Germany and the Imagined East

Germany and the Imagined East

Edited by

Lee M. Roberts

CAMBRIDGE SCHOLARS PRESS

Germany and the Imagined East, edited by Lee M. Roberts This book first published 2005 by Cambridge Scholars Press 15 Angerton Gardens, Newcastle, NE5 2JA, UK British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library Copyright ©2005 Lee M. Roberts and contributors

All rights for this book reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without the prior permission of the copyright owner. ISBN 1-904303-61-7

TABLE OF CONTENTS Part I: Eastern “Germanies” ............................................................................................. 1 Dis-membering and Re-membering the GDR: Material Culture and East Germany’s Self-Reflexive Memory in Good Bye, Lenin! Wendy Graham Westphal.................................................................................... 2 Making New Enemies: How Slavs Replace Turks in G. W. Pabst’s Der Schatz Michael Huffmaster........................................................................................... 16 Liegt Böhmen noch am Meer? Ingeborg Bachmann’s Landscapes as Utopian Constructs Sarah Painitz...................................................................................................... 23 The Secrets of the Kazabaika: Ethnic and Geopolitical Scenarios in Leopold von Sacher-Masoch’s Venus in Furs Anne Dwyer....................................................................................................... 32 Part II: Eastern Europe..................................................................................................... 49 Habermas and his Yugoslavia Tomislav Zelic................................................................................................... 50 Imagining the East: Some Thoughts on Contemporary Minority Literature in Germany and Exoticist Discourse in Literary Criticism Maria S. Grewe.................................................................................................. 69 Inviting Barbarism: Nietzsche’s Will to Russia Nicholas Martin ................................................................................................. 80 Part III: The Near East and Nearby .................................................................................. 95 Orientalism, Expressionism, Imperialism: Bruno Taut’s Competition Design for the “House of Friendship” in Istanbul Didem Ekici....................................................................................................... 96 Nietzsche’s Zarathustra: Between Persia and Greece Azadeh Yamini-Hamedani .............................................................................. 113 “Crouching Tiger” and Hidden Desires: Exotic Danger in Waldemar Bonsels’ Indienfahrt and Thomas Mann’s Tod in Venedig Sukanya Kulkarni ............................................................................................ 125

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Part IV: The Far East ....................................................................................................... 141 “So that Asia can become great”: The Representation of Eastern Cultures in Fritz Lang’s Die Spinnen (1919) Richard John Ascárate ..................................................................................... 142 The Orientalist Reflection: Temporality, Reality, and Illusion in Gustav Mahler’s Das Lied von der Erde Francesca Draughon ........................................................................................ 159 Brecht and the Chinese Experiment in Theater Imogen von Tannenberg.................................................................................. 174 Imaginary Terrain of German Orientalism: The Image of Japan in Die Gartenlaube, 1854-1902 Hoi-eun Kim.................................................................................................... 184

LIST OF IMAGES 3-1 3-2 3-3 4-1 4-2 4-3 4-4 4-5 4-6 4-7 4-8 4-9 4-10 4-11 4-12 4-13 4-14 4-15 4-16 4-17 4-18 4-19 4-20 4-21 4-22 4-23 4-24 4-25 4-26 4-27 4-28

