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What Remains?: The Dialectical Identities of Eastern Germans Joyce Marie Mushaben full chapter instant download
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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
© The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s), under exclusive licence to Springer
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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
1 Introduction:
Prelude to a German Revolution 1
Methodology 9
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
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
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
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
Index545
Abbreviations
xiii
xiv ABBREVIATIONS
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
xix
CHAPTER 1
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,
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.
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