What Remains?

: The Dialectical
Identities of Eastern Germans Joyce
Marie Mushaben
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What Remains?
The Dialectical Identities of
Eastern Germans
Joyce Marie Mushaben
What Remains?
 Joyce Marie Mushaben

What Remains?
The Dialectical Identities of Eastern Germans
Joyce Marie Mushaben
BMW Center for German & European Studies
Georgetown University
Washington, D.C., WA, USA

ISBN 978-3-031-18887-9    ISBN 978-3-031-18888-6 (eBook)

https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-18888-6

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 Acknowledgements

Indirectly occupying my thoughts for thirty years, this book proves that
national identities are rarely de- and reconstructed in the space of a single
generation. While I cannot personally thank the historical muses who put
me “in the right place, at the right time” with regard to this project on
East German identity, I can express my gratitude to many earth-bound
actors who contributed to the production of this book. For starters, I
acknowledge the Ford Foundation which financed my initial Fellowship in
GDR Studies at the American Institute for Contemporary German Studies
(AICGS), 1989–1990, then extended my grant for two months commen-
surate with the increasing complexity of the topic. I also recognize the
BMW Center for German and European Studies at Georgetown University
which enabled me to start analyzing my data as its first research fellow,
1990–1991. Likewise included in my thanks are the German Marshall
Fund of the United States, the German Academic Exchange Service, the
GDR Studies Association of the United States and the Alexander von
Humboldt Foundation, whose financial support made it possible for me
to travel to the German Dramatic Republic at critical turning points, as
well as to continue my investigation regarding the fates of eastern resi-
dents over the next few decades.
Completion of this book would not have been possible without the
sustained support of multiple colleagues at different stages of my research,
though some of us have drifted apart since the 1990s. My interactions
with “regulars” and visitors at the AICGS ensured access to a broad spec-
trum of political perspectives on the course of unification, a never-ending
flow of newspaper and journal articles, as well as unanticipated

v
vi ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

opportunities to view the making of history from a front-row seat. I

enjoyed the company and friendly assistance of AICGS “co-workers,”
especially the late Dr. Manfred Stassen (DAAD), well beyond my year in
residence. Co-fellow and subsequent Research Director, Lily Gardner
Feldman, provided detailed readings of my work, countless recommenda-
tion letters and years of Frauensolidarität well beyond the institute walls.
Other intellectual compatriots gratefully discovered by way of my earlier
affiliations included Friederike Eigler, Daniela Dahn, Christiane Lemke,
Jonathan Olsen, Ann Phillips, Helga Welsh, Pastor Bernd Wrede and
Jennifer Yoder. I extend heartfelt thanks to Judith and Reinhard Maiworm
(Goethe Institute), who sustained me for years (actually decades) with
their professional enthusiasm, private hospitality, personal friendship and a
shared belief that it is possible to build a permanently peaceful, democratic
German nation.
Nor could I have completed core components of my fieldwork without
the assistance and candor of several GDR facilitators, especially my 1990
hosts at the former Central Institute for Youth Research in Leipzig,
Wilfried Schubarth, Ulrich Heublein and Rudolf Dennhardt. Siegfried
Sach at the GDR Institute for International Relations helped me to secure
a number of appointments with leading SED officials (rarely granted to
academics from a capitalist-imperialist “enemy state”) during the critical
twelve months preceding the 1989 Wende. Klaus Richter, Marianne
Eschenbach and Herr Viererbe, wherever he may be, arranged invaluable
interviews with parliamentarians from Bundnis ’90, the SPD and the
CDU, in the wake of the first truly democratic Volkskammer elections.
Gisela Richter, Ruth and Hans Misselwitz, Marianne Birthler, Eckhard
Priller, Heinrich Bortfeldt and Detlef Pollack provided updates with
respect to post-unity currents in the East-Länder during my annual sum-
mer sojourns. The University of Missouri-St. Louis accorded me flexible
research leave opportunities, while the late Jan Frantzen, Linda Miller and
Lana Vierdag helped with successive grant deadlines, allowing me to com-
mit many extraordinary experiences to paper while I still remembered
them. My son Joshua provided me with the opportunity to experience the
eastern child-care system first-hand in Erfurt. His time at Zwergenland, in
turn, supplied him with the German language skills that enabled him to
pursue two internships at Schiffshebewerk Niederfinow, as well as a mas-
ter’s degree at the University of Stuttgart. My particular thanks to German
taxpayers for funding not only my research projects but also two years of
my son’s graduate education.
 ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS vii

Marriage, motherhood and four intervening books delayed the com-

pletion of this work, but those years blessed me with new colleague-friends
who urged me to continue with this academic equivalent of a painstaking
archeological dig. Gabriele Abels and Sabine Lang, especially, extended
countless speaking invitations and fantastic hospitality, which kept me
going through good times and bad. The wonderful facilities and cheerful
assistance of my favorite librarians at the Bundestag Bibliothek in Berlin
made sure that the final draft of this book materialized in accordance with
the Humboldtian tradition of Einsamkeit und Freiheit. Strange as it
sounds, I also owe a certain debt to the otherwise devastating COVID
pandemic. The latter kept me seated at my dining room table in front of a
laptop for months on end, pulling together a wide assortment of old and
new books, government reports, journal articles, newspaper clippings,
critical re-reflections and personal memories. This book is dedicated to the
millions of “essential workers,” worldwide, who did not enjoy that luxury
but whose devotion and hard work made it possible for me to emerge
from this difficult time in good health, a little bit older and possibly wiser.
 Contents

1 Introduction:
 Prelude to a German Revolution  1
Methodology   9

Part I Dimensions of the Dialectical Identity  17

2 Exit,
 Voice, and Loyalty: The Theoretical Parameters 21
A Concentric Approach to Identity Theory  27
Circle One: Identity as the Bio-Psychology of the Individual  27
Circle Two: Identity as Social Interaction  31
Circle Three: Identity as National Consciousness  32
The Circles Broken: Exit versus Voice  35
Expanding the Framework: Making the Case for Loyalty  45
Reinterpreting die Wende, 1989–1990  49
Identity from Below: Socialist Subcultures  55

3 Selection
 by Consequences: What Did It Mean to Be
GDR-German? 63
The Parameters of Political Legitimacy  68
A Spectre Haunting …: The Stalinist Legacy  74
Founding Narrative Versus Historical Record  79
The Quest for Socialist Legitimacy  85
Redefining the Significance of State, Nation, Nationality  89

ix
x Contents

“The Problem of Generations”  98

Love of the Socialist Fatherland: Ideal Versus the Real 100
Historicism Versus Materialism 103

Part II The Deconstruction of Official GDR-Identity 113

4 Real-Existing
 Socialism: Consumer Culture and
Vitamin “B”115
The Perils of Planning Under Real-Existing Socialism 118
Collective Reponses to Chronic Scarcities 126
Intershop Socialism and Its Discontents 134
Creating the “Socialist Consumer” 138
The Paradox of Real-Existing Materialism 149

5 “Now
 out of Never”: Exit, Voice, and Riding the
Revolutionary Bandwagon159
Learning to Live with “Arrangements” 161
Protest Currents and the Velvet Revolution 165
Unanticipated Consequences: Freikauf, Expulsions, and Local
Reactions 172
The Dialectical Forces of Exit and Voice 176
Ostalgie: Marketing East German Memories 183
Conclusion: Loyalty, Habitus, and “the Wall in One’s Head” 188

6 Heimatgefühl and the Reconfiguration of Civil Society205

Political “Representation Gaps” in the Eastern Länder 208
Die Grüne Liga (Green League) of Mecklenburg-
Vorpommern 212
Volkssolidarität (People’s Solidarity): Landesverband Berlin 218
Runder Tisch gegen Gewalt (Round Table Against
Violence) in Sachsen-Anhalt 224
Gleichstellungsstelle-Erfurt (Erfurt Office of Equal
Opportunity), Thüringen 229
Forum Ostdeutschland (SPD) and Aufbau Ost (CDU) in
Berlin/Brandenburg and Saxony 234
The PDS as “Comeback Kid” 241
“The End of Apprenticeship” 244
 Contents  xi

Part III Reconstructing East-German Identities: Peer

Cultures 255

7 Conscience
 of the Nation: Writers, Artisans, and
Intellectuals257
Cultural Policies and the Forces of Socialist Realism 260
Anti-fascist Imperatives: Loyalty and the Aufbau Generation 268
“Profiles in Courage”: Christa Wolf and Stefan Heym 272
The Sixty-Eighters and the Dilemmas of Cultural Revolution 281
The Post-Wall Literaturstreit: “The West” Versus Christa Wolf 285
Loyalty, Voice, and the National Question 293

8 From
 Losers to Winners, and Back: The Stasi, Pastors,
and Dissidents303
Shield and Sword of the Party: The Ministry for State Security 306
Opiate of the Masses: The SED and Religion, 1945–1970 316
From Peaceful Coexistence (1971–1979) to Church from
Below (1980–1989) 320
(Re)Marginalized Voices: Pastors and Politics, 1990–1998 324
The Helsinki Factor: Loyalty as Dissent 328
Prosecuting the SED Dictatorship 334
Loyalty, Voice, and Retributive Justice 341

9 From
 State Paternalism to Private Patriarchy: East
German Women355
Gender and Ideology: State Paternalism 357
Equality without Emancipation: Double Burdens and the
“Right to Work” 365
Revenge of the Cradle: Reproductive Rights and Wrongs 377
Private Patriarchy and the Re-domestication of Eastern Women 387
Deutschland einig Mutterland: Gender Policies under Angela
Merkel 393
Winning Women 397
xii Contents

10 The
 Anti-political Identities of East German Youth409
Redefining Class Consciousness: The Uniform Socialist
Education System 413
Not-so-free “Free-time”: FDJ and the Jugendweihe 421
“Leave Us Kids Alone”: Finding Voice Through Music 429
From Voice to Exit: Normalos, Avantis, Gruftis, Punks,
and Skins 435
Writing for the Panzerschrank at the Central Institute for
Youth Research 444
Through the Looking Glass: Unification and Normative Loyalty 451
“Be careful what you pray for …” 462

11 No Country for Old Men: Second-Class Citizenship

and its Discontents475
The Double Bind of Military Machismo 478
The Treuhand Versus the “Heroes of Labor” 485
A Clash of Male Cultures: Eastern Underlings, Western Bosses 492
Backlash: Far-right Populism and the New Misogynists 495
Relative Deprivation: Second-Class Citizenship and the
“Unhappiness Curve” 502
Working-Class Men: Winning the Battle, Losing the War 507

12 The
 Dialectical Identities of Germans United519
Caught in the Middle: Die Wendekinder  525
The Post-Turnaround Generation: Difference Still Matters 529
The Blessings of Late Birth 532

13 Epilogue: October 3, 2021539

Index545
 Abbreviations

AfD Alternative für Deutschland/Alternative for Germany

BEK Bund Evangelische Kirche/Evangelical Church Union
CC Central Committee of the SED
CDU Christian Democratic Party
CPSU Communist Party of the Soviet Union
CSU Christian Social Union (Bavaria)
DA Demokratischer Aufbruch/Democratic Awakening
DEFA German Film Company
DFD Demokratische Frauenbund Deutschland/Democratic Women’s
League in Germany
EOS Expanded secondary school
FDJ Freie Deutsche Jugend/Free German Youth
FDGB Freier Deutscher Gewerkschaftsbund/Free German Trade Union
Federation
GSS Gleichstellungsstelle/Office of Equal Opportunity
IFM Initiative for Peace and Human Rights
KoKo Kommerzielle Koordinierung/Commercial Coordination
KPD Communist Party of Germany
MfS Ministry for State Security
NVA Nationale Volksarmee/National People’s Army
NÖS New Economic System
PDS Party of Democratic Socialists
POS Polytechnical school system
SDP/SPD Social Democratic Party

xiii
xiv ABBREVIATIONS

SED Sozialistische Einheitspartei Deutschlands/Socialist Unity Party

of Germany
SMAD Soviet Military Administration (occupation zone)
Stasi State Security Forces
VEBs Volkseigene Betriebe/“people’s own factories”
VK Volkskammer/People’s Chamber
ZIJ Zentralinstitut für Jugendforschung/Central Institute for Youth
Research
 List of Figures