Bruno Taut’s House of Friendship page 110 Bruno Taut, sketch of the grand central hall 110 Hans Poelzig, House of Friendship Proposal 111 Stills from Edison’s recording of Native American dance 145 Incan city framed and surveyed 148 Naela the High Priest 148 Naela prepares to sacrifice Lio Sha 148 Glimpses into Kolonialhalle at the German Colonial Exhibition 150 Glimpses into Kolonialhalle at the German Colonial Exhibition 150 Kay Hoog’s study 150 African weapons and shield, Buddha and Egyptian statue 150 Spiders’ headquarters 151 Kay Hoog in pawn shop of Chinese quarter 151 Exotic Others in catalogue of 1896 German Colonial Exhibit 152 Depiction of exotic Others in Die Spinnen 152 Exotic Others in catalogue of 1896 German Colonial Exhibit 152 Depiction of exotic Others in Die Spinnen 152 Exotic Others in catalogue of 1896 German Colonial Exhibit 152 Depiction of exotic Others in Die Spinnen 152 Encoded message from the Spiders 153 Ivory sliver with a mysterious symbol 153 Scene from Kay Hoog’s travels 153 Scene from Kay Hoog’s travel 153 Bookshop 154 Carl Spitzweg’s Der Bücherwurm (1850) 154 Kay Hoog in salon car of South Mexican Railroad 156 Allusion to Tchaikovsky’s 1812 Overture 166 Transformation of dance-like theme 167 Pedal point in double bassoons 170 Recitative-like phrase in solo violin 170 Gustav Klimt, Portrait of Baroness Elisabeth Bachofen-Echt 173

PREFACE I emphasize…that neither the term Orient nor the concept of the West has any ontological stability; each is made up of human effort, partly affirmation, partly identification of the Other. That these supreme fictions lend themselves easily to manipulation and the organization of collective passion has never been more evident than in our time, when the mobilizations of fear, hatred, disgust, and resurgent self-pride and arrogance—much of it having to do with Islam and the Arabs on one side, “we” Westerners on the other—are very large-scale enterprises.1 -Edward W. Said

The passage above is from the preface of Edward W. Said’s 25th Anniversary edition of Orientalism (2003), but it serves well to illustrate the guiding principle behind the Twelfth Annual Interdisciplinary German Studies Conference, “Germany and the Imagined East,” held on March 13-14, 2004, at the University of California, Berkeley.2 Although East and West presently seem charged with the same energy as North and South during the American Civil War, this conference focused not on drawing specific boundaries, like the infamous Mason and Dixon line, but on examining the countless perceptions of East-West relations. It seems altogether appropriate that German Studies take up this question, for twentieth-century Germany witnessed within its own national borders the power of West-vs.-East mentalities. For many in the West, Germany represented a shield against the Soviet East; for their counterparts on the other side of the Wall, Germany was a barricade against the capitalist West. Whichever side one found oneself on, however, Germany was the middle country, the place that belonged to neither side completely. But Germany was not always as simple to find on a map as the lands on either side of the former divide between the Federal Republic of Germany and the German Democratic Republic. Adalbert Stifter’s protagonist says at the end of the nineteenth-century novella Brigitte: “In Spring I took up my German [deutsch] clothing, my German [deutsch] walking stick and wandered toward the German 1

Said, Orientalism, xvii. Heartfelt thanks go to The Doreen B. Townsend Center for the Humanities, The Institute of European Studies, and the German Department of the University of California, Berkeley, for their generous support of this conference. 2

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[deutsch] fatherland” (My translation).3 As Brigitte takes place largely in presentday Hungary, the clothing and stick referred to as “deutsch” distinguish the narrator’s possessions from the eastern variety. The location of this German (“deutsch”) fatherland is less clear, however, as Germany (Deutschland) did not exist politically until 1870/71. Stifter’s wanderer probably took “deutsch” simply to mean “where German language is spoken,” which would include present-day Austria (Österreich), the eastern part of the German-speaking realm nearest to Brigitte’s Hungary. Today solidly a part of the political map of Europe, Germany is arguably a portion of an imagined cultural sphere called the “West,” but some claim that Germany has been a part of the West for only a short time. Complementary to Said’s Orientalism, Ian Buruma’s and Avishai Margalit’s Occidentalism: The West in the Eyes of Its Enemies (2004) presents the so-called Occidentalist perspective, in which the West appears as a world without human feeling, increasingly hungry for material comforts. Like Orientalism, Occidentalism “strips its human targets of their humanity.”4 Within Buruma’s and Margalit’s argument, Germany played a role in the creation of this image of the Occident. They write: [It] is clear from the writing of German nationalists in the 1920s and 1930s that their view of the West was of an old world, effete, money-grubbing, selfish and shallow. The danger, in their eyes, was that the seductions of this old world were corrupting and enervating young Germans who should be fighting for a glorious future. Only their sacrifice in a storm of steel would save them from being ruined by the banality of the West.5

