What Remains?: The Dialectical Identities of Eastern Germans

Description

This book tells the story of the German Democratic Republic from “the inside out,” using the lens of generational change to deconstruct an intriguing array of social identities that had little to do with the “official GDR” version authoritarian rulers regularly sought to impose on their citizens. The author compares the “identities” of five societal subgroups (GDR writers and intellectuals; pastors and dissidents; women; youth; and working-class men), exploring the policies defining their lives and status before/during/after the 1989 Wende, as well as the diverging “exit, voice and loyalty” dilemmas encountered by each. The “dialectical” components treated in this work center on the extent to which eastern identities were lost, found and reconfigured across three generations, from 1949 to 1989, from 1990 to 2005, then up to 2020. It explores how the existence of a separate East German state and the socialization processes imposed on each subculture has not only complicated the search for national unity since 1990 but also -- perhaps more controversially―invoked new challenges directly related to ongoing East-West structural disparities since unification and the treatment of eastern Germans by often more privileged western Germans. Acknowledgements Contents Abbreviations List of Figures List of Tables List of Boxes Chapter 1: Introduction: Prelude to a German Revolution Methodology Part I: Dimensions of the Dialectical Identity Chapter 2: Exit, Voice, and Loyalty: The Theoretical Parameters A Concentric Approach to Identity Theory Circle One: Identity as the Bio-Psychology of the Individual Circle Two: Identity as Social Interaction Circle Three: Identity as National Consciousness The Circles Broken: Exit versus Voice Expanding the Framework: Making the Case for Loyalty Reinterpreting die Wende, 1989–1990 Identity from Below: Socialist Subcultures Chapter 3: Selection by Consequences: What Did It Mean to Be GDR-German? The Parameters of Political Legitimacy A Spectre Haunting …: The Stalinist Legacy Founding Narrative Versus Historical Record The Quest for Socialist Legitimacy Redefining the Significance of State, Nation, Nationality “The Problem of Generations” Love of the Socialist Fatherland: Ideal Versus the Real Historicism Versus Materialism Part II: The Deconstruction of Official GDR-Identity Chapter 4: Real-Existing Socialism: Consumer Culture and Vitamin “B” The Perils of Planning Under Real-Existing Socialism Collective Reponses to Chronic Scarcities Intershop Socialism and Its Discontents Creating the “Socialist Consumer” The Paradox of Real-Existing Materialism Chapter 5: “Now out of Never”: Exit, Voice, and Riding the Revolutionary Bandwagon Learning to Live with “Arrangements” Protest Currents and the Velvet Revolution Unanticipated Consequences: Freikauf, Expulsions, and Local Reactions The Dialectical Forces of Exit and Voice Ostalgie: Marketing East German Memories Conclusion: Loyalty, Habitus, and “the Wall in One’s Head” Chapter 6: Heimatgefühl and the Reconfiguration of Civil Society Political “Representation Gaps” in the Eastern Länder Die Grüne Liga (Green League) of Mecklenburg-Vorpommern Volkssolidarität (People’s Solidarity): Landesverband Berlin Runder Tisch gegen Gewalt (Round Table Against Violence) in Sachsen-Anhalt Gleichstellungsstelle-Erfurt (Erfurt Office of Equal Opportunity), Thüringen Forum Ostdeutschland (SPD) and Aufbau Ost (CDU) in Berlin/Brandenburg and Saxony The PDS as “Comeback Kid” “The End of Apprenticeship” Part III: Reconstructing East-German Identities: Peer Cultures Chapter 7: Conscience of the Nation: Writers, Artisans, and Intellectuals Cultural Policies and the Forces of Socialist Realism Anti-fascist Imperatives: Loyalty and the Aufbau Generation “Profiles in Courage”: Christa Wolf and Stefan Heym The Sixty-Eighters and the Dilemmas of Cultural Revolution The Post-Wall Literaturstreit: “The West” Versus Christa Wolf Loyalty, Voice, and the National Question Chapter 8: From Losers to Winners, and Back: The Stasi, Pastors, and Dissidents Shield and Sword of the Party: The Ministry for State Security Opiate of the Masses: The SED and Religion, 1945–1970 From Peaceful Coexistence (1971–1979) to Church from Below (1980–1989) (Re)Marginalized Voices: Pastors and Politics, 1990–1998 The Helsinki Factor: Loyalty as Dissent Prosecuting the SED Dictatorship Loyalty, Voice, and Retributive Justice Chapter 9: From State Paternalism to Private Patriarchy: East German Women Gender and Ideology: State Paternalism Equality without Emancipation: Double Burdens and the “Right to Work” Revenge of the Cradle: Reproductive Rights and Wrongs Private Patriarchy and the Re-domestication of Eastern Women Deutschland einig Mutterland: Gender Policies under Angela Merkel Winning Women Chapter 10: The Anti-political Identities of East German Youth Redefining Class Consciousness: The Uniform Socialist Education System Not-so-free “Free-time”: FDJ and the Jugendweihe “Leave Us Kids Alone”: Finding Voice Through Music From Voice to Exit: Normalos, Avantis, Gruftis, Punks, and Skins Writing for the Panzerschrank at the Central Institute for Youth Research Through the Looking Glass: Unification and Normative Loyalty “Be careful what you pray for …” Chapter 11: No Country for Old Men: Second-Class Citizenship and its Discontents The Double Bind of Military Machismo The Treuhand Versus the “Heroes of Labor” A Clash of Male Cultures: Eastern Underlings, Western Bosses Backlash: Far-right Populism and the New Misogynists Relative Deprivation: Second-Class Citizenship and the “Unhappiness Curve” Working-Class Men: Winning the Battle, Losing the War Chapter 12: The Dialectical Identities of Germans United Caught in the Middle: Die Wendekinder The Post-Turnaround Generation: Difference Still Matters The Blessings of Late Birth Chapter 13: Epilogue: October 3, 2021 Index