Fig. 2.1 Concentric model of identity 28

Fig. 2.2 Forms of exit, voice, and loyalty 47
Fig. 8.1 Vladimir Putin’s Stasi identification 308
Fig. 8.2 My personal Stasi file: Department XX excerpt 312
Fig. 10.1 Wende attitudes, unemployment and GDR affinity 460
Fig. 10.2 Achieving economic parity and internal unity 462
Fig. 11.1 Number and rate of unemployed workers in Germany,
1980–2019 (in %) 493
Fig. 11.2 West/East vote shares in the Bundestag elections,
1990–2017 (in %) 496
Fig. 11.3 Non-voters and AfD voters, Bundestag Elections
2009 and 2017 499

xv
 List of Tables

Table 4.1 Average gross wages (east marks), according to labor sector,
1955–1988139
Table 4.2 Annual food/nutritional consumption, 1955–1989 142
Table 4.3 Possession of major household appliances (in %), 1955–1985 147
Table 5.1 Out-migration from the SMAD/GDR to the Federal
Republic, 1950–1961 167
Table 5.2 Physical exits, 1961–1989 (including transfers from East to
West Berlin) 174
Table 5.3 “Resettlers” from East to West Germany, 1989 179
Table 6.1 New entries in selected registers of associations, 1990–1996 211
Table 6.2 Projected life expectancy in East Germany 219
Table 9.1 Women’s employment across major economic sectors
(as a proportion of total employment), 1970–1985 372
Table 9.2 GDR women in political leadership positions, 1971–1985 374
Table 9.3 Number of live births per woman, 1955–1989 380
Table 9.4 Divorces initiated by women and men, 1960–1989 384
Table 9.5 Children born to unwed mothers (% of all live births) 385
Table 9.6 East-West unemployment rates, 1990–1996 (socially
insured workers) 389
Table 9.7 Women in state parliaments, 2012 (pre-AfD), and 2022
(with AfD presence) 396
Table 10.1 Class backgrounds of students in higher education,
1960–1966419
Table 10.2 Trust in the SED (in %) 447
Table 10.3 Identification with the SED (in %) 448
Table 10.4 Identification with Marxism-Leninism 450
Table 10.5 Identification with the goals of the FDJ 451

xvii
xviii List of Tables

Table 10.6 Political orientations of youth, 1987–1989 458

Table 10.7 Dimensions of personal identity (in %) 460
Table 10.8 Attitudes reflecting systemic versus normative loyalty;
systemic, policy-oriented loyalty elements 463
Table 11.1 Perceptions of the Bundeswehr and willingness to defend
the GDR (in %) 483
 List of Boxes

Box 1.1 On the Perils of “Collecting Qualitative Data”: Holcolm’s

Evaluation Laws 10
Box 3.1 National Anthem of the German Democratic Republic 65
Box 4.1 Understanding “The Plan” 121
Box 5.1 “Die Lösung”/ “The Solution” (Bertolt Brecht) 166
Box 10.1 The Ten Commandments of Socialist Morals and Ethics 425
Box 10.2 The Jugendweihe Oath (February 17, 1955) 426
Box 10.3 Typical Responses: ZIJ Surveys, 1989 453
Box 11.1 “Eigentum”/“Property” (Volker Braun) 490

xix
 CHAPTER 1

Introduction: Prelude to a German

Revolution

The date was May 10, 1989, the place was St. Louis, Missouri. In less than
two weeks, I would be moving to Washington, D.C., where I planned to
investigate GDR-identity as it had crystallized across a span of four decades
since its founding in 1949. I had already spent four years exploring the
contours of postwar German identity as it had evolved among the cohorts
born into the Western state, 1949–1989.1 I secured funding and outlined
a research agenda in late 1988, uncertain at the time what barriers I would
encounter in trying to unearth the official and unofficial dimensions of
GDR state-consciousness in a closed socialist society, the German
Democratic Republic. As one of my last formal duties in St. Louis, I
attended a dinner hosted by the Goethe Institute featuring the prominent
if querulous West German author, Günther Grass. Seated next to the guest
of honor, I briefly described my upcoming project, to which Grass imme-
diately responded: “Identity? Homeland? I believe that a homeland is
something one can only define as that which one has lost.”2 Our casual
dinner-party exchange came back to haunt me six months later. On
November 9, 1989—that chaotic, champagne-drenched night during
which the Berlin Wall suddenly came tumbling down—Grass’s definition of
identity wedded to homeland assumed the status of a self-fulfilling prophecy.
Nearly twenty years of living and researching abroad have confirmed
my belief that the concepts of Heimat and Identität are most easily defined
from a distance. The pressures and distractions of day-to-day living at
close range tend to obscure the contours of the larger picture. By contrast,

© The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature 1

Switzerland AG 2023
J. M. Mushaben, What Remains?,
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-18888-6_1
2 J. M. MUSHABEN

the ability to look back on past relationships and dependencies helps an

individual to accord new weights to the influence each has exercised on
her personal development. The opportunity to return to a place of origin,
and possibly reminisce with those who stayed behind, yields a sense of the
permanent and the transitional, the core and the peripheral elements of
one’s personal identity. Time, distance, and lapses of memory usually ren-
der one critical of certain aspects and laudatory toward others, although
the truth usually lies somewhere in between. Homeland is, more often
than not, a place one “comes from.”
Serving as Berlin’s Reigning Mayor, Willy Brandt sustained the moral
courage of his people when the Wall suddenly went up in August 1961. As
Germany’s first social-democratic Chancellor, he just as courageously
dared to pursue East-West rapprochement under the rubric of Ostpolitik.
The day after the Wall fell in 1989, he eloquently summarized the hopes
of millions of postwar European citizens with the words, “Now that which
belongs together can grow together.” My initial aim in writing this book
was to challenge that proposition, to persuade the reader that the search
for “German identity” did not end with unification. I argued back then
that while the former SPD Chancellor had been a brilliant statesman, he
was not an expert demographer: Had he reflected on generational change,
his prognosis would have been a lot more pessimistic. By 1989, two-thirds
of Westerners and three-fourths of Easterners had been born after World
War II, meaning that most had never experienced a whole nation.
Once the Wall fell, 16.4 million GDR citizens were expected to jettison
the lives they had known, and to reassess how they had “arranged” them-
selves with the SED regime, how they may have suffered as its victims, and
how they might best adapt to a new world. Over 61 million FRG citizens
were ostensibly free to pursue business and politics as usual. My earlier
study of generational differences in the old Federal Republic of Germany
had nonetheless persuaded me that rather than ending a search for shared
feelings of national belonging, the formal merger of two ideologically
opposed states marked only the beginning of a new quest for deutsche
Identität.
This story of East German identity before and after the opening of the
Wall is a study of identity lost, found, and reconfigured. But history is not
a soliloquy. Any national narrative involves characters, places, events, mul-
tiple plot twists, a climax, and sometimes a denouement. The German
Democratic Republic had all of these, but “the rest of the story” cannot
 1 INTRODUCTION: PRELUDE TO A GERMAN REVOLUTION 3

be told unless and/or until Western Germans come to recognize that their
own past and future is intricately connected to the experiences of the
other side.
Assessing the strengths and weaknesses of what used to be GDR-­
identity has been rendered no easier by the curious nature of my discipline:
political science pits the scientific against the political, the normative
against the empirical, and institutional imperatives against human compo-
nents. In 1906 Arthur L. Bowley at the Royal Statistical Society (London)
prescribed the first rules for determining a “representative sample,” a
mechanism that has become the lifeline of political behaviorists every-
where. German identity nonetheless predates the existence of survey
research techniques by a few hundred years, its core elements having been
established by countless wars and regime changes. The relatively closed
nature of GDR society made it virtually impossible for scholars to employ
standard methodologies used to test the attitudinal waters in the West.
This does not mean that East German officials prohibited any and all
forms of public opinion data; it does imply, however, that one cannot take
the existing data at face value.
I was the first US-American to be accorded unlimited access to archival
materials at the GDR’s Central Institute for Youth Research (ZIJ) in
Leipzig. Prior to the so-called Turn-around (Wende) of 1989, the survey
data generated there could only be accessed by SED Politburo members,
select Central Committee departments, the Office for Youth Affairs in the
Council of Ministers, and top officials of the Free German Youth League
(FDJ). For better or worse (given the outdated copying facilities I encoun-
tered during my first two-week stay), I was also the last American to enjoy
this privilege as a formal guest “during GDR times.” In accordance with
provisions appended to the Unity Treaty, the ZIJ was abgewickelt, “wound
down” and dissolved in December 1990. Several works drawing on the
Leipzig data have been published since 1991, usually by former ZIJ
researchers, but most texts have appeared only in German. This book
attempts, inter alia, to provide a broader picture of the Institute’s longitu-
dinal findings than is usually accessible to English-speaking readers.
The experience of having both one’s “target-group” and “data base”
officially cease to exist halfway through a research project is but one of the
occupational hazards which have tested the mettle of East European ana-
lysts since 1990. Feeling quite blessed not by my “late birth” but rather by
my good fortune at landing in the GDR when I did, mine was a very mov-
ing but also an extraordinarily chaotic research experience from the start.
4 J. M. MUSHABEN

I had expected to encounter much distrust, if not outright official hostility

toward a project as controversial as mine. Since its inception, GDR leaders
had viewed the constructs of nation and nationality as very touchy issues,
subjecting them to many ideological revisions. My contacts quickly trained
me to employ the term DDR-Staatsbewußtsein [GDR state-consciousness]
in all “identity” discussions with public officials.
I arrived in East Berlin for preliminary talks the very week that hun-
dreds of vacationing GDR citizens began to seek refuge at West German
embassies in Budapest, Prague, and Warsaw, August 5–12, 1989. To my
great surprise, office doors opened, prominent SED officials offered to
supply me with critical background materials and a few of them even
treated me to lunch. The conditions I experienced during the exhilarating
yet chaotic months of August 1989 through December 1990 have been
replaced by routine archival visits on the part of younger scholars inter-
ested in GDR life. Though over thirty years have passed, I find it useful,
on occasion, to remind ourselves just how fundamentally German condi-
tions and life-styles have changed—not only in the eastern Länder but also
in the “old” federal states. With amazing speed, an overwhelming major-
ity of Eastern Germans embraced democratic processes as natural and
good, despite forty years of socialization under an authoritarian regime.
This book gives them long-overdue credit for this achievement.
I can best illustrate these points by recounting my initial experiences in
the field. On November 26, 1989, two weeks after the Wall had opened,
I was escorted along the labyrinthine hallways of the building housing the
Central Committee of the Socialist Unity Party. I passed by numerous
uniformed armed guards en route to a prescheduled interview with Klaus
Hoepcke, the then-Minister for Cultural Affairs serving the Politburo.
Promised only half an hour to discuss the historical evolution and contem-
porary significance of “GDR state-consciousness,” I took the risk of
addressing the obvious collective-identity crisis highlighted by the crowded
embassy compounds. To my astonishment, Hoepke responded in a very
personal manner to my questions about identity, extending the interview
to an hour. Seven months later, as a PDS delegate in the first democrati-
cally elected parliament (Volkskammer, VK), he invited me to visit him at
home in order to continue our discussion along with his wife and daugh-
ter. I did not receive his letter (which he had hand-delivered to the
Academy for Social Sciences where I was occupying a dorm room) until
four days after the proposed meeting. This was but the first of many “com-
munication breakdowns” impeding my plan to conduct over sixty official
discussions in the still-existing GDR.
 1 INTRODUCTION: PRELUDE TO A GERMAN REVOLUTION 5

My efforts to secure interviews with members of the new parliament

were Kafkaesque at best. Anticipating a dearth of xeroxing facilities at the
Academy, I had brought along a hundred copies of a letter explaining my
project and requesting interviews with VK delegates. Supported by the
German Marshall Fund, I had been able to observe the elections first-hand
in March 1990, but no comprehensive list of the new parliamentarians had
been published prior to my April return. To compile a somewhat represen-
tative sample of prospective interviewees, I needed the names and addresses
of all the new legislators.
Landing in East Berlin on Tuesday, April 24, 1990, I headed for “the
Palace of the Republic” on Wednesday, certain that such a list would be
available six weeks after the election. Notified that the Volkskammer would
convene at the end of the week (April 26), I hoped to post my letters
before the legislators left the capital-city for a long holiday break. The
uniformed men at the reception desk were unable to offer direct assis-
tance, but they indicated that the delegates’ offices were located in the
former Central Committee building.
I rushed over to that once-intimidating complex that had been rechris-
tened the House of Parliamentarians. Three uniformed men at the recep-
tion desk immediately demanded my “identification.” I handed over my
passport, explaining in German who I was (a university professor from the
USA, officially invited by the Academy of Social Sciences) and what I
needed (a list of the new VK representatives and their contact addresses).
They told me that the entire building was undergoing renovation; few
MPs had moved into the offices, hence no such list was available. They
urged me to return to the Volkskammer, housed in the (asbestos-­
permeated) “Palace,” colloquially known as the Ballast of the Republic.
The guards there were surprised to see me back. Having “no informa-
tion,” they felt no further obligation toward me and resumed their own
conversation, though I did not leave. My outsider status afforded me a
degree of courage: I insisted that someone in the building had to have some
way of informing the people’s democratically elected representatives about
upcoming committee meetings and plenary sessions. All I wanted was
access to that person. They rang up a press liaison who agreed to meet me
in the cloakroom. After twenty minutes, the young man consented to
share his own list which classified the MPs by party only. Lacking access to
a xerox machine himself, he graciously allowed me to hand-copy all 400+
names into my notebook. Two hours later I reappeared at the Palace
reception desk with forty letters in care of selected members. Lacking
6 J. M. MUSHABEN

specific addresses, I requested that they be placed in the parliamentarians’

mailboxes prior to the next plenum, set to convene a day later. One func-
tionary accepted the letters, though the in-house mailroom was closed for
the afternoon. It had been, I thought, a very productive day.
The next morning I registered with the city police for my temporary
residency permit, exchanged D-Marks for East Marks at the official 1-to-1
rate, and returned to the People’s Chamber. Given my need to track down
each letter-recipient to set up individual meeting dates, I reiterated my
request for phone numbers and contact addresses. The VK guards sent me
back to the House of Parliamentarians, where that crew was likewise sur-
prised to see me again. I re-explained the situation at length. Insisting they
had no such list, they advised me to check with die Fraktionen [caucuses]
at the headquarters of the individual parties. I spent all day Thursday
being shunted back and forth from one site to another under the follow-
ing refrains:

★★★ At the central CDU office: “You want addresses and phone
numbers of our VK members? We’d like to have them ourselves!
Try the House of Parliamentarians.”
★★★ Back at the HoP reception desk: “We don’t have ‘em. You have
to go back to the party caucuses.”
★★★ At the now smaller, back-door office of the SED-turned-PDS:
“As you can see, they made us move. Maybe Herr-So-und-So
can help you.” Herr-So-und-So found my project very interest-
ing and told me he hoped to receive a copy of my book when it
came out. Regretfully he had no addresses and phone numbers
for his party’s VK delegates.
★★★ Back at the People’s Chamber: “No, [they] didn’t know where
the Liberal Party had moved to. Maybe the SPD could help.”
★★★ Returning to the SPD headquarters: I had a long conversation
with an amiable office worker, Marianne Eschenbach who, in
addition to offering me coffee, cookies and a place to stay, prom-
ised to arrange an interview with “her” MP, Angelika Barbe,
confirmed the next day.

