Kathleen McCaffrey, Associate Editor
Ideology: Libertarian | Writing from: Berlin, Germany
As I have mentioned before in my articles, I am studying abroad this fall at a program organized through New York University at Humboldt University in Berlin. This was a particularly eventful season to be in Berlin, Federal elections took place in September and Tuesday marked the twentieth anniversary of the Berlin Wall falling in 1989 (as well as the 71st anniversary of Kristallnacht). Berlin was buzzing this weekend with exhibits and festivals commemorating freedom in the city center. I went to my fair share of museums, but I learned the most at an exhibit far from Unter den Linden and Potsdamer Platz. At the FEZ-Berlin Center, a few stops East on the S-Bahn, I found an exhibit on life in the GDR inspired by original diaries of young people “with interactive stations and direct insight into [their lives].” The inadequacy of East Germany finally became tangible upon touching the “everyday objects,” from spoons to ‘leather’ bags to rulers, all made of the same cheap plasticy material roughly ten times lighter than their western counterparts. Books were thin and cheap to the touch, while the texture of school children’s uniforms strongly reminded me of Barbie dolls. (Of course, slightly more disconcerting was the history ‘reinvented’ by the GDR – as a raid on the German Historical Museum of the East revealed in late 1989.)
The poor quality of, well, everything, wasn’t what appalled me the most about typical life in the GDR. There was, as part of the exhibit, a real Stasi file. Angela, a sixteen year old girl, was tracked for almost a year and had roughly one hundred pages of information filed on her. In her file were copies of her mail and reports on her character that were partially taken from the interrogations she endured. Altogether, she spent seven weeks in custody. I certainly hope she learned her lesson – not to hang out with punk rockers.
I doubt I could ever truly fathom the horrific network of tyranny and fear that the East German system lay contingent upon. “Founded in 1950, the Stasi’s main job for four decades was to cover the country and its people with a paralyzing layer of fear, intimidation and violence. By 1989, the Stasi employed 91,000 people and had built up a network of more than 150,000 civilian informants who spied on anyone they were told to — even their spouses.” The Stasi had their own University where they learned he most effective methods of extracting confessions and torturing the human mind. To this day, they are practicing lawyers and psychiatrists who roam without punishment, receiving state pensions, while those they tortured remain scarred and largely without reparations. On a recent tour I took at a Stasi prison, the guide was asked the difference between Germany under National Socialism and the GDR. She answered the question bluntly, “Under National Socialism, if you were an Aryan – you could possibly lead a pretty good life. In the [GDR], nobody was safe.”
As a libertarian, I particularly regard any political system that can only function through lies, brainwashing, violence, and the near absence of freedom as unnatural and unjust. It seems that the thousands who rallied and toppled that wall did too. A refugee from East Berlin put it best, “We will work like in East Germany, but we will work for a better existence, and work on our personal identity. Over there, we only worked for the apartment and for our clothes.” Another young man who fled explained that ”[he] left because [he] just did not want to deal any more with the daily difficulties over there. You cannot do anything because you don’t get anything. Whatever you plan, it won’t work because of shortages here and there. You can only get things if you pay a lot of money or if you pay in hard currency.”
Aside from those living under oppression, three major public figures, Ronald Reagan, Margaret Thatcher, and Pope John Paul II, understood the inhumane confinement and the atrophying of human rights in the Soviet Union. Though their chastising of Soviet policy would have been fruitless without internal opposition, they exacerbated the demise of the USSR by forcing it to stretch its resources and “catch up” or answer to Western standards. Notably, as Peter Schweizer recognized, “the various Reagan initiatives were costing Moscow as much as $45 billion a year” at a time when the nation had $32 billion a year in hard-currency earnings. “[At arms summits] Mikhail Gorbachev frantically offered increasingly gigantic cuts in strategic missiles” – first 50 percent, then all of them – “if Reagan would just abandon his Strategic Defense Initiative.” Yet as I entered the Checkpoint Charlie Museum on Saturday to attend the opening of the Reagan Exhibit, I was interrupted by a swarm of anti-capitalist protesters outside. This brought me back to the distasteful reality of the new generation in Berlin today…
Admittedly, I had assumed that this city would be far more “free market” friendly given their past of oppression. I certainly did not expect to encounter “Ostalgie” in the younger generation to the degree I have in the past two months. (“Ostalgie” is a combination of “Ost” and “Nostalgie,” the German words for East and nostalgia.) The GDR is not gone from German politics either. In fact, there is a hard-left party literally formed by socialists and unapologetic remnants of the GDR communists. Die Linke (translated to “The Left”) is considered one of the five most popular coalitions left in Germany. “Die Linke’s likely decent performance in the eastern states also speaks to promise unfulfilled. Ossis — Easterners — vote differently from Wessis — Westerners — because they still perceive their interests as being different. Ossis earn less, produce less and have higher rates of unemployment than Wessis.”
