cologne, 1994); and Gries, pp. 193-214.
105. Anna Mulrine, "Icon Faces a Crossroads," U.S. News and World Report (February 2, 1998), p. 8.
106. Quoted in Fischer, p. 154.
107. See Dirk Philipsen's introduction to his oral history of East Germans (n. 23 above), pp. 5-6.
108. See, e.g., the post-1989 exposé on the scandalous state of East German mental hospitals in Ernst Klee, Irrsinn Ost, Irrsinn West: Psychiatrie in Deutschland (Frankfurt, 1993).
109. Günther Gaus, Wo Deutschland liegt: Eine Ortbestimmung (Munich, 1986);
110. Katharina Belwe, "Zwischenmenschliche Entfremdung in der DDR," in Die DDR in der Ära Honecker, ed. Gert-Joachim Glässner (Cologne, 1988), pp. 499-513.
111. Mario Stumpfe, "DDR Historische Gegenwart: Eine Reflexion," in Ludwig, ed. (n. 25 above), pp. 142-45; as well as McFalls (n. 4 above), p. 98.
112. Robert von Hallberg, ed., Literary Intellectuals and the Dissolution of the State: Professionalism and Conformity in the GDR (Chicago, 1996);
113. John Torpey, Intellectuals, Socialism and Dissent: The East German Opposition and Its Legacy (Minneapolis, 1995);
114. Andreas Huyssen, "After the Wall: The Failure of German Intellectuals," in his Twilight Memories (New York, 1995), pp. 37-66.
115. This sentiment found expression across the political spectrum from the West German right to East German radical left. See, e.g., Joachim Fest's 1989 essay, "The Silence of the Clerks," in James and Stone, eds. (n. 2 above), pp. 52-56; and the numerous laments by East German intellectuals in Philipsen, esp. chap. 8.
116. Bild-Zeitung (November 9, 1990), quoted in von Hallberg, ed., p. 5.
117. Torpey, pp. ix-xiv.
118. The phrase is attributed to Hildegard Hamm-Brücher, as quoted in Klaus Hartung, "The Great Changing of the Wheel, or the Revolution without Utopia," in German Unification and Its Discontents: Documents from a Peaceful Revolution, ed. Richard Gray and Sabine Wilke (Seattle, 1996), p. 174.
119. One West German sociologist went so far as to say that "the only thing that they [East German intellectuals] brought into the unification process was their suffering." Wolf Lepenies, Folgen einer unerhöhten Begegenheit (Munich, 1992), quoted in Torpey, p. 184.
120. Tony Judt, "1989: The End of Which European Era?" Daedalus 123, no. 3 (Summer 1994): 1-20.
121. Norman Naimark, The Russians in Germany: A History of the Soviet Zone of Occupation, 1945-1949 (Cambridge, 1995).
122. Even the banal terms used to describe East Germany as it stands - "Rest DDR" (leftover GDR) or simply "neue Bundeslaender" (new federal states) - underline this point.
123. Lutz Niethammer, "Erfahrungen und Strukturen: Prolegomena zu einer Geschichte der Gesellschaft der DDR," in Kaelble, Kocka, and Zwahr, eds. (n. 5 above), p. 110.
124. Ina Merkel, ed., Wunderwirfschaft: DDR-Konsumkultur in den 60er Jahren (Cologne, 1996).
125. Even so, rationing for meat, eggs, and butter was provisionally reintroduced in 1962. Jeffrey Kopstein, The Politics of Economic Decline in East Germany, 1945-1989 (Chapel Hill, N.C., 1996), p. 48.
126. Gernot Schneider, Wirtschaftswunder DDR: Anspruch und Realität (Cologne, 1990).
127. Ina Merkel, "Der aufhaltsame Aufbruch in die Konsumgesellschaft," in her edited Wunderwirtschaft, pp. 8-20.
128. Kopstein, esp. chap. 2; as well as Philip Bryson, The Consumer under Socialist Planning: The East German Case (New York, 1984).
129. Ferenc Feher, Agnes Heller, and Gyorgy Markus, Dictatorship over Needs: An Analysis of Soviet Societies (Oxford, 1983), esp. pp. 45-133.