Not so long after the end of World War II, when writers in Gruppe 47 attempted to recreate a German language without the taint of Nazism, vestiges of earlier ways of thinking were still prevalent. Buruma and Margalit explain the sort of notions of the East that may still have had a hold on post-World War II German consciousness: German heroic propaganda [,] different from its counterpart in Western Europe, [proposed] the idea that Germany was different, the Reich in the middle, culturally distinct from the West, beyond the civilizing borders of the old Roman Empire. This is what made Konrad Adenauer, the conservative but unromantic German politician from the western Rhineland, mutter “Asia” every time his train crossed the Elbe into Prussia.6

3

Stifter, Brigitte, 64. Buruma and Margalit, Occidentalism: The West in the Eyes of its Enemies, 10. 5 Ibid., 58. 6 Ibid., 53. 4

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Adenauer, a Westerner with possibly Orientalist opinions, thus is implicated in the creation of the conceptual division between the Orient and Occident. But he was perhaps merely part of a system of expression that conceived of the East in such terms. These views may seem jarringly similar to present-day friction in the Middle East, but differences between the East and West have not always been depicted so negatively. As early as 1786, Gottfried August Bürger’s Baron von Münchhausen told German readers of his bizarre adventures in Russia, which the Baron described as a wondrous place more interesting than anything found in the French West. I will not bore you, gentlemen, with idle talk of the constitution, the arts, sciences and other oddities of this magnificent capitol of Russia. Instead, I will keep to greater and more noble objects of interest, namely to knightly deeds and praiseworthy behavior, which fit the nobleman far better than a bit of dusty Greek or Latin or any snuff boxes and fancy things from French intellectuals, and the like (My translation).7

Of course, we know better than to mistake the Baron’s word for anything real, but his point might be clear to anyone embroiled in the debate over literary models: the East has virtues different from but equal to those of the West. In the nineteenth century, when Germany had entered the race for colonies, Theodor Fontane wrote Effi Briest, a novel that treats most explicitly problems inherent in societal ideals, especially pertaining to marriage. In this fiction we find evidence that Germany had discovered a larger world around its empire. The protagonist Effi marries the debonair Baron Innstetten and moves to Kessin in the German-speaking East, where she is surrounded by people of varied backgrounds and ethnicities. Her first reaction to the new world is both shock and interest; upon seeing a man in a fur hat and coat, she remarks: “He looked like a Starost…although I must admit that I have never seen a Starost” (My translation).8 Effi’s understanding of her surroundings draws on some scant knowledge of the Slavic East, in which the so-called Starost, a sort of village official in Polish, exists; in this respect, she is an Orientalist. But she finds the East exciting, nonetheless, from the Japanese screen, which she imagines might be in a home in the East,9 to her enthusiasm for the Slavs in the region.10 Despite her seeming openness towards the world, however, Effi is frightened by a small picture of a Chinese man, and she dreams that it comes to life and visits her bedroom one night. She admits: “A Chinese person always is somehow creepy [gruselig]” (My 7

Bürger, Bürgers Werke in einem Band, 232-3. Fontane, Effi Briest, 203. 9 Ibid., 191. 10 Ibid., 203-4. 8