Utterly frustrated, I returned to the House of Parliamentarians on

Friday morning prior to appointments with Michael Brie (Humboldt
University), the Wiens (two dissident film-makers from Pankow who were
sheltering a Romanian refugee family in their three-room apartment), and
 1 INTRODUCTION: PRELUDE TO A GERMAN REVOLUTION 7

Jens Reich, a cofounder of New Forum. Adopting a more Teutonic tone,

I demanded access to MP addresses/phone numbers and remained at the
reception desk for forty-five minutes. Now constituting something of a
security risk, I was assured that an official responsible for “international
relations” was on his way to appease (and/or dismiss) me. After another
forty-five minutes of circular arguments, I squeezed out one name and
(wonder of wonders) the room number for the managing officer of the
CDU-caucus, Herr Viererber.
I thanked the guards for their “assistance,” noting that I would return
on Monday to contact the CDU. “You can’t do that,” they responded;
“the holiday is coming up.” Yes, I noted, “May First (International
Workers’ Day) falls on Tuesday, but I’ll be back on Monday.” They
repeated: “You can’t do that. We will be closed. Wir haben vorgearbeitet”
[“We’ve worked our hours ahead of time”]. Two and a half months after
the elections, parliamentarians had no offices, no phones, no contact
addresses. The building itself was a hazardous construction site, with old
bugging devices openly visible in the walls—yet the “workers” would take
an extra day off because they had built up “compensatory” time! It is easy
to see why the interim government of Lothar de Maizière did not occupy
a particularly strong bargaining position vis-à-vis FRG officials in Bonn
during the critical phase of negotiations over the conditions for accession.
When I reappeared at the reception desk at 8:00 a.m. on Wednesday
after the holiday, I announced (disingenuously) that I had an appointment
with Herr Viererber, located in Room 4135. Not knowing his actual
whereabouts and having no phone contact, the guards presumed that I
did have an officially scheduled meeting and allowed me to ascend in the
pater-noster unaccompanied. I spent the next two hours roaming the halls
of the former Central Committee, encountering huge piles of plaster and
scaffolding materials but nary a worker. I eventually discovered not only
the “real-existing” Herr Viererber but also Klaus Richter, Managing
Officer for Bündnis’ 90, who immediately agreed to locate prospective
interview partners in his party. Another chance discovery, a kindly secre-
tary for the FDP, Frau Wagner, agreed to schedule interviews with three
of “her” parliamentarians, after disclosing many of her own economic
fears and identity concerns linked to the so-called Wende. A few days later,
a CDU parliamentarian already back home in Dresden called to say he had
seen his name atop a large stack of envelopes left in a reception room after
the Friday VK plenum. My letters had not been distributed, much less on
8 J. M. MUSHABEN

time, to legislative delegates; those who eventually did respond to my

interview request would not reach me until weeks later.
In short, each interview referenced in this book usually entailed serious
detective work, as well as many hours underway with the decrepit DDR
Reichsbahn. Colleagues who established their own scientific reputations in
the field of GDR Studies prior to 1989 will appreciate the valiance of my
struggle as well as the numerous historical and psychological ironies
depicted herein. The need to “read between the lines” prior to 1989
infused all GDR-analyses with a higher degree of subjectivity than Western
number-crunching analysts are inclined to tolerate. That special breed
known as “GDR researchers” had to seek confirmation for their hypoth-
eses across many sub-fields ranging from literature and history to social-­
psychology, organizational theory, and even psycho-therapy, resulting in a
kind of multi-dimensional “validation” not enjoyed by those committed
to quantitative analyses.
Many survey experts unfamiliar with GDR history and culture none-
theless headed eastwards during the final months of the regime, hoping to
ply their trade. Armed with batteries of questionnaires—a real improve-
ment over the tanks and missiles of old—they sought to record the histori-
cal moment, to compare the identities of Western and Eastern Germans at
their respective peaks, and to capture the essence of DDR-Identität before
it assumed its proper place (as Friedrich Engels opined) in the “museum
of human history, next to the bronze ax and the spinning wheel.” Having
found what they deemed to be “statistically significant” political similari-
ties (e.g., electoral preferences), too many underestimated the long-term
impact of other socio-psychological variables. Their methodologies often
precluded them from looking in the “right places” for deep-seated differ-
ences between the Germans of East and West, analogous to the proverbial
town drunk looking for his wristwatch under the streetlamp, not because
that is where he lost it but because that is where the light happens to be.
My investigations over the last three decades began with a single, albeit
complex question: Had forty years of division resulted in the formation of
separate identities for the Germans of East and West, or was it possible that
the historical bonds of “national consciousness” had transcended the horrors of
war, the ignominy of defeat and the imposition of diametrically opposed socio-­
economic systems? This is the second of two books focusing on that ques-
tion, based on my belief that separate identities had indeed emerged in the
two Germanys as early as 1972. I remain convinced that one must first
comprehend how far the peoples of a divided nation had grown apart
 1 INTRODUCTION: PRELUDE TO A GERMAN REVOLUTION 9

between 1949 and 1989, before one can begin to figure out (with all due
respect to Humpty-Dumpty) how to put them back together again.
This book is divided into three parts. The first part (Chaps. 2 and 3)
explores the historical and “national” components of GDR-Identity as it
was officially defined and propagated over a span of forty years. The second
part (Chaps. 4, 5, and 6) analyzes major factors that contributed to a
growing gap between the national consciousness espoused by the Socialist
leadership and average citizens’ willingness to embrace the official version
prior to the fall of the Berlin Wall. It explores the transformation of iden-
tity among former GDR state officials, party functionaries and “true-­
believers.” Fired or forced into early retirement, many came to perceive
themselves as outright “losers” following unification, though a few became
surprisingly successful capitalists.
The third part (Chaps. 7, 8, 9, 10, and 11) investigates the unofficial
dimensions of East German identity which imprinted themselves on the per-
sonal consciousness of specific subsets of citizens, as a key to understanding,
in the words of Christa Wolf, what remains.3 It explores an array of often
erroneously conflated subcultures—writers, intellectuals, pastors, dissi-
dents, women and youth—along with working-class men, whose identities
have been marked by alienation and hostility since the political implosion
of 1989, attracting them to the rightwing populist Alternative for Germany
party.4 The concluding chapter is devoted to speculations about the orien-
tations and identities of post-Wall youth (Third Generation East), and the
curious failure of West Germans to recognize the extent to which their own
identities have been reconfigured in the wake of unification.

Methodology
Although my Ford Foundation grant had been approved in mid-1988, I
was unable to commence work on this project exploring DDR-Identität
until June 1989. My initial experiences in the field provided many impor-
tant lessons about the lives and mind-sets of citizens made-in-the-GDR, a
number of which can be used retrospectively to “defend” the eclectic
methodological approach adopted here (see Box 1.1). For younger schol-
ars whose curiosity has been piqued by the collapse of the GDR, my
account will call forth the image of an academic stone-age or, at a mini-
mum, tales of a Great Depression they did not personally witness. They
may find it hard to imagine an industrialized country unable to provide
visiting professors with the names of elected officials, much less to supply
10 J. M. MUSHABEN

its citizens adequately with women’s underwear and other personal

hygiene articles as late as the 1970s. As Holcolm noted in reference to
“the perils of qualitative research,” the nine-to-five set need not have
applied for an adventure such as this.

Box 1.1 On the Perils of “Collecting Qualitative Data”: Holcolm’s

Evaluation Laws
☺ Always be suspicious of data collection that goes according
to plan.
☺ Research subjects have also been known to be people.
☺ The evaluator’s scientific observation is some person’s real life
experience. Respect for the latter must precede respect for
the former.
☺ Total trust and complete skepticism are twin losers in the field.
All things in moderation, especially trust and skepticism.
☺ Evaluators are presumed guilty until proven innocent.
☺ Make sure when you yield to temptation in the field that it
appears to have something to do with what you are studying.
☺ A fieldworker should be able to sweep the floor, carry out the
garbage, carry in the laundry, cook for large groups, go without
food and sleep, read and write by candlelight, see in the dark,
see in the light, cooperate without offending, suppress sarcastic
remarks, smile to express both pain and hurt, experience both
pain and hurt, spend time alone, respond to orders, take sides,
stay neutral, take risks, avoid harm, be confused, seem con-
fused, care terribly, become attached to nothing… The nine-to-
five set need not apply.
☺ Always carry extra batteries and getaway money.

Scholars who study authoritarian regimes recognize the methodologi-

cal limitations inherent in the conduct of empirical research, irrespective of
its specific ideological orientation. It is difficult to accumulate quantifiable
data in countries which regularly prohibit opinion polls, falsify govern-
mental statistics to glorify their own achievements, bar foreign researchers
from their territory, and utilize secret police or criminal statutes to intimi-
date prospective interview partners. Scholars compelled by circumstances
to rely upon qualitative methods are frequently called upon to “defend”
 1 INTRODUCTION: PRELUDE TO A GERMAN REVOLUTION 11

their sources and strategies by quantitative experts whose objects of study

are open, liberal-democratic systems.
Decades after unification, I still view the findings of Western pollsters
who “discovered” the East European states in 1989/1990 with skepti-
cism. Individuals continuously socialized into hiding their real feelings
about leaders and policies will not automatically shift to candid expres-
sions of political self-interest, no matter how delighted they are to be
asked, at long last, about their personal preferences. Recently liberated
citizens usually have too much at stake to reveal their innermost political
feelings, seeking to avoid charges of complicity with the old regimes or
due to their collective need to please would-be foreign investors.
My pre-1989 experiences in the realm of GDR research taught me to
integrate many kinds of data, ranging from official parade slogans to anti-­
state jokes circulated among members of the underground. This study
draws on books, newspapers, radio broadcasts, official documents, opposi-
tion leaflets, campaign materials, hand-copied surveys from the ZIJ, and
on-site observations. My findings also derive from an exhausting yet exhil-
arating array of personal discussions, including 50+ in-depth interviews
(lasting one to three hours each), executed at five key points throughout
the transformational process. They included: the period of mass emigra-
tion in August 1989; the opening of the Wall, November 1989; the first
free elections in March 1990; communal elections and preparations for
the arrival of the D-Mark, April-June 1990; and the first all-German elec-
tions of December 1990.
I completed roughly thirty interviews with members of the first demo-
cratically elected Volkskammer, two of whom subsequently became
Ministers in the first all-German government under Chancellor Helmut
Kohl: Rainer Ortlebb (Education), and Claudia Nolta (Women and
Family). De Maizière’s Deputy Press-speaker, Angela Merkel, became
Minister for Women and Youth, later responsible for the Environment and
Nuclear Safety. Merkel then moved on to become Germany’s first woman
Chancellor (2005–2021), while another interviewee, Joachim Gauck,
subsequently served as Federal-President (2012–2017), after directing the
agency responsible for processing Stasi files for ten years. More than half
of my VK sample moved on to seats in the all-German Bundestag or
assumed positions in the new Länder governments after 1990, though
several then left the political arena to pursue other careers.
The realization that all investigators respond to political phenomena on
the basis of their own values and interests is not a barrier to solid empirical
12 J. M. MUSHABEN

research. The questions I judge most essential to an understanding of

GDR-identity cannot, for the most part, be answered on a quantitative
basis. But hard data do have their place in a longitudinal study of this sort;
this text utilizes insights compiled by Eastern experts of a quantitative
bent, formerly employed by the Zentralinstitut für Jugendforschung in
Leipzig. The Central Institute for Youth Research was created in 1966
under the direction of psychology professor Dr. Walter Friedrich, who
remained at the helm until its December 1990 dissolution.
Subordinated to the Office for Youth Questions in the GDR Council of
Ministers, the ZIJ’s tasks and structure were defined by way of the
Ministerial Resolution of 26 February 1968. The Socialist Unity Party
(SED), in cooperation with the Free German Youth (FDJ), retained for
itself the power to approve the development of research emphases, the
formulation of research plans, as well as the establishment of contacts
between commissioned researchers and participating institutions. Scholars
sought to influence the choice of methodologies by way of a limited num-
ber of seats on the Scientific Council. The latter consisted of delegates
from the ZIJ, the communist youth league and the SED, named by the
Director of the Office for Youth Questions.
Resident scholars conducted over 400 investigations from the time of
the Institute’s inception until its dissolution, including a battery of studies
which sampled the mood of youth throughout the critical periods of
1989/1990.5 Administrators at both the Academy in Berlin and the Central
Institute in Leipzig had learned one thing about the “free market econ-
omy” immediately prior to the arrival of the western D-Mark under the
Currency Union (scheduled to take effect on July 1, 1990). They informed
me that I would have to pay an “organizational use fee,” but neither was
willing to accept the still-valid coin of the realm, the East-­Mark. My costs
ranged from $100 for “tuition,” plus DM50 per night for lodgings at the
desolate-looking Academy, to a charge of DM60 per week at the ZIJ. Never
mind the fact that I had to cross paths with Academy employees to get to
the restroom/shower at 6:30 a.m., and that all the lights in the building
were shut off on weekends. When the concierge took a break, or left his/
her post for unexplained reasons, the overnight “house-guests” found
themselves locked in for lengthier periods. This also happened to two of my
very surprised West Berlin friends who had come to meet me there.
I had neither a typewriter nor a xerox machine at my disposal during
my initial stay in Leipzig, meaning that I had to copy most of statistical
tables by hand—even though the ZIJ, according to official reports, met
 1 INTRODUCTION: PRELUDE TO A GERMAN REVOLUTION 13