130. Part of this crisis concerned how to socialize the GDR's dissatisfied Western-oriented youth culture. Gerlinde Irmscher, "Der Westen im Ost-Alltag: DDR Jugendkultur in den sechziger Jahren," in Merkel, ed., pp. 185-93;
131. Dorothee Wierling, "Die Jugend als innerer Feind: Konflikte in der Erziehungsdiktatur der 60er Jahre," in Kaelble, Kocka, und Zwahr, eds., pp. 404-25.
132. Both the excerpt from the Ulbricht letter to Khrushchev of January 18, 1961, and the commentary are quoted in Kopstein, p. 44.
133. Quoted in Annette Kaminsky, "'Keine Zeit verlaufen - beim Versandhaus kaufen,'" in Merkel, ed., pp. 132-33.
134. Katherine Pence, "Schaufenster des sozialistischen Konsums: Texte der ostdeutschen 'Consumer Culture,'" in Lüdtke and Becker, eds. (n. 5 above), pp. 91-118.
135. For a good discussion of the SED's price politics, see André Steiner, "Zwischen Frustration und Verschwendung," in Merkel, ed. (n. 53 above), pp. 21-36.
136. For a good account of consumer complaints, see Felix Mühlberg, "Wenn die Faust auf den Tisch schlägt . . . Eingaben als Strategie zur Bewätigung des Alltags," in Merkel, ed., pp. 175-84.
137. By 1967, 35 percent of East Germans owned refrigerators, while 46 percent had washing machines. Gerlinde Irmscher, "'Arbeitsfrei mit Küsschen drauf,'" in Merkel, ed., p. 47.
138. Merkel, ed., p. 12.
139. Niethammer, von Plato, and Wierling, eds. (n. 23 above), pp. 9-73.
140. On the importance of television in undermining the GDR state, see Borneman (n. 23 above), pp. 133-42.
141. Jonathan Zatlin, "The Vehicle of Desire: The Trabant, the Wartburg and the End of the GDR," German History 15, no. 3 (1997): 358.
142. Kopstein (n. 54 above), p. 187; McFalls (n. 4 above), p. 95.
143. The same went for East Germany's hygiene and beauty industry. For a sharp analysis, see Simone Tippach-Schneider, "'Wie Bist Du Weiss?' Über die widerspenstige Werbung im Sozialismus," in Schmerz lass nach: Drogerie-Werbung in der DDR (Dresden, 1992), pp. 21-34.
144. For a thorough West German discussion, see Erica Carter, How German Is She? Postwar West German Construction and the Consuming Woman (Ann Arbor, Mich., 1997).
145. Ludwig, ed. (n. 25 above), p. 7. Other exhibitions include the 1991 "Alltagsleben in der DDR: Vom Zusammenbruch des Dritten Reiches bis zur Wende" in Kommern and the 1998 "Glück im Osten" show at the Kulturbrauerei in Berlin.
146. Alf Lüdtke, "'Helden der Arbeit' - Mühen beim Arbeit: Zur missmütigen Loyalität von Industriearbeitern in der DDR," in Kaelble, Kocka, and Zwahr, eds. (n. 5 above), pp. 188-213.
147. Iris Czak, "Spitzname Elvis: Interview mit Schorsch T.," in Merkel, ed. (n. 53 above), p. 194.
148. For a similar cultural history of the Schwalbe scooter, see Jörg Engelhardt, Schwalbe Duo Kultmobil: Vom Acker auf dem Boulevard (Berlin, 1995), pp. 7 ff.
149. This corresponds to the post-1989 literary trend toward autobiography as the new measure of authenticity. Manfred Jäger, "Die Autobiographie als die Erfindung der Wahrheit: Beispiele literarischer Selbstdarstellung nach dem Ende der DDR," Aus Politik und Zeitgeschichte B41, no. 92 (1992): 25-36.
150. For further suggestive comments about new developments in East German literature, see Julia Hell, "History as Trauma, or, Turning to the Past Once Again: Germany 1949/1989," South Atlantic Quarterly 96, no. 4 (Fall 1997): 911-47.
151. Heinz Bude has commented that "destiny is a category of the 90s" in both West and East Germany, where both have lost their particular "cultures of common destiny" after 1989. Heinz Bude, "Schicksal," in his edited Deutschland spricht: Schicksale der Neunziger (Berlin, 1995), pp. 7-12.