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translation).11 Although Effi is still within German-speaking territory, her sentiments illustrate Buruma’s and Margalit’s point that some conceived of the Prussian East as Asia, something frightfully foreign. As a land in the middle, as Germany has often been called, its literature contains an astounding number of references to the East. Hermann Hesse’s The Journey to the East (Die Morgenlandfahrt) is a prime example. The narrator, cleverly called H.H., recounts his experiences in a secret league that endeavors to travel to the East, a place that holds for each person something different but always valuable. For the narrator, the East promises the unparalleled beauty of Princess Fatima. For others, the East holds such treasures as a thing called tao or a fabled snake with special powers. For all, the East promises something extraordinary. The narrator explains: “[A]t certain stages of our Journey to the East, although the commonplace aids of modern travel such as railways, steamers, telegraph, automobiles, airplanes, etc., were renounced, we penetrated into the heroic and magical.”12 As the tale unfolds, the unusual nature of the narrator’s East becomes apparent. So much of the heroic and magical experience is just a figment of the League members’ imagination in a place that is not so far from the journey’s starting point. Indeed, the first great phenomenon in the journey takes place in a chapel in a region called Spaichendorf, obviously still within German-speaking territory. Herein, perhaps, we find the true nature of the narrator’s East, a fictitious world created with the myths one finds at home. The narrator admits even that the journey is “only a wave in the eternal stream of human beings, of the eternal strivings of the human spirit towards the East, towards Home.”13 How, you might ask, can the East be home to this narrator from the Germanspeaking West? The answer is simple: This East, both familiar and foreign, is a literary invention. The narrator travels in a group that encounters during the journey various other members of the League, and “[each] one of them [has] his own dream, his wish, his secret heart’s desire, and yet they all [flow] together in the great stream and all [belong] to each other, [share] the same reverence.”14 The journey defies space and time, permitting visits with both actual historical personages in ancient China and fictitious characters in German literature, but each of the experiences is, for the reader, only a glimpse into the mind of the narrator. Journey to the East is the narrator’s attempt to write a history of the League, but the result is little more than a narrative used to make sense of his life. While writing, the narrator realizes: “In order that something like cohesion, something like causality, that some kind of meaning might ensue and that it can in some way 11

Ibid., 205. Hesse, Journey to the East, 6. 13 Ibid., 13. 14 Ibid., 23-4. 12

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be narrated, the historian must invent units, a hero, a nation, an idea, and he must allow to happen to this invented unit what has in reality happened to the nameless.”15 Almost a demonstration of psychoanalysis, Journey to the East is, as a text, the medium through which we readers can acquaint ourselves with the narrator. That is, we learn in this tale more about the narrator than about the East; he is his own East. Our Journey to the East and our League, the basis of our community, has been the most important thing, indeed the only important thing in my life, compared with which my own individual life has appeared completely unimportant. And now that I want to hold fast to and describe this most important thing, or at least something of it, everything is only a mass of separate fragmentary pictures which has been reflected in something, and this something is myself, and this self, this mirror, whenever I have gazed into it, has proved to be nothing but the uppermost surface of a glass plane.16

As a reflection in the surface of a mirror, the narrator sees in his own story that his journey through life was a path to self-discovery. Self-discovery seems a most fitting way to categorize such present-day writers in German as Yoko Tawada, as her themes often involve some aspect of selfcritique in connection with an exploration of the Other. Tawada’s work resists traditional methods of literary classification, however. Like so many writers of non-German descent writing in German, she stands on the border of the national and the foreign. German film maker Wim Wenders wrote in the preface of Where Europe Begins (2002) the following comments on Tawada’s book Talisman: “Yoko Tawada…has written this complex, subtle intelligent and poetic book in German [!]…At the same time, this is definitely not a ‘German’ book, if I may put things in simplistic terms. No one else but a Japanese woman could have had these experiences.”17 While Wenders’ words seem to make sense, one must wonder how exactly he means them. Why could only a Japanese woman have had such experiences? Perhaps Wenders tapped into a discourse alive from as early as the nineteenth century, when Friedrich Nietzsche made similar claims about an alternate, eastern experience of the world in Beyond Good and Evil (1886): The strange family resemblance of all Indian, Greek, and German philosophizing is explained easily enough. Where there is an affinity of languages…everything is prepared at the outset for a similar development and sequence of philosophical 15