“all the requirements of modern social research.” Institute researchers

relied on a typing-pool, allowing the government to control the dispersal
of a potentially controversial document. I was never treated to a tour of
the “computer facilities,” but it was easy to conjure up the image of “Hal”
from the classic film, 2001, sitting in a basement next to the winter supply
of coal brickets. The Institute’s unisex water-closet on our floor, always to
be locked after use, afforded interesting insights into pre-war German
plumbing techniques.
Most of the materials placed at my disposal were in the process of being
declassified, though they still bore the labels “Confidential Document,”
“Confidential-Classified” or “Top-Secret Document.” Unfortunately, ZIJ
co-workers had not yet completed the task of re-cataloguing newly declas-
sified documents during my May 1990 visit. It was therefore difficult to
locate many of the “top secret” documents, based on the registry of titles
I was given. By the time I returned in November, the Institute’s dissolu-
tion was already imminent under the Unity Treaty. Realizing that they
would be unemployed by mid-December, some 90% of the support staff
no longer subscribed to the principle of a full working day. Only once did
I succeed in locating the librarian at her designated workspace (7:30 to
11:30 a.m. on Wednesdays); when I requested access to the top-secret
documents from the basement archives, she expressed surprise regarding
my interest in “that old stuff.” I had less than twenty-four hours to exam-
ine several “historical” studies, uncovered two weeks before the Central
Institute officially ceased to exist. Its data were transferred to the Deutsches
Jugendforschungsinstitut (German Institute for Youth Research) in Munich
and the Central Archive for Empirical Social Research in Cologne. The
services of some eighteen former institute members were retained only
through 1994.
The perils of relying on official GDR-data, in general, and ZIJ data, in
particular, are self-evident. First, there is the “non-representative” nature
of earlier GDR-youth surveys. To some degree, this deficit reflects the
state-of-the-art problems confronting behavioralists of decades past. For
the most part, the ZIJ evaluators included an appropriate caveat regarding
problems of statistical sampling in the introductory sections of their stud-
ies. Second, there is the politically “loaded” nature of the questions
researchers were expected to pose (see Chap. 10). In addition to facing
questions heavy with official terminology—as opposed to colloquial for-
mulations which might have more clearly reflected their real feelings—
young participants were limited to SED-sanctioned response options.
14 J. M. MUSHABEN

Another qualification regarding ZIJ data stems from the fact that
responses were solicited under a command system rather than on the basis
of voluntary participation. Though researchers sought to guarantee ano-
nymity by collecting classroom surveys into a large pile, it was always dif-
ficult to assess the sincerity of the answers provided, the contents of which
may have been motivated by fear, by a concern for one’s university or
career prospects, by a sense of duty-consciousness, or by direct teacher
supervision. Attempts to verify individual responses with follow-up inter-
views would have resulted in further distrust, multiplying the number of
disingenuous replies, although this method was used on occasion. Added
to this dilemma is the fact that most GDR-youth would have been well-­
versed in “double-speak” by the time they were teenagers.
Last but not least, there were the formidable problems of interpreta-
tion, replication, publication, and, ultimately, open discussion of the
results. Consistent with its general self-glorification tendencies, the regime
tolerated only those interpretations of data stressing that “the glass was
almost full,” as ominous as the signs of youth discontent had become by
the early 1980s. Though regularly denied permission to publish any data
suggesting an erosion of systemic support, Institute members could, on
occasion, lecture on their findings among “selected” publics permitted to
discuss them, for example, FDJ functionaries. By the summer of 1989, a
direct order from the Chief of the Office for Youth Affairs in the Council
of Ministers barred all ZIJ analysts from discussing the deteriorating polit-
ical climate publicly. That muzzle was only removed in the wake of the
dramatic events of October/November, by which point it had already
become impossible to reverse the course of GDR history.
These serious qualifications notwithstanding, the Leipzig data do tell a
rather astounding story. More important than the extent to which young
survey participants protected themselves by voicing the party-line is the
degree to which they did not, despite the negative repercussions most real-
ized they might face. Surveys of the late 1970s testify to a consciously
articulated loss of faith in the system, especially among young members of
the working class. A comparable decline in support would not be observed
among university students and party-political youth until the mid-1980s.
Educational Minister Margot Honecker, along with the Politburo mem-
bers who were privy to these data, might have undertaken policy changes
at the onset of the decade to ensure the system’s survival, yet they refused
to see the handwriting on the Wall, real and proverbial. Thus, the
 1 INTRODUCTION: PRELUDE TO A GERMAN REVOLUTION 15

beginning of the end of the German Democratic Republic was rooted in

the hearts and minds of East German youth almost a decade prior to the
Party’s “great fall.”
This book is, to a large extent, an effort to tell youth’s side of the story
(citizens now in their 40s and 50s), as well as to assess the role of genera-
tional change in precipitating the system’s collapse. My work challenges
many Western publications which “explain” the GDR’s demise solely in
terms of dictatorship and command-economy rationalizations. Drawing
on Hirschman’s oft-cited framework of exit, voice, and loyalty, I attempt to
determine which elements of East German identity have persisted under
unification as a function of GDR-specific socialization mechanisms, the
critical dimension of loyalty having been ignored by most authors explor-
ing the exit-voice dynamics of the short-lived Wende phase. My analysis is
grounded in the belief that residents of the young Länder need not aban-
don “East German” identity in its entirety in order to embrace new demo-
cratic institutions and values cultivated under the Western-dominated
Federal Republic.
I contend that the rediscovery of personal East German identities, a
process mockingly referred to as Ostalgie [East-nostalgia], should not be
viewed as an attempt to paint the GDR past as a golden one, nor as an
attempt by former citizens to exonerate themselves from complicity with
what was admittedly an authoritarian regime. As my earlier study of West
German identity attested, residents of the old Länder have cultivated a
Nestalgie of their own, that is, a yearning for the well-feathered western
nest in the “unsullied” economic-miracle state they used to know. I see the
rediscovery of differences among German citizens today as fulfilling a fun-
damentally necessary purpose: the renewed search for an East-identity is one
phase of a process of taking pieces of the old-life—a multitude of familiar
cultural norms, practices, behaviors, and tastes (their habitus, as Bourdieu
would say)—and reassembling or reconfiguring them into new networks. In
other words, it is a search for mixed modes of social capital—another way
of describing one’s “loyalty” to old norms, behaviors, interpersonal rela-
tionships, and even tastes—that lend themselves to more effective use
under new institutional conditions and new socio-psychological
imperatives.
As was true throughout the socialist bloc, the slightest changes in offi-
cial terminology oftentimes signaled fundamental shifts in doctrine.
Certain German terms are so fraught with historical significance that an
English translation may render them trivial, however. The German term
16 J. M. MUSHABEN

das Volk, for example, bears “organic” connotations ideologically at odds

with its American equivalent “the people,” just as Heimat is culturally
more significant than “home” as understood by geographically mobile
Americans. Terms like this have been left as is, with profound apologies to
non-German readers. I otherwise provide original East German terms,
accompanied by an English equivalent; all translations, unless otherwise
noted, are my own. It is to the official, historical, and ideological dimen-
sions of DDR-Identität, propagated by the Socialist Unity Party across a
span of four decades, that we now turn.

Notes
1. Joyce Marie Mushaben, From Post-War to Post-Wall Generations. Changing
Attitudes towards the National Question and NATO in the Federal Republic
of Germany (Boulder, CO: Westview Press, 1998).
2. In his own words: “Identität? Heimat? Ich glaube Heimat ist das was man
nur definieren kann, als was man verloren hat.”
3. This is the title of a literary treatment of Wolf’s own encounters with the
Secret Police or Stasi in the late 1970s. The author’s decision to publish her
account after the Wall fell led to charges of “opportunism,” followed by a
sustained public assault on her literary accomplishments, led by conservative
western male critics. See Chap. 7 for details.
4. Umbruch or implosion is the term some GDR experts prefer to use over the
term “revolution” to describe the peaceful dynamics of democratic awaken-
ing and regime collapse between August 1989 and October 1990.
5. Among its more “historically” valuable survey holdings are a number of
interval/panel studies initiated in 1969, under the titles STUDENT ’69,
STUDENT ’79, and STUDENT ’89, the eastern equivalent of the West
German Shell Studies.
 PART I

Dimensions of the Dialectical Identity

Once upon a time, there was a country about which most people knew and
probably cared so little that they only referred to it by its initials. It was the
“so-called DDR.” Like other countries throughout history and across the
globe, this one was created to pursue a specific set of ideals, derived from the
not-so-happy history of the big and powerful country that had preceded it,
which had also been German. It wanted to guarantee that this horrible his-
tory would never be repeated, so it adopted a new model for a perfect, peaceful
society—and for a brief period it showed the promise of becoming die deutsche
(anti-faschistische) demokratische Republik, 1945–1948.
But human leaders aren’t perfect and, like so many countries, this one had
a hard time living up to its ideals. Step by step, the theory became alienated
from the praxis so, like many other governments, this one tried to win the
hearts and minds of its citizens by using ever more boasting, propaganda and
even coercion. Its rulers wanted the country to give birth to millions of “social-
ist personalities” in their own image and likeness. But the message became
stale, the schools became authoritarian and the goods were not always deliv-
ered, during this phase of die deutsche demagogische Republik, 1949–1970.
As a result, the people became more apolitical, as they pulled into their
private niches; the state grew ever more distant, but they found a quiet middle
ground. They invented an historical compromise they called an “arrange-
ment.” The people would go to May Day and Founders’ Day parades (most
big governments love parades on their birthdays) and the state would leave
them more or less alone to struggle through the periods of scarce consumer
goods, albeit with lots of subsidies. Contradictions were, after all, just part of
18 Dimensions of the Dialectical Identity

the process of growing up to be real-existing socialists, and this was clearly the
phase of die deutsche dialektische Republik, 1971–1987.
The contradictions worsened, however, when the people in the Land of
Resistance Fighters woke up one day, turned on their televisions to watch the
evening news, on West-TV, and discovered that other countries were changing
all around them, opening their borders, even printing real-news in their
newspapers. DDR citizens wanted to know why they couldn’t at least be as
free as the Hungarians if they couldn’t be as rich as “the other” Germans.
So they headed out, in many new places, for a different kind of parade with
lots of candles; with lots of candles; only this time their children—actually the
children of the children of the comrades who had built the country in the first
place—pointed their fingers and called out loud that the emperor was wear-
ing no clothes. Their parents were a little ashamed, not of their leaders’
nakedness (after all, they had fought for nudist beaches) but of their own
silence all those years, and suddenly they became “the people” in die deutsche
dramatische Republik, 1988–1990.
Now some people wanted to ask important, theoretical questions, after
their own local parades, to talk about rebuilding their country based on a
new set of ideals. Most of their neighbors didn’t want to wait around for the
answers, however. Instead they packed their camping gear, got into their
funny little cars called Trabis (for Traurige Arbeiter und Bauern Initiative/
The Sad Initiative of Workers and Peasants), and following the wisdom of a
famous cigarette commercial, they shouted “Let’s go West.” Though our story
does not end here, this phase could be labeled die deutsche demolierte
Republik, which dominated the headlines from March 18 to October 3, 1990.
Not too long after the Wall came tumbling down, some people who looked
into their academic crystal balls and psychology textbooks predicted it would
take at least a decade for our sheroes and heroes to learn how to live happily
ever after in their glittery new republic. Five years into the internationally
celebrated marriage of the richly attired Western King and the somewhat
haggard-looking Eastern princess, the new people living in the Bigger (though
not totally Better) Kingdom started to ask, in the words of their own
Cassandra, “What remains?” They started to wonder ostagically, so to speak,
why they were being treated like strangers in a strange land. Too many had
lost their jobs, their benefits, their Heimat and often, quite literally, “a home
of their own,” in this new, deutsche däprimierte Republik, 1991–1998.
Now Old King Kohl was not such a merry, bold soul by the end of his reign,
so he and his minions hardly noticed that something amazing was taking
place in the far-away parts of his kingdom. The people started talking out
 Dimensions of the Dialectical Identity 19

loud, or talking to each other, while thinking about tactics and tricks they had
used to make their homeland better “in GDR times,” as they were wont to say.
Remembering their clubs, their grill- and other kinds of parties, their Handys,
their days and (k)nights of the Round Table, they took one last look in the
Spiegel (surveys); although the photo still wasn’t very flattering, they suddenly
realized that they had lost their ugly Duckmäuser demeanor and were anx-
ious to become a deutsche dynamische Region, 1999–2007.1
That would have been a happy ending, but the dark clouds of an EU
financial “shit-storm” (as the Germans say) spread across the land. Shortly
thereafter many new people from foreign lands began pouring into the
Kingdom in search of peace and freedom, just like these Germans had done
many years ago. But some of the citizens grew afraid and resentful, so they
took to the streets once again, chanting “we are the people.” But this time they
started voting for angry, taboo-breaking politicians who reminded too many
others at home and abroad of the deutsches dämonisches Reich that had
caused them to be divided in the first place. Unlike most fairy tales, this is not
the end of his- or her-story, so let us continue the tale.