“According to a recent survey by the eastern German charity Volkssolidarität, 1 in every 10 Ossis wishes he or she were still living in the G.D.R.” After all, everyone at least had a job and a place to stay – assuming they abdicated their faculty to question. (A popular “spitty,” or sticker placed around the city, reads “Make Capitalism History.”) Perhaps this is because the East Berliners were famously treated better than typical East Germans. Thomas Davey wrote in his 1987 book, “A Generation Divided”, that “the brand of propaganda was exaggerated in the capital city… Not only was it visited by millions of Westerners [but it was] also the recipient of West German television and so it [worked harder] to make the city a ‘showcase of socialism.’ Hence, living conditions were markedly better here; salaries [were higher and prices lower]. Although there were still shortages […] life was not quite so difficult.” Within the GDR, East Berlin was teased as “Filz” or “Volvograd” by their neighbors. This jealousy was likely increased tenfold once their neighbors heard they had an “antifascist protection” wall complete with guards facing east to ensure that they wouldn’t escape to fascist West Berlin.
Two months before the wall fell, the head of GDR State Planning revealed some disrupting economic news. “Nearly 60 per cent of East Germany’s entire economic base could be written off as scrap, and productivity in mines and factories was nearly 50 per cent behind the West. […] Just to avoid further indebtedness would mean a lowering next year of living standards by 25 to 30 per cent, and make the GDR ungovernable.” This was conflated with a 12-fold increase in the GDR’s national debt, which had been classified as a state secret lest loans from Western creditors dry up, confirming a certain end to the German Democratic Republic. Perhaps if the Wall had stayed up for another year and the GDR had imploded under the economic pressure it made for itself, “Ostalgie” would have its proper place in history.
Interesting look at the way the East looks at its own decay. And an interesting contrast to Emily Seig’s post of just yesterday. Thank you for attributing leadership in the west to the deserving troika of Reagan, Thatcher, and the Pope.
When you characterized East Germany’s political system as working through “lies, brainwashing, violence, and the near absence of freedom” it made me think of us. We don’t yet have intolerable violence yet, but give us time…
“Under National Socialism, if you were an Aryan – you could possibly lead a pretty good life. In the [GDR], nobody was safe.”
Yeah, I guess the Holocaust wasn’t that bad.
Clearly thats exactly what I meant, thanks.
The Intelligent Comment of the Day Award goes to Noah Baron.
I made that comment because the implication was that the GDR was “worse” than Nazi Germany, something I, as a Jew, find to be ridiculous, not to mention quite frankly offensive.
For me, Nazi Germany is difficult to equate to any other regime in human history due to the size and systematic nature of its slaughter of millions upon millions of human beings — as well as numerous other aspects of its oppressive nature.
While many people in the GDR were certainly not free, the notion that the oppression somehow approached — let alone exceeded — the level of oppression of Nazi Germany is simply ridiculous.
It should also be pointed out that there’s more than one anti-capitalist philosophy, and that anti-capitalism is not necessarily the equivalent to the support of the GDR or Soviet-style government.
Anticapitalism, as you all use it, is a farce. We are all products of the two dominant spheres of modernity: the political sphere, whose mode in this epoch is the state, and the economic sphere, whose mode in this epoch is capitalism.
To be anti-capitalist is to detach oneself from modernity. I don’t think the East Berliners, Michael Moore, or anyone else claims to be doing this–no matter what they actually say. To be clear, socialsm is not anticapitalism. The only real anticapitalists are those still bartering minerals and labor for food and livestock.
Kathleen: From yours: “the distasteful reality of the new generation in Berlin today…” By that I take it you mean the protesters(anti-capitalist). I, like you, am sad for Berlin, but…
We have them here, on this board, in this forum. They’re all around us.
Noah,
I, as a regular person, find your comments to be distracting from the argument at hand.
I, as a jew, find your tendency to hide behind Judaism increasingly annoying. (I read this site quite a bit)
She didn’t try to say that Nazi Germany was better or worse than the GDR. She noted that they were both oppressive – but Nazi Germany oppressed select races, while the GDR put down everyone. I hardly suspect Ms. McCaffrey of supporting either of those methods.
If you please, Mr. Baron, stand up and argue based on her argument rather than being “religiously” offended.
Now, If I may, move onto the actual topic at hand – being Ms. McCaffrey’s suppositions about Germany, I’d like to ask her what she thinks would fix the disparity between Eastern and Western Germans that still exists.
Kelly,
I don’t “hide” behind my Judaism. I discuss it when it is relevant — such as when the Holocaust comes up or when marriage comes up.