Ibid., 47. Ibid., 48. 17 Wenders in Tawada, Where Europe Begins, XI. 16

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Did Nietzsche and Wenders draw the same conclusion: That the Ural-Altaic experience—in this case, Japanese—must be different from the so-called IndoEuropean experience? It is a question for scholars to consider. Most recently, Todd Kontje’s German Orientalisms (2004) appeared, ushering in this new direction in German Studies, which will seek to elucidate the complex tangle of metaphors used in the German-speaking world to grasp the so-called East. Kontje writes: Geographic locations…have symbolic connotations….It is one thing to say that Germany lies in central Europe and another when Thomas Mann says that Germany is “das Land der Mitte” (the land of the center) that must find a balance between Western rationalism and Eastern mysticism. Geography, at least as it is conventionally understood, dwells in the realm of facts; symbolic geography, in contrast, is the province of the literary imagination.19

“Germany and the Imagined East” takes part in the same trend in research, one that seeks to situate the German-speaking world into a series of discourses on the Self and the Other. Similar to both Colonial and Postcolonial Studies, research on Germany’s imagined East will highlight how easily artistic and everyday expression can impose a hierarchy on the world that otherwise might not exist. Kontje demonstrates this very point most aptly, explaining how German civilization moved toward an intellectual colonization of the East: One can bring the benefits of civilization to non-European peoples—or impose civilization on them by force—but one cannot turn “natives” into Germans. Or can one? Beginning in the late eighteenth century, German ethnographers, historians, and linguists began to view themselves as the direct descendants of an “Aryan” culture originating in the Caucasus or in the mountains of northern India, as distinguished from the Semitic culture of the Middle East. From this perspective, the Germans had no need to conquer and colonize eastern lands, for they were already part of a greater Indo-European whole. The politically fragmented Germans could thus adopt a high moral ground in condemning the violent conquests of other colonizing nations, while quietly absorbing selected portions of the Middle East and Central Asia into a pan-German Kultur.20

18

Nietzsche, Beyond Good and Evil, 27-8. Kontje, German Orientalisms, 1. 20 Ibid., 8. 19

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While most of the essays in this collection address neither Kontje’s IndoEuropean question nor Nietzsche’s concept of Ural-Altaic philosophy, they do offer a spectrum of views that elucidate the wealth of the topic, Germany and the Imagined East. Divided according to four geographic regions, the essays each treat an aspect of German culture in relation to a perceived East. Part I, “Eastern Germanies,” features the former German Democratic Republic and Austria. An examination of both film and literature, these essays treat the problems of German reunification, as well as the threat of a multifaceted Other and the concept of national borders in Austria. In Part II, “Eastern Europe,” three essays analyze the connections in literature, philosophy and politics between the German-speaking world and former Yugoslavia, Romania and Russia. The essays in Part III, “The Near East and Nearby,” visit a range of connections between Germany and Turkey, ancient Persia, and India. From architecture to philosophy to literature, these essays underscore the various ways in which East and West have both threatened and complemented each other. Finally, in Part IV, “The Far East,” the examination of intercultural exchange spreads beyond the linguistic boundaries once called IndoGermanic to include the German perception of China and Japan. These final four essays combine views on film, literature, history and music in a multidisciplinary collage that invites scholars from all departments to explore just how varied EastWest relations have been. As any discipline is also part of the discourse of its time, “Germany and the Imagined East” illustrates that German Studies have evolved to encompass Germany on a world scale. No longer simply the study of a national literature unaware of the many perspectives it affords its fellow countries and disciplines, German Studies are quickly becoming a field that reaches beyond traditionally established borders to place the “Germanies” into a global context. Just a little more than eighty years ago, Oswald Spengler published The Decline of the West (1918-23), in which he explained the historical development of the so-called West and made predictions about its future. While some scholars have argued that Spengler did not intend his title to be taken fatalistically, some in both the imagined West and the imagined East have reacted as if both hemispheres were locked in constant struggle. Similarly, Robert D. Kaplan has written in the introduction to the 2004 translation of Taras Bulba, Nikolai Gogol’s tale of the fearsome Cossacks, that we “need more works like Taras Bulba, to better understand the emotional wellsprings of the threat we face today in places like the Middle East and Central Asia.”21 Kaplan’s