Note
1. An earlier version of this tale appears in Joyce Marie Mushaben. 2010.
“Unification and the Law of Unanticipated Consequences,” German Studies
Review 33 (3): 483–488.
 CHAPTER 2

Exit, Voice, and Loyalty: The Theoretical

Parameters

Im traurigen Monat November war’s,        It was in November, that dreary month;
Die Tage wurden trüber,           The days were growing shorter;
Der Wind riss von den Bäumen das Laub     The winds ripped all the leaves from the trees;
Da reist’ ich nach Deutschland hinüber.     And I came to the German border.

Und als ich an die Grenze kam,       And as I reached the borderline
Da fühlt’ ich ein stärkeres Klopfen     A stronger pulse began
In meiner Brust, ich glaube sogar       To throb within me; down my cheeks
Die Augen begunnen zu tropfen…     I think some teardrops ran.

                   Heinrich Heine,

                   Deutschland, ein Wintermärchen1

More than three decades have passed since the two parts of a long-­divided
German nation became one, but even thirty years may not be sufficient to
make or break an identity, be it personal or national. Generational studies
suggest that it takes at least twenty years for people to sort through a
myriad of attitudes and behaviors in a conscious effort to determine which
identity traits are worth preserving, and which ones are best pitched into
the recycling bin of historical memory.2

© The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature 21

Switzerland AG 2023
J. M. Mushaben, What Remains?,
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-18888-6_2
22 J. M. MUSHABEN

This book began as a narrowly defined effort, prior to the fall of the
Berlin Wall, to pinpoint the quintessential components of a divided
national identity that rendered the German Democratic Republic a sepa-
rate state across a span of four decades. Its initial purpose was to determine
the extent to which specific elements of that identity contributed to, or
worked against, the leadership’s efforts to legitimize the GDR’s existence
in the eyes of its own citizens between its founding in 1949 and the 1989
Wende [Turn-around]. In the mid-1990s, I expanded my framework to
investigate not only the officially mandated “GDR-identity” but also key
features of a little studied, unofficial “eastern” (ostdeutsche) identity likely
to shape the formation of a new all-German identity following unification,
a topic I have followed for three decades.
While the German Democratic Republic ceased to exist as a political
entity on October 3, 1990, a de facto merging of the Eastern and Western
cultures had yet to occur by the time of the 2017 national elections.
Ironically, it took the rise of a rightwing populist party, the Alternative for
Germany (AfD), to force prominent elites in the “old” Federal Republic
to recognize the import of psychological factors in the unification process.
The potential sources of ongoing division I had emphasized in 1990–1991
resurfaced in public debates around 2014, following the rise of the
PEGIDA movement (Patriotic Europeans against the Islamization of the
Occident) in Dresden.3 The fact that the official GDR-identity lacked deep
roots among average citizens no doubt contributed to the state’s rapid
demise after the dramatic opening of the Wall on November 9, 1989. The
extraordinary pace of unification denied Easterners a chance to assess their
attachment to familiar elements of everyday GDR culture and values,
however, undercutting their ability to voice mounting dissatisfaction with
the path that “unity” had taken.
The GDR’s forty-year history embodies a complex interplay of conti-
nuity and change, successes and failures. Like every society, this one was
fraught with contradictions and conflicts, both class- and gender-based.
But eastern political culture also evinced its own forms of accommodation,
bargaining, and social solidarity. Its dissolution was simplistically charac-
terized in many quarters as the triumph of capitalism over communism,
and/or freedom over dictatorship. But identities do not die as a conse-
quence of new borders and a new currency alone. Were this the case, there
would have been no rational basis, and certainly no socio-cultural founda-
tion for a “reaffirmation” of national unity after forty years of German
division.
 2 EXIT, VOICE, AND LOYALTY: THE THEORETICAL PARAMETERS 23

At issue in this work is the staying-power of political culture. In his clas-

sic exploration of the Social Origins of Dictatorship and Democracy,
Barrington Moore Jr. ascertained that human beings have frequently been
“punched, bullied, sent to jail, thrown into concentration camps, cajoled,
bribed, made into heroes, encouraged to read newspapers, stood up
against a wall and shot, and sometimes even taught sociology,” under
many types of regimes seeking to preserve or transmit a particular value
system.4 This eclectic array of socialization methods, some more coercive
than others, implies that the goal of any state is not only to promote its
official political culture but also to have it internalized at the level of indi-
vidual consciousness. Political culture and national identity are synergisti-
cally linked, but the de jure elimination of the former does not produce
the immediate disappearance of the latter. Indeed, the difficulties inherent
in the inculcation of a new identity tell us how hard it must be to wipe out
old ones propagated by regimes of some duration.
The significance of political culture has been emphasized by political
theorists and would-be social engineers of many ideological persuasions,
ranging from Vladimir Lenin, Sidney and Beatrice Webb, Margarete
Mead, and Ruth Benedict, to Max Weber, Karl Mannheim, Talcott
Parsons, Gabriel Almond, and Sydney Verba. This is not to imply that
analysts share a consensus as to its content and role in processes of societal
change. At a minimum, a country’s political culture can be understood as
the cumulative impact of identities developed at multiple levels of “citizen
consciousness.” Devoting significant energy to the study of communist
states, Archie Brown defined political culture as “the subjective perception
of history and politics, the fundamental beliefs and values, the foci of iden-
tification and loyalty, and the political knowledge and expectations which
are the product of the specific historical experience of nations and groups.”5
Created after 1945 as a consequence of World War II, the socialist
states of Eastern Europe were extremely ambitious in their efforts to rede-
fine political culture “from above.” Seeking the total transformation of
political, economic, and cultural values, the fledgling regimes faced the
awesome task of introducing new historical-cultural traditions and “per-
sonalities” consonant with their own ideologies, in hopes of securing pop-
ular recognition of their new borders and institutions. The extent to which
they were successful remains an open question, given the electoral come-
backs of “reformed” socialist parties across Central/East Europe through
the 1990s, followed by shifts to the radical right over the last decade. As
one skeptical observer cautioned decades ago,
24 J. M. MUSHABEN

what the scholarship of comparative communism has been telling us is that

the political cultures are not easily transformed. A sophisticated political
movement ready to manipulate, penetrate, organize, indoctrinate, and
coerce and given an opportunity to do so for a generation or longer ends up
as much or more transformed than transforming.6

While efforts to induce political-cultural change from above often fall

short of the founders’ ideals, this does not preclude the possibility of fun-
damental, albeit incremental changes entrenching themselves from below
over a period of many decades.
Focusing on post-war Eastern Europe, Frank Parkin emphasized the
transformation of values as a function of institutional power: “Values are
much more likely to flow in a ‘downward’ than an ‘upward’ direction;
consequently moral assumptions which originate within the subordinate
class tend to win little acceptance among the dominant class.”7 Moore
disputed this claim, maintaining that a complete set of values does “not
descend from heaven to influence the course of history.” Political culture
never serves as “more than an intervening variable’ [operating as a filter]
between people and an ‘objective’ situation’, made up of all sorts of wants,
expectations, and other ideas derived from the past.”8 It does so in ways
that emphasize certain aspects of the objective situation by screening out
others, a process involving selective memory. Alternatively, Brown posited
that the ostensible (in)effectiveness of measures to secure political-cultural
change may not be a question of an upward/downward flow but rather
the result of minimal interaction between one (official) value system and
another dominant or “peer” culture.
New values, particularly those conducive to official aims, may be fused
with old ones, while old ones might be reinterpreted and renamed. One
should not presume that all cases of ostensible continuity involve processes
of direct transmission. Indeed,

revolutionary change in the political system opens up the possibility of dis-

sonance between the political culture and the political system… That is to
say, there may be a prolonged failure on the part of the controllers of insti-
tutional power to socialise the population into acceptance of the official
political culture. In such a case, a crisis triggered off by other stimuli
­(frequently but by no means always economic) may produce a more open
political situation in which the strength and direction of political change
may be strongly influenced by the dominant—and no longer dormant—
political culture.9
 2 EXIT, VOICE, AND LOYALTY: THE THEORETICAL PARAMETERS 25

The speed of “acceptance” and the degree to which the parameters of

a new political culture will be internalized depends, in part, on the nature
of citizens’ historical break with the pre-existing culture. Mary McAuley
stresses the interactive patterns between “past” and “present” factors,
including but not limited to “the speed of economic change, the type of
economic change, the role of the state, the relationship with other states,
intellectual movements within and outside the country, historical memo-
ries,” as well as collective religious orientations.10 A third variable influenc-
ing this process derives from the forces of demography, that is, the
proportion of a population that has reached political consciousness before,
during and after transformative events have occurred. Last but not least,
widespread absorption of a new paradigm of values, expectations, and
behaviors may well depend upon the methods of inculcation employed in
political (re)socialization.
This study is rooted in a concept of identity that is explicitly multi-­
dimensional in character, incorporating objective as well as subjective fea-
tures of East German political culture. It does not equate identity with the
sentimentally driven “love it or leave it” mentality (alias patriotism) that
typifies many US-American discussions of this topic. The construct uti-
lized here covers a much wider range of behaviors and attitudes, some
more inwardly directed than others.
Like political socialization, identity-formation is an ongoing process,
subject to many agents and environmental influences. Although this pro-
cess takes place at many levels simultaneously, two are particularly impor-
tant for the purposes of this study. The first entails official, collective culture
which determines that dimension of identity best understood as “state
consciousness.” This is the meaning ascribed to the term GDR-identity
throughout this book. Secondly, identity is shaped at the unofficial, indi-
vidual or personal level, in the realm Christiane Lemke and others have
labeled “peer culture.”11 In this context, I apply the label East German
identity. Both identity types usually encompass a spectrum of distinctive or
competing sub-identities (women vs. men), ranging from an “all-German
identity” or a specific “GDR-consciousness,” to regional and/or local
micro-identities (e.g., as Saxonians or Berliners). The identity traits
acquired at each level are interactive as well as cumulative; while distin-
guishable in theory, they are much harder to disaggregate in practice.
This investigation nonetheless rests on these analytical distinctions,
highlighting the key components of GDR-identity as it was officially
defined, collectively cultivated and individually experienced throughout the
26 J. M. MUSHABEN

course of East German history. Although I do not posit a perfect corre-

spondence between identity variables mandated at the political-systemic
level and those observed at the level of human psychology, I believe that it
is only by establishing linkages between the two that one can understand
persistent tensions between Eastern and Western Germans, which is essen-
tial to facilitating their alleviation.
Identity paradigms developed by social-psychologists can serve as effec-
tive heuristic devices in untangling the processes of national identity-­
formation.12 Observing in 1935 “how often in the last few years has one
heard… that it is quite inexplicable how the Germans could have changed
so completely in so short a time,” Karl Mannheim noted that an analyst

misinterprets psychological trends when he (sic) speaks of a sudden change

in national character… The most serious mistake… is to select a single man
as his criterion, and then to regard him as the incarnation of all the changes
that have taken place. If the different phases of the psychological changes
that have been diffused throughout a large community are projected onto a
single individual, one has only to multiply this figure a millionfold in order
to pride oneself on being a social psychologist. In this case it is clear that the
cardinal mistake was in creating the fiction of a uniform change passing
steadily over an entire nation, instead of making a concrete analysis of social
mechanisms. If we are to avoid mistakes of this kind we must divide this
complex transformation into its successive phases, with a different social mecha-
nism at work in each. [my emphasis]13

Mannheim’s caveat remains relevant for any scholar seeking to capture the
essence of German national character in the post-war and post-Wall eras.
We cannot assume that the GDR’s past efforts to instill a new “national”
identity by fiat were uniformly effective among various segments of its
population. Nor can we presume, as many post-unity prognoses did, that
market forces will move Eastern Germans in equal measure to embrace the
prevailing western or FRG-identity as their own.
This chapter begins by outlining a concentric model of identity devel-
oped in conjunction with my earlier work on West German identity, before
and after the fall of the Wall.14 Building on developmental and “operant
conditioning” theories advanced by Abraham Maslow and B. F. Skinner, I
explore key dimensions of individual-psychological, social-interactive and
national-collective identity. I then consider the ways in which the abrupt
demise of an official GDR-identity—but not its day-to-day counterpart,
East German identity—has redefined the significance assigned to each
dimension over the last three decades.
 2 EXIT, VOICE, AND LOYALTY: THE THEORETICAL PARAMETERS 27

I then revisit the exit/voice/loyalty paradigm first espoused by Albert

O. Hirschman in 1970 and revived after 1989/1990 to explain the sud-
den collapse of the GDR. I argue that Hirschman’s analytical framework,
rooted in Western, market-oriented and liberal-democratic assumptions,
overlooks critical forms of social communication stressed by Karl Deutsch,
that is, other types of exit and voice which evolved in response to the
GDR’s one-party dominant, command-economy system.15 I contend fur-
ther that Western bias led many post-Wall analysts, including Hirschman,
to neglect the paradigm’s critical third dimension, loyalty. As a result,
many scholars and political officials seriously underestimated the “staying
power” of eastern identities at the level of peer culture. I attempt to rem-
edy that miscalculation by linking loyalty to the concept of social capital,
an ingredient I view as absolutely essential to the internalization of democ-
racy among East German citizens in the nation united.