For thousands of years, politics and religion have been extremely relevant to one another. Politics in many places and frequently have determined whether one has the right to practice or observe freely and openly; religion has historically and contemporally informed the beliefs and convictions of millions. To ask someone to separate their beliefs from their religion is as inane as it is obnoxious.
Furthermore, I object because to simply say, “Oh, well the GDR oppressed ‘more’ people than Nazi Germany” is not only historically incorrect — it ignores the degree to which people were oppressed. No group of people in the GDR were systematically slaughtered — unlike in Nazi Germany. Furthermore, in Nazi Germany as in the GDR, free speech was suppressed, hundreds of thousands of individuals were monitored (for crimes such as listening to swing music — in the GDR it would be punk music), and homosexuality was criminalized (it had been legal during the Weimar Republic).
As for whether I should “argue based on her argument”: I can argue about whatever I find interesting or important. I’ve had the same arguments over and over again about whether Reagan made the Soviet Union collapse (he certainly made our nation’s more-or-less balanced budget collapse!), and so on. For me, those are largely tired arguments.
Many other aspects of the article — the degrading nature of oppression, be it by Stasi or Nazi, or whether anti-capitalism is the same thing as pro-Soviet (it isn’t) — seem rather straightforward.
I’m curious,
Why is it so imperative to “fix” the disparity between East and West Germany? I will be the first to say I’m certainly not a fan of the GDR’s policies. I promote freedom and capitalism. But perhaps we should step back for a minute and look at this from a different perspective. There are always opposing viewpoints. People with “Ostalgie”, many of them anti-capitalists honestly feel that the current system doesn’t work for them. There are fine lines that shape people’s opinions and viewpoints, the way they were raised, their life experiences.
So I would like to ask what makes “them” wrong, and “us” right?
It’s really not so perplexing that some Germans want their good ol’ GDR back.
I’ve spent some time in Berlin. As you have mentioned, “Ossis” are blaming the current system for their unemployment, their problems. And I think they have every right to. In a very short amount of time, their way of life was stripped away from them, and they were forced into a dramatically different one. I will agree with Adam, that these people are not anticapitalist. They are turning to a familiar form of government that they believe will better their lives. This is more than a political stance, but a cultural phenomenon.
Jeanette: You make an interesting observation. Those with a case of “Ostalgie” were comfortable, I guess, in their oppression. There are those in any society who are more comfortable being lead–provided for. Communism gathers them as a compliant minority, and sets about buying or bullying the support or assent of enough others to rise to power. I would guess that if you liberated any totalitarian country, 20 years later someone would be grousing about it: their uncle might have been a party official, and maybe their life was better than their neighbors.
I stood on a watchtower one night in 1975 in West Berlin, it overlooked the patch between east and west. I contemplated the fact that all the barbed wire was on the eastern side. We could go there, but none did. They were not allowed to come west. Which political system was abusing their citizens was plain to see. Good riddance to the Soviet domination of Eastern Europe.
Adam: They were holding a rally at Checkpoint Charlie and, in their own words, “protesting capitalism.” I don’t know their thoughts on modernity or economics aside from that but I do doubt that they have your impressive understanding. I know that anti-capitalism is not necessarily pro-socialism, but their timing (the weekend of Mauerfall) and their place (Checkpoint Charlie) suggested to me that they would like a revival of some description.
Kelly & Jeanette: Welcome to The Politicizer and I hope to see you comment more. Thank you for pointing out that I am not a sympathizer to the Nazi movement. I believe there will always be Ostalgie, particularly in Berlin because of the “better” conditions I described. Residents of the GDR did have basic comforts at the bare minimum. I do not believe it could be fixed, because I think the best deterrence to this line of thought would have been to let the wall remain and see the GDR implode with such poor quality of life. That option aside, I do not think it’s necessarily imperative for us to fix the disparity. Rather, I find it annoying that they would want to revive an era mired in violence and oppression for the sake of being “guaranteed” a few things. It shows an incredibly elementary understanding of history and a great deal of ignorance. Hopefully it will be phased out with more students educated about the terrors of the GDR, like the ones in this article I cited – http://www.dw-world.de/dw/article/0,,4831236,00.html. As Germany moves further from this atrocity, hopefully they will strive to fix the commerce situation in the east.
Kathleen,
I never said that you were a Nazi sympathizer — I was, however, objecting to the notion that the GDR was somehow worse than Nazi Germany, even if we overlook the atrocity of the Holocaust.
N
They’re probably socialists, I’m not denying that. I’m just saying that socialists are not anticapitalists unless they are also Bedouins or revolutionary Marxists, which even the Leninsts and Stalinists were not.
Regardless, it looks like an awesome time to be in Berlin…Also: Krugman wrote about the differences between the US and German approaches to unemployment in the Times today. Have you noticed any difference in the general economic mood since you’ve been over there?