152. Even so, these new "destiny stories" are more common in the East. Werner Kalinka, Schicksal DDR: Zwanzig Porträts von Opfern und Täter (Berlin, 1997).
153. Andreas Ludwig, interviewer, "Frau G. aus Berlin schenkt dem Museum etwas: Interview mit Frau G.," in Ludwig, ed., p. 103.
154. Regarding markers of social distinction, see Martin Diewald, "'Kollektiv,' 'Vitamin B,' oder 'Nische'? Persönliche Netzwerke in der DDR"
155. as well as Martin Diewald and Heike Solga, "Soziale Ungleichheiten in der DDR: Die feinen, aber deutlichen Unterschiede am Vorabend der Wende," both in Huinink and Mayer, eds. (n. 5 above), pp. 222-60 and 261-305, respectively.
156. See also Winfried Thaa et al., eds., Gesellschaftliche Differenzierung und Legitimätsverfall des DDR-Sozialismus (Tübingen, 1992), esp. pp. 154-200.
157. This East German solidarity can be seen as a by-product of socialist design policy wherein the capitalist cult of differentiation was rejected in favor of what GDR design publicist Horst Redeker called the "the unity of form with society"; quoted in Heinz Hirdina, "Gegenstand und Utopie," in Merkel, ed., p. 50.
158. Maier (n. 3 above), p. 39.
159. Merkel, "Consumer Culture in the GDR" (n. 31 above), p. 296.
160. An excellent example is Ina Merkel's . . . Und Du, Frau an der Werkbank (n. 5 above). For a far-reaching discussion of the changed power and status of women after 1989, see Boa and Wharton, eds. (n. 5 above).
161. The best overview of GDR design is Heinz Hirdina, Gestalten für die Serie: Design in der DDR, 1949-1985 (Dresden, 1988).
162. See also Jörg Roesler, "Politik, Ökonomie und Industriedesign in Ostdeutschland," Deutschland-Archiv 11 (1995): 1135-52.
163. Functionalism was also linked to social control. Note, e.g., the state's worry during the 1950s about the potential dangerous effects of modular furniture: "if the user is free to do what he wants with them [the components], free to arrange the constituent parts as he pleases, the proportions of the assembled pieces will change in an uncontrollable and artistically unacceptable manner and the underlying intellectual idea will become unclear and elude social control." Gerhard Hillnhagen, Anbau- Aufbau- Baukasten- und Montagemöbel (Berlin, 1955), quoted in Bertsch and Hedler (n. 27 above), p. 21.
164. Merkel, "Der aufhaltsame Aufbruch" (n. 56 above), pp. 11, 15.
165. This ideology certainly informed the socialist packaging and advertising of consumer goods. Jochen Fetzer, "'Gut verpackt,'" in Merkel, ed. (n. 53 above), pp. 104-11.
166. Merkel, "Consumer Culture in the GDR," p. 290.
167. Ulbricht, quoted in Horst Redeker, Chemie gibt Schönheit (Berlin, 1959), p. 14.
168. On plastics, see Jörg Petruschat, "Take Me Plastics," in Halter, ed. (n. 27 above), pp. 108-14.
169. Hirdina, Gestalten, pp. 68-70.
170. Simone Barck, "Das Dekadenz-Verdikt: Zur Konjunktur eines kulturpolitischen 'Kampfkonzepts' Ende der 1950er bis Mitte der 1960er Jahre," in Jürgen Kocka, ed., Historische DDR-Forschung (Berlin, 1993), pp. 327-44.
171. Meuschel (n. 5 above), pp. 181-220; Raymond Stokes, "In Search of the Socialist Artefact: Technology and Ideology in East Germany, 1945-1962," German History 15, no. 2 (1997): 221-39.
172. Horst Redeker, "Technik und Ornament," Form und Zweck (1962), p. 20.
173. Kein Köster, "Schmerzliche Ankunft in die Moderne," in Merkel, ed., pp. 101-2.
174. Martin Keim, Produktgestaltung im Sozialismus (Berlin, 1971), p. 81.
175. Herfried Münkler, "Das kollektive Gedächtnis der DDR," in Parteiauftrag: Ein neues Deutschland: Bilder, Rituale und Symbole der frühen DDR, ed. Dieter Vorsteher (Berlin, 1996), pp. 458-68.