A Concentric Approach to Identity Theory

Identity begins with the individual, adding “layers” as it moves into the
larger communities of family, neighborhood, city, state, and nation. To
grasp the phenomenon of national identity in its entirety, it is helpful to
imagine it as concentric in nature (Fig. 2.1). The innermost circle encom-
passes the psychological needs of the individual. The second circle involving
specific patterns of social interaction may impose external limits on indi-
vidual identity but can also provide alternate sources of self-worth. The
outer circle finds identity moving beyond a personalized “community” to
a legal or historical collectivity known as the nation-state. Academic schol-
arship often construes the forces operating within each of these circles as
the province of a particular social science. There is nonetheless much to be
gained by exploring competing or complementary frameworks for “iden-
tity” borrowed from more than one field. My search for East German
identity therefore builds upon the works of political scientists, literary crit-
ics, social-psychologists, psycho-historians, and even psycho-therapists.

Circle One: Identity as the Bio-Psychology of the Individual

The acquisition of cognitive and affective orientations toward the self has
long occupied the attention of psychologists and psycho-analysts ranging
from Piaget to Freud. Theories regarding the contextual and interactional
components of self-identity are less well-developed yet all the more
28 J. M. MUSHABEN

Fig. 2.1 Concentric model of identity

interesting because of their inherently dynamic character. A broader inter-

disciplinary perspective helps to bridge the gap between individual and
collective identification processes.
An individual’s search for identity involves questions of personal as well
as political motivation. In his classical work on motivational theory,
Abraham Maslow posited five categories of human needs comprising a
“hierarchy of relative prepotency.” Once each class of needs is satisfied,
new and higher needs are expected to emerge which then come to domi-
nate the individual [or collective] organism.16 In ascending order, the scale
consists of basic physiological or sustenance needs, safety or security needs,
belonging and love needs, esteem or status and independence needs and,
finally, the need for self-actualization.
Implicit in Maslow’s theory is the notion that neither woman nor man
can be satisfied “by bread alone.” Humankind possesses an innate desire
to advance from one level of the scale to another, but the quest for a sense
of belonging is not inherently at odds with a striving for greater indepen-
dence; the former serves as a precondition for the latter. Maslow antici-
pated the rise of a “new discontent and restlessness” in the face of a
 2 EXIT, VOICE, AND LOYALTY: THE THEORETICAL PARAMETERS 29

repressed “desire to become more and more what one is, to become
everything that one is capable of becoming.”17 A fundamental thwarting
of these needs would “give rise to either basic discouragement or else
compensatory or neurotic needs,” and possibly to severe traumatic neuro-
sis.18 The latter is reflected in certain psychological “deformations” affect-
ing particularly sensitive or politically persecuted individuals (but certainly
not all citizens) under the old GDR regime.19
Desire alone will not enable an individual to attain a state of physical
and psychological well-being. Each person must discover and engage in
“functions furthering the interchange between organism and environ-
ment,” known as behavior.20 Not all behaviors move people toward their
desired end of self-actualization; some can even prove counter-productive,
causing humans to pursue a strategy B. F. Skinner characterized as “selec-
tion by consequences.”
Drawing on patterns of biological evolution, Skinner traced persistent
modes of human behavior back to the first molecule that managed to
reproduce itself and prevail against the rest. Other organisms followed,
whose reproduction occurred under ever more diverse and, in part, adverse
conditions. The environment played a determining role in the genetic
endowment of biological functions, rendering an organism most likely to
survive/thrive under conditions equivalent to those underlying its selec-
tion. Hence, “the definition or identity of a species, person, or culture” is
transmitted from one generation to the next to the degree that select
behaviors are reproduced as part of an individual’s repertoire.21
Skinner held that successful reproduction over time depends on two
processes enabling organisms to acquire behaviors appropriate to subse-
quent changes in the environment. The first is known as respondent
(Pavlovian) conditioning, whereby responses pre-programmed by natural
selection can be redirected and controlled by new stimuli. The second
process is operant conditioning, whereby events immediately following
new stimuli serve to strengthen or reinforce new responses. This method
amounts to “selection in progress, resembling a hundred million years of
natural selection or a thousand years of the evolution of a culture com-
pressed into a very short period of time.”22
To the extent that human behavior is primarily social in nature, other
members of the species provide one of the most stable fixtures within a
given environment. “Imitation” of others is critical to reinforcement and
thus to the perpetuation of a behavioral repertoire; contingencies induc-
ing one “organism” to perform in a certain way will generally impel others
Another random document with
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place.

Richard Whitmore returned without having seen either Colonel Pease or his
daughter, so was unable to answer the volley of questions by which he was
assailed.

"Miss Pease was comfortably established at the hotel selected by her brother,
and had received a telegram announcing his arrival. She hoped to see him
almost immediately. I thought it better not to intrude upon such a meeting by
staying until he came," he replied.

Miss Pease wrote letters which showed that she was brimming over with
gladness; but as the days went on a difficulty arose as to her return to Mere
Side.

"My brother has much business to attend to, and will have a great deal of
travelling before he can settle down. There is no one but myself to look after
Norah. What can I do but stay with the child?"

"Bring her here, I should say," suggested Mina. "By all accounts she knows
very little of her native country, for she went to India a tiny child, came back,
lost her mother, and since then has wandered to and fro on the earth under
her aunt's wing. May she come here, Dick, and enjoy a summer holiday in
England?"

"I can have no objection, dear. In fact, it is the best possible solution to the
difficulty. Then we shall get our dear little house-mother back again, and as
soon as Colonel Pease can spare time for a rest he shall come too, if he will.
Mere Side will be a real home for him amongst you girls, until he can fix on
one for himself. He means to buy a handsome place somewhere."

Miss Pease was delighted when the cordial invitation came, and actually
written in Gertrude's hand. She was longing for the dear niece to meet the
girls to whom she was so warmly attached, and she was utterly weary of hotel
life after a fortnight's experience, and with but little of her brother's society,
owing to unavoidable causes. So she sent a grateful acceptance on North's
behalf, and herself carried to Mere Side a message from Colonel Pease, who
promised to spend his first spare week there.

The little lady was warmly welcomed by the Whitmore girls on her return, and
her niece was also received in a manner that charmed both. They were all,
however, surprised to find that the new guest, though a girl, was about Mina's
age, instead of Molly's.
The latter expressed what the rest felt when, after embracing Miss Pease with
equal vigour and affection, she exclaimed, "Why, your niece is a grown-up
young lady. I thought she was a girl like me, and that we should all call her
Norah."

"She will be very much distressed if you call her anything else," said the girl
herself. "I am very sorry for the misapprehension, but you must please not
blame my aunt for it. The mistake she made was not a wilful one."

"The fact is, Molly dear, that I never calculated on Norah being grown-up any
more than you did, but kept picturing her as very much the same as when I
last saw her, forgetting that Time had not stood still with the child any more
than with the rest of us."

They felt that Miss Pease had been herself mistaken, and when she added,
"You must not like my Norah any less on account of her aunt's blunder," a
chorus of welcoming words came from the girls, after which the young guest
was conveyed to her room.

"I think she is one of the most charming young creatures I ever saw," said Jo,
and Mina echoed the expression.

"What do you think of Norah, Gertrude?"

"I quite agree with you both," was the answer; and in her heart she added, "I
wish she were not so charming."

Richard was absent when the arrival took place, but on his return in the early
evening, he glanced towards the doorway, and saw not only his pet Molly on
the look-out for his coming, but a sort of glorified Molly near her.

It was a girl with hair of the same shade and a very fair complexion, but taller
and slenderer than his robust young sister. He could see the perfect profile,
and was sure the eyes were beautiful, though he could not discern their
colour. But whilst the features were so fine and delicately cut, there was
nothing of the mere statue-like beauty in the face as a whole. On the contrary,
those who might be at first attracted by the almost perfect features, would
forget these in the greater beauty of expression and the wonderful charm of
manner which Norah Pease possessed.

Richard Whitmore did not see all this at once. But he noted the figure of a girl
in a simple dress of dainty Dacca muslin, only relieved by pale blue bows, and
he thought it exactly suited the place. Norah was not looking in his direction,
but towards something which Molly was pointing out in the distance, and he
slackened his steps in order to take in the sweet picture more fully.

Miss Pease saw him coming, and met him at the door to exchange greetings,
and to be welcomed back by Richard himself. As they crossed the hall
together, Molly, who had become aware of her brother's presence, rushed to
meet him.

"Come, Dick," she said, "and be introduced to Norah. She is older than I am
by more than three years, and not a schoolgirl, but she is just as nice."

Miss Pease was about to introduce Norah to her host in due form, but Molly
spared her the trouble by saying, "Norah, this is Brother Dick. He is such a
darling, and so is she, Dick. You are sure to like one another. Are they not,
Miss Pease?" turning to her elder friend.

"Indeed I hope so," said Richard; and, quite naturally, Norah echoed the wish.

"I can hardly feel strange here," she added, "for my aunt has written so much,
and, since we met, talked so much about every one at Mere Side, that I
almost thought I was going to meet five more cousins, and had a sense of
extra riches in consequence."

"Cousins do not seem such very near relatives after all," said Molly, in a
meditative tone. "Sisters are better. I should like you for one, Norah."
Miss Pease was just a little scandalized at Molly's freedom of speech, and
said, "My dear, you talk too fast. I am afraid Richard spoils you too much."

But there was no trace of self-consciousness on Norah's face as she thanked

Molly for her willingness to adopt her as a relative on such very short
acquaintance. Then Richard, Miss Pease, and she talked on quite
unrestrainedly, and the girl was enthusiastic about the loveliness around her.
Somehow, the aunt and niece drifted into the angle window, while Dick stood
just within, his arm round Molly, and told his young guest the names of the
hills which bounded the view, and various other particulars about the
landscape before them.

"This window is the most charming nook I ever saw," said Nora. "I can
scarcely bear to leave it. And what a wealth of roses you have! The varieties
seem endless."

"If you are not too tired, will you come and look at them before dinner? You
want some flowers to wear, do you not? My sisters always like to have them
and to choose for themselves."

"That is the best of all," said Norah. "I would rather have a knot of wild-flowers
that I gathered for myself than the finest bouquet that could be bought ready
put together by an accomplished gardener."

She turned to leave the recess, but at the instant something struck violently
against the glass and startled her. On looking she could see nothing.

"Do not be alarmed," said Richard. "This is a thing which, unfortunately, often
happens. A poor bird has flown against the pane, and probably wounded itself
so badly that it will die. As the creatures can see through the glass, they
cannot understand that it offers a solid obstacle to their flight, and many are
killed in this way. It is the only drawback to my enjoyment of this window. Will
you not come out this way?" And Richard stepped out through the open sash,
and offered his hand to assist Norah in following.

There upon the ground, feebly fluttering, lay a fine thrush, wounded to death.
Tears sprang into Norah's eyes as she saw it, but, happily, the pains of the
injured bird were not of long duration. A moment after she first saw it the
movement ceased.

Richard picked up the dead thrush, and gently stroked its glossy feathers,
then laid it down amongst some shrubs, saying, "It shall be buried by and by.
You may think me sentimental for a man, but I do not like to cover the poor
little body with earth whilst it is warm with the life that has but just fled."