176. Martin Keim, "Gestaltung - Humanisierung unserer Umwelt," Bildende Kunst 9 (1966): 451-55;
177. as well as Jürgen Peters and S. H. Bergenau, "Wohngestaltung heute und morgen," Bildende Kunst 9 (1966): 466-70.
178. A suggestive GDR analysis of the changing historical meaning of aesthetics can be found in Lothar Kühne, Gegenstand und Raum: Über die Historizität des Ästhetischen (Dresden, 1981).
179. Merkel, "Consumer Culture in the GDR" (n. 5 above), p. 297.
180. Gries (n. 34 above), pp. 193-220.
181. I thank Gabriele Linke and Pieter Lagrou for their personal accounts of such events.
182. Michael Rutschky, "Wie erst jetzt die DDR entsteht," Merkur 9/10 (September/ October 1995): 851-64.
183. Note Lüdtke's theoretical remarks about this concept in his edited book, The History of Everyday Life: Reconstructing Historical Experiences and Ways of Life, trans. William Templer (Princeton, N.J., 1995).
184. Lüdtke applies these ideas to various aspects of East German history in his "Helden der Arbeit" essay in Kaelble, Kocka, and Zwahr, eds. (n. 5 above),
185. as well as in his "Sprache und Herrschaft in der DDR: Einleitende Überlegungen," introducing Akten Eingaben Schaufenster, Lüdtke and Becker, eds. (n. 5 above), pp. 11-26.
186. Volker Handloik and Harald Hauswird, eds., Die DDR wird 50 (Berlin, 1998).
187. G. Korff, "Rote Fahnen und Bananen: Notizen zur politischen Symbolik im Prozess der Vereinigung von DDR und BRD," Schweizerisches Archiv für Volkskunde 86, no. 3/4 (1990): 130-60.
188. James Livingston, Pragmatism and the Political Economy of Cultural Revolution, 1850-1940 (Chapel Hill, N.C., 1994);
189. Charles McGovern, "Consumption and Citizenship in the United States, 1900-1940";
190. Victoria DeGrazia, "Changing Consumption Regimes in Europe, 1930-1970: Comparative Perspectives on the Distribution Problem";
191. Lizabeth Cohen, "The New Deal State and the Making of Citizen Consumers," all in Strasser, McGovern, and Judt, eds. (n. 31 above), pp. 37-58, 59-84, and 111-25, respectively.
192. For perceptive accounts of the West German case, Michael Wildt, Vom kleinen Wohlstand: Eine Konsumgeschichte der fünfziger Jahre (Frankfurt, 1994); and Carter (n. 71 above), esp. pp. 109-70.
193. Quoted in Zatlin (n. 69 above).
194. Lamenting the ultimately noncritical nature and stabilizing effect of GDR literary and intellectual culture informs many of the interviews printed in von Hallberg, esp. pts. 3 and 4. Selle (n. 29 above), p. 89.
195. Merkel, . . . Und Du, Frau an der Werkbank (n. 5 above), p. 7.
196. Gerd Kuhn and Andreas Ludwig, eds., Alltag und soziales Gedächtnis: Die DDR Objektkultur und ihre Musealisierung (Hamburg, 1997); and Jelich and Faulenbach, eds. (n. 26 above).
197. Borneman (n. 23 above), p. 137.
198. Maaz, Behind the Wall (n. 31 above), pp. 85-86. He cynically concluded that such materialistic attitudes even colored the relationship between East and West Germans: "Some West Germans raved about the warmth with which they were received by us when they came on visits. This may have been an indication that some relationships were even more difficult or more superficial in the West. But in effect the hospitality and superficial friendliness to the visitors was most engendered by East German greed for material things" (p. 94).
199. Quoted in Fischer (n. 8 above), p. 154.
200. Roland Habich and Eckhard Priller, "Soziale Lage und subjektives Wohlbefinden in der ehemaligen DDR," in Abbruch und Aufbruch, ed. Michael Thomas (Berlin 1992), pp. 239-58.
201. Merkel, "Consumer Culture in the GDR" (n. 31 above), p. 282.