"I think you feel just as I do. Why should a man be less pitiful than a girl?"
replied Norah.

Richard smiled in reply, and led the way to the roses, for his guest to make
choice amongst them. At first he had felt sorry that Norah should be with only
her aunt and Molly, beside himself, for the other girls were engaged at a tennis
party, to which they had been invited before they knew when Miss Pease
would return. But he never forgot that evening which seemed to bring the girl
guest and himself so near together, and that night he dreamed of the slender
white-robed figure framed by the angle window.

Day followed day, and each developed some new charm in Norah. She had
travelled much, and had a well-stored mind, without the smallest taint of
pedantry. She was a born musician, but though her voice was well cultivated,
she owed less to her teachers than to her natural gifts, and when she sang,
none could help listening with delight.

The Whitmore girls loved her. Even Gertrude felt the spell, for with all Norah
was so sweet, frank, tender, and natural, that she won hearts without effort.
She had won one that hitherto had never been stirred in like manner, for
Richard Whitmore had given to Norah all the love of which his large heart was
capable.

Outsiders began to smile as they saw the young master of Mere Side so
constant in his attendance on his graceful guest. Miss Sharp found something
new to talk about, and whispered to gossips like herself, that any one could
see what Miss Pease had brought Norah to Saltshire for. She had fished for
an invitation for her niece in order to get her a rich husband. How hard it
would be for those four girls to give place to a chit like that!

Gentle Miss Pease had her qualms of conscience lest she might be misjudged
in this matter, though she knew her brother's only child would be a rich
heiress, and no unsuitable mate in that respect for Richard Whitmore.

And Gertrude! She was not blind. She guessed her brother's secret, but said
nothing, though a fierce combat was going on within her. Self was battling
against her love for Richard, and that which Norah had wrung from her in spite
of her will. She felt how well suited they were to each other, and yet she could
not endure the idea of Richard taking to himself a wife.
The other girls had no such feelings, but would have welcomed Norah as a
sister with open arms.

Week followed week, and it was near the end of August. Still Norah stayed on
at Mere Side, and waited in expectation of her father's coming, and still he
was prevented from joining her there. His letters were frequent and full of
regrets, though he expressed the hope that present self-denial would lead to
satisfactory results, and that when these business matters were settled, a
future of rest would be before him.

One morning, however, Norah received a letter which scattered dismay

amongst the family at Mere Side.

She could not bear to tell the contents, but passed it for her aunt to read
aloud, and Miss Pease began, "My dearest Eleanor."

"I thought your name was just Norah," said Molly. "I am always called so,
because—"

Someone entered at the moment, and stopped the girl from telling why her
name had been thus abridged, and Miss Pease continued—

"I am really grieved that after all I cannot at present join you at Mere Side, and
have the pleasure of personally thanking Mr. Whitmore and his sisters for all
their kindness and of making their acquaintance. I must hope for this at some
future time."

"You, dear Eleanor, must come to me with as little delay as possible. I should
like you to meet me on Thursday, and on Saturday I purpose going on to
Paris, where your aunt and cousins now are. A family matter requires that we
should meet. Indeed, she wants my help, and, after all her goodness to you, it
would ill become me to hesitate, if I can be of use to her. Nelly and Beatrice
are in a state of wild delight at the prospect of seeing you."

"Your aunt's maid, Carter, has been visiting her old mother in Lincolnshire, and
I have arranged that she shall bring you from Mere Side, or rather from
Salchester, where she will meet with you, travel to town with you, and cross
with us to the Continent. This plan will prevent your causing any
inconvenience to your aunt."

There were further messages of thanks, regards, and regrets, and then the
letter ended, amid a chorus of groans from the listeners.
Norah's face had grown pale, and Richard's had on it an expression of pain
that was unmistakable.

He had waited, like the honourable man he was, for the coming of Colonel
Pease before speaking to Norah. He thought it would not be right to declare
his affection for the daughter until the father had seen him, and had an
opportunity of judging of his character.

He must not speak now, for this was Wednesday, and on the morrow the girl
was to leave. The bustle of preparation had to be got over, and at ten o'clock
in the morning Norah must be ready to depart.

So much had to be crowded into so short a time that there was little leisure for
uttering vain regrets, though a running fire of these was kept up on all sides
through the day and during the gathering together of Norah's belongings.

"Shall you have any spare time?" asked Richard at luncheon. "Or will it be all
bustle until you step into the carriage?"

"I shall have the whole evening," replied Norah; "all the time, I mean, from four
o'clock. I could not do without a last happy night to look back upon. I can
never thank you all for your kindness to me."

"Thank us by coming back and bringing your father as soon as possible. For
the present, I, for one owe you much, Norah; so the balance is really on the
other side. My home was never so graced before," he added, with a smile and
a look which made a flush cover the girl's fair face, "or seemed so bright a
place to me."

But she looked bravely up at him in return, and said—

"I will certainly come back to Mere Side, if I may, and bring my father too. You
ought to know each other. You only need to meet to be friends."

That afternoon they all had early tea on the terrace, and as they sat there the
old swallows circled round and round, feeding their young ones in the air, and
exercising them preparatory to the long flight before them. Down they came,
skimming the surface of the lake, which was all aglow with the rays of the
declining sun, dipping in its waters, and then gathering on the roof to plume
themselves after their bath.

"The swallows are getting ready for flight, like you, Norah," said Richard. "A
little while and they will all be gone. See, that is a hawk in the distance. I hope
he will not carry off any fledgling to-night."

"You know everything," she replied. "Birds, bees, trees, flowers are all familiar.
You only need a glance to name them."

"I have lived among them always. A country life has interest enough for me;
but I do sometimes wish to see more than these familiar objects, and, but for
an outcry among the girls, I should have joined a scientific expedition this last
spring. I could not leave the mother awhile back, or my sisters in their sorrow.
Perhaps I may give up the idea altogether," he added in a musing fashion,
"though there is such an expedition annually in connection with a society to
which I belong."

"I hope you will not be away when I—when my father comes to Mere Side,"
said Norah.

And Dick responded emphatically—

"I certainly shall not."

Later on in the twilight Norah sat at the piano and sang one song after
another, and then they stole an hour from sleep, and all talked of the happy
days they had spent together, and of their hope of meeting again. At the same
time on the following evening the swallows were skimming to and fro, but
Norah was gone, and the house seemed empty to its master, though all the
rest were left. But as he sat in the library, with his head leaning on his hand,
Richard saw neither books nor aught around him.

He was picturing that slender, white-robed figure as he first saw it in the

doorway. He heard none of the sounds going on around, though the tennis-
players were on the lawn and the bold song of the robins came from every
bush. What he heard was a sweet voice flooding the room with a richer song,
and one that spoke more to his heart than theirs.

And Richard smiled to himself as he said, "The seat in the angle window, the
mother's seat, will be filled again, and I shall hear the dear voice that makes
my heart thrill as no other can, in place of the echo which memory gives me
now. For I felt her little hand tremble in mine, and though she said 'good-bye'
in a brave voice to all the rest, she could not say it to me, though her lips
parted and closed. I had her last look, and tears were shining in her eyes as
she gave it. They are speaking eyes, and they said to me, 'I am sorry to go,
but I will not forget my promise. I will come again.'"
 CHAPTER VI.
THE FRAME HAS A PICTURE ONCE MORE.

NORAH wrote as soon as possible to tell of her arrival at Paris, and pour forth
on the same sheet her regrets at parting from the Whitmores, and her
pleasure in being with all her kith and kin. At first there seemed a prospect of
their returning to England; but later on, instead of hearing that a time was
fixed for their coming, news arrived of a contrary character. The doctors
advised Colonel Pease to winter at Cannes, in order that after so many years
spent in India, he might not be too suddenly exposed to the severity of the
season in England.

Richard Whitmore heard this, and began to meditate on the possibility of

taking Miss Pease and his sisters to spend the winter in the Riviera, but he
decided to let January come first, and then to journey South for the three
following months.

Once more came a message from the angle window which put an end to his
plans and froze to the death the glad hopes that he had been nourishing in his
heart.

Gertrude was sitting there with Miss Pease, reading a letter aloud, when he
entered the morning-room. She was not very fond of pet names, and often
called her sisters by theirs at fall length instead of using the diminutives, Mina
and Jo, and roused Molly's wrath by calling her Florence Mary. Since she had
been aware that Norah was only short for Eleanor, Gertrude usually spoke of
their late guest by her full name also.

As Richard entered the room he heard his sister say, "So Eleanor is actually
engaged to Sir Edward Peyton. Is it not rather a sudden affair?"

"Perhaps it may be deemed so in respect to the engagement itself, but they

have been long acquainted. While Norah was here she often spoke of his
frequent visits and attentions when we were alone, but so long as there was
nothing definite it was scarcely likely she would allude to such things before
others."

Richard paused a moment to recover himself after the blow. Then he

advanced towards Miss Pease, saying, "I was not an intentional
eavesdropper, but I heard the news of your niece's engagement, and I
suppose I must congratulate you on the event."

"Yes, Eleanor is engaged," said the little lady, all sympathetic smiles and
blushes. "Sometimes I think when such events occur, condolences would be
more fitting for those they leave behind. When there is but a single parent and
few children, or only one, a break brings pain as well as pleasure, even
though caused by marriage."

Richard begged Miss Pease to give his congratulatory messages, and then
stole away into the library to think over what he had heard, and find comfort as
best he might.

There was only one picture that came constantly before him, and that was the
angle window without an occupant, and a dying bird on the terrace below.

And Richard whispered to himself, "Just another wounded bird. I could almost
wish that I, too, had been injured even unto death. If it were not that I am
needed, specially by Molly, I should say it in earnest. As it is, I must run away,
lest the rest should see the wound."

Richard's mind was promptly made up. There was to be an expedition for the
purpose of observing a total eclipse of the sun, visible in Southern latitudes,
but not in England. He announced his intention of joining it, pleaded that he
wanted a shake-up, that he was growing old and rusty by dint of over-petting
and self-indulgence; and, in short, that he must go.

Before Miss Pease received another letter conveying a message of thanks for
his congratulations, Richard had completed his arrangements and was on his
way to Mauritius.

Whilst there he saw in the "Times," for February 27, an announcement of the
marriage, at Cannes, of Sir Edward Peyton, Bart., and Eleanor Pease. It was
simply worded, and as the "Queen" did not fall into his hands, Richard missed
many details about dresses, bridesmaids, etc., some of which might have
proved interesting.
He wondered a little that almost nothing was said in subsequent home letters
about this marriage. Miss Pease did just mention that Eleanor's wedding had
taken place, and there were allusions in some of his sisters' epistles to the
good match made by her niece, but Norah, as the Norah of Mere Side, was
not mentioned, or only in the most cursory way.

"Perhaps they guess," thought Richard, "and are silent for my sake. Thank
God, for Norah's! From all I have been able to ascertain she has married a
good man, and I pray that she may be happy. I would not grudge her to the
husband of her choice, but somehow I cannot believe that any tie existed
when she was with us. If I had only spoken, or gone when she did to meet her
father—but it is too late."

It was not until the May twelve months after leaving home that Richard
Whitmore set foot in England again.

He joined one scientific party after another, and went to and fro, adding much
to his store of knowledge, and finding in change of scene and the habit of
close observation, which gave him work for every day, the best remedy for the
wound which healed but slowly.

Then he had to come home, to open his hands for more wealth. A distant
cousin had left him thirty thousand pounds. When the news reached him he
said, "This, divided into four and added to the little belonging to the girls, will
give each of them ten thousand pounds, for the Maynards do not want it.
There will be more for them by and by, from their bachelor brother, for I shall
never marry now."

He did not tell them this, or even about the legacy at first. He had to hear of all
that had passed during his absence, to note that Molly, now turned seventeen,
was more like Norah Pease, slenderer and more thoughtful-looking than of
old.

It was Dick's absence that had made her the last. Little Miss Pease's hair was
greyer, but it just suited her delicately fresh complexion. Nina and Jo had
altered less than Molly, but Gertrude was the most changed of all.

There was a new light in her eyes, a softer flush on her cheek, a gentleness of
manner foreign to the old Gertrude. Molly's welcome was not more hearty
than hers, or her sisterly embrace more tender or more entirely voluntary than
was Gertrude's.
Nobody had told Richard anything, but he looked at his eldest sister and
guessed her secret rightly.

The girl had given her heart to a good, but not a rich man, one who at first
feared to offer his own to Miss Whitmore, of Mere Side, lest he should be
suspected of seeking a rich bride whose wealth would make amends for his
own small means.

For once Miss Sharp's tongue did good service without its being intended. Her
keen eyes, ever on the watch, detected something in Gertrude's manner
favourable to Mr. Kemble, of whose views she decided there could be no
doubt.

"He is in the Civil Service, and has an income of three hundred a year," said
Miss Sharp. "I dare say he thinks Gertrude Whitmore is an heiress, but I shall
open his eyes, and show that proud minx what he is really looking after."

Miss Sharp carried out her resolution, and managed to let Mr. Kemble's sister
and niece, visitors in the neighbourhood, know the exact amount to which
Miss Whitmore was entitled under her father's will. The result astonished her.

Instead of packing up and departing at once, Mr. Kemble manifested the

greatest delight. He would have shrunk from the heiress, but he dared to ask
the girl he loved to share his lot, when he found out that there was not much
disparity in their means, and none in social standing; and she accepted him
with this proviso, that Richard must give his consent, though she was of age.

Gertrude told her brother this, sitting in the angle window, and with the moon
shining in thereat.

Dick kissed her, rejoiced with her, and told her there was no need to wait for
the advance of salary which Kemble was sure of in another year.

"True hearts should not be parted without a needs-be, my dear, and none
exists in your case," he said. Then he told her how he had always put by a
considerable portion of his income, in order that his sisters might not be
dowerless maidens.

"I counted on this sort of thing coming to one of you at a time, you know, and I
was fairly ready for your first turn, my dear, before something else happened,
which has given me at a stroke enough for you all."
He told her of the legacy, and the share he had mentally appropriated to
herself, then added, "As I am a cut-and-dried old bachelor, there will be more
for you in the long run."

He was not prepared for what followed.

Gertrude broke into a flood of passionate tears and sobs, and between these
she cried, "Dick, dear brother Dick, can you forgive me? I do not deserve
anything from you. I have been hard and selfish and ungrateful. I have tried to
make the others so, and cared nothing for your happiness, only how I could
keep all good things to myself. It was when I learned to love Bertram that I
knew what I had done to you."

The girl sank on her knees and hid her tearful face in her hands as she bowed
her head over Dick's lap, and her frame shook with sobs.

Love had conquered at last, as he always believed it would, and Richard's

face looked beautiful in the moonlight, as he bent over his sister and insisted
on raising her from the ground and drawing her head on his breast.

"You do forgive me, Dick. Your kind touch tells me so without words; but
please listen, I want you to know everything—" and the girl went on and laid
bare all the envy, ingratitude, and selfishness that had begun during that visit
to the Tindalls, and how these things had grown and for a long time influenced
her life for evil. "Then," she said, "you were so persistently loving that I began
to see the beauty of your life and disposition, and to loathe the ugliness of my
own—till Norah came."
Richard started at the mention of that name, and Gertrude felt his heart beat
fuller and faster.

"No one, not even I, could help loving Norah," she said, "and often I thought
what a perfect mate she would be for you, dear Dick; but I could not endure
the idea of her coming here as mistress and turning us all out of Mere Side. I
thought you cared for her, and she for you, but nothing came of it, only I was
glad when she went away, though I expected you and she would soon meet
again. You would have done so if you had not set out for Mauritius, for we
were invited to the wedding, only we did not go as you were absent."

"How could I have gone?" asked Dick, with a groan of anguish that went to the
listener's heart and told her something of what he had suffered.

"Then you did think it was Norah who married Sir Edward Peyton. I thought
you misunderstood, and yet I purposely held my tongue. I know what my
silence has done. I felt it when I realised what it would be if I were called on to
part with Bertram. You will never forgive me, never."

"For pity's sake tell me what you mean, Gertrude! I am not often so impatient,
but suspense will drive me mad. Is Norah married?"

"No, Dick, neither has she ever been engaged. Do you remember that
morning when Miss Pease was reading the colonel's letter, in which he called
his daughter 'Eleanor'? Nora was going to explain why she was never
addressed by it at her aunt's, but someone interrupted. She told me
afterwards that Eleanor was her grandmother's name, and that her elder
cousin bore it as well as herself. To distinguish between them, one was called
Nelly; that was the girl whom Miss Pease described as having been 'all
elbows' when she was just in her teens, and the other, our Eleanor, was Norah
to everybody. Nelly is Lady Peyton, and Norah is Norah Pease to-day."

An irrepressible thanksgiving broke from Richard's lips, and confirmed

Gertrude's conviction, whilst it increased her penitence.

"You must know all," she added. "All the rest believed that you knew which of
the girls was engaged to Sir Edward Peyton. I led them to think so, without
directly saying it; and though they had thought you cared for Norah, when you
went away so suddenly they concluded either that they had made a mistake
or that she had refused you. This is why they scarcely named her in letters."
"Are Colonel Pease and Norah in England?" asked Richard, in a voice unlike
his own, so moved was he.

"Yes; and they are coming here to-morrow. They were to have come together
so long ago, but they have been wintering abroad and travelling about with the
other family ever since."

There was a short silence, and again Gertrude faltered out—

"Can you forgive me, now you know all?"

"Thank God, I can, as I hope to be forgiven. He has overruled all for good—
even my rashness and blindness."

For a little moment Richard still held the weeping girl to his breast, and then
he kissed her once more, and, gently placing her on the seat whence he had
risen, left her alone in the moonlight.

The next day brought Norah and her father, and the first sight of the dear fair
face told Richard as plainly as words that she had come back unchanged, and
was glad to be there.

A few more happy days, and then Richard told the story of his love, and knew
that the treasure he desired above all others was his very own, with her
father's full consent.

He spoke and she listened, in the fittest place of all—the angle window, which
is no longer a frame without a picture. A white-robed figure sits on what was
once the mother's seat, and gives her husband an answering smile when he
looks in that direction from amongst the roses.

Colonel Pease has bought a fine estate in Saltshire, with a house on it ready
to his hand, and his gentle little sister presides over his domestic
arrangements.

Gertrude's home is in the outskirts of London; Mina will soon follow her sister's
example, and go to a new nest. The other girls will do as they have done
since Dick's marriage—flit between Mere Side and Overleigh, the colonel's
home; for the old soldier is never happier or Miss Pease more in her element
than when they have young faces about them.

It is said that Miss Sharp has greatly affected the society of Miss Pease since
she began her rule at Overleigh; but there is no fear for the colonel; he is too
old a soldier.

Brother Dick is as truly blessed as his unselfish nature deserves to be, now he
has quite recovered from the wound he received through the angle window.
 A MERE FLIRTATION

CHAPTER I.

"IT seems strange that Dr. Connor should advise your going away again in
such lovely weather, and from a place to which other people come in search
of health. He might let you have a little peace."

So spoke Norah Guiness to Jeannie Bellew, an only child, a probable heiress,

and the object of enough thought, care, and indulgence to spoil a much finer
nature than she was gifted with.

"It is always a doctor's way. He must order something different from what you
have, however good that may be. I have everything that money can buy, and
instead of being allowed to enjoy it in peace, am sent hither and thither at the
doctor's will. Look at me, Norah. Am I like an invalid?"

Thus appealed to, Norah surveyed Jeannie as she lay back in a folding-chair
and challenged her scrutiny with a half-defiant air.

Truly there was nothing of an invalid about the girl. There was a rich colour on
her fair face, her figure was symmetrical, and the shapely hand on which her
curly head partly rested was plump and well-rounded. Norah thought there
was no trace of illness, and said so.

"The doctor should know what is best," she replied; "but as an invalid you
appear to me an utter fraud."

A ringing, musical laugh greeted these words, then Jeannie started from her
seat, kissed Norah, declared she always was a dear, sensible darling, whose
judgment was worth that of all the doctors put together, danced round the
room, and finally dropped panting into her seat again, with a considerably
heightened colour.

Norah noticed that Jeannie's hand was pressed to her side, and looked grave.
"Are you wise to indulge in such violent exercise?" she asked.

"Perhaps not, though it is only the having been pampered and waited on hand
and foot that has made me so susceptible. I must really begin to live like other
girls now I am so well again," said Jeannie.

"Only do not make such a sudden start. Have you any pain?"

"Not a bit, now. I had a little twinge or two, but it is all gone. The strongest girl
would have felt as much if she had been prancing round as I did a minute ago.
I am as well as you are, Norah. It is downright wicked of Doctor Connor to say
that I must have another change for a month or so, and then he will decide
about next winter. As though one lost nothing by leaving a home like mule with
all its comforts. I have often thought that the loss of them counterbalanced the
good done by the 'entire change' the doctors are so fond of ordering. If I could
take Benvora and all belonging to it, Jet included, away with me, I should care
less. And I would have you, Norah, if I could."

"That is impossible, dear. I am quite indispensable at home. But there is Jack

Corry. You will want him most of all, now your engagement is a settled thing."

"Want Jack with me!" exclaimed Jeannie. "Why, Norah, what can have put
such an absurd notion into your head? If you realised my feelings the least
little bit, you would know that the sweet drop in my cup of banishment from
Ballycorene is the thought that I shall leave Jack Corry behind me. He bores
me to death. He follows me like a lapdog, gives me no chance of wishing to
see him, for he is here so often that I am at my wits' end to get rid of him half
the time. Jack Corry, indeed!" And Jeannie gave her pretty head a toss, as
though she and the individual in question had neither thought nor wish in
common.

Norah looked utterly bewildered, and heard without understanding her friend's
words.

"I thought you cared so much for Jack," she said. "If not, why did you act in
such a way as to make him think you did? 'Why did you accept his offer, and
allow your engagement to be announced, if—"

Norah hesitated to put her thoughts into words. She was true to the core
herself, and infinitely above the petty vanity and cruel selfishness combined
which make up the character of a flirt—vanity, which is ever craving for
admiration, and never satisfied with what it gets; selfishness, that cares only
for gratifying the whim of the moment, without heeding what the amusement
may cost some true heart; vanity, that loves to parade the homage that is
rendered, yet only values it so far as it can be displayed and utilised to
advance its own importance, or to while away time that would otherwise hang
heavily; selfishness, that having had its turn served, its little day of triumph,
never asks whether the moths that fluttered round had merely sunned
themselves in the light and suffered no harm, or whether they had been
cruelly scorched whilst suspecting none.

Hard hearts are like diamonds. The flirt's weapons glance harmlessly aside
from them and leave no wound, as the best-tempered tool leaves no scratch
on the surface of the precious stone. But those same weapons have pierced
many a true and tender heart, and virtually killed its faith in womanly truth, and
taught it to doubt the possibility of honest girlish affection.

It seemed too dreadful for Norah to associate the idea of vanity and
selfishness with her friend Jeannie, a girl just eighteen, and looking even
younger, with her fair face and childish head covered with a crop of short
curls. Yet as she gave a mental glance at the past she felt that Jeannie's
actions and words belied each other.

Jack Corry had long been deemed quite first favourite in the neighbourhood.
He was bright, kindly. To young and old alike, he was ever ready to render a
service, and people used to look at him and say that this was his one fault. He
was the same to all, and no person could detect any sign of preference
towards any of his fair neighbours.

Jeannie Bellew had spent two winters in the Riviera. Whether there now
existed any cause for anxiety on her behalf, there had been enough to justify
the fears of her parents and her own banishment.

A sharp attack of inflammation of the lungs, brought on, if truth must be told,
by her own wilfulness, had left the girl without absolute disease, but extremely
sensitive to every change of temperature. After her second winter in the
South, she had returned home with greatly improved strength and looks, but
in other respects rather changed than improved.

Jeannie, the little schoolgirl, with her artless country manners and winsome
ways, was gone, and in her stead there returned to Ballycorene one who was
a girl in age and looks, but who brought with her more knowledge of the world
than all her feminine neighbours put together could boast of.

Mrs. Bellew had accompanied her daughter on both occasions, and a middle-
aged, trusty servant waited on the two. But the mother dreaded the loneliness
of life in apartments, where everything and every person were strange around
them, and so the pair spent the two winters in a large hotel, and gained many
experiences which the younger especially would have been much better
without.

Before Jeannie's reappearance, Ballycorene gossips had begun to couple the

name of Jack Corry with that of Norah Guiness, and to say that at last the way
to his heart had been discovered. Also that if he had the luck to gain Norah's,
he would win the greatest treasure that could enrich his life and brighten a
home, though she would be almost a dowerless maiden.

Perhaps it was because no word or act of Norah's gave Jack Corry cause to
think she bestowed a thought upon him, that he began to devote much
thought to her. She practised no little coquettish airs, did not pretend to shun
him, in order to hire him to seek her. She met him, as she did others, with the
bright smile, the honest look devoid of all self-consciousness, the kindly
greeting which was natural in one whom he had known all his life, and no
more.

No girl looked on Norah as a possible rival. All regarded her as a true-hearted

friend, and saw in her a self-devoting daughter, the one comfort of her father's
life, and a sister almost worshipped by his three motherless lads. None could
accuse her of striving to attract Jack Corry, and so, when it seemed that he
was likely to be attracted, all the girls with one consent voted, "Better Norah
than anyone else."

Then Jeannie Bellew came back to Benvora, changed as aforesaid, a

fashionable young lady instead of a simple country girl, and yet with the power
to act the latter character to perfection when it suited the whim of the moment.
She was prettier than ever, and had acquired an ease and grace of manner
which, together with an almost inexhaustible wardrobe, threw all the country
girls into the shade.

Jeannie's father was very rich; sole owner of a vast manufacturing concern,
which in his skilful hands was always growing in value.

In what way could wealth be better applied than in surrounding his only child
with every luxury that it could purchase? Mr. Bellew was a good master, and
paid his hands liberally. No man ever applied to him in vain if help was wanted
for any good object, and so, as he was generous to all beside, was he likely to
stint where Jeannie was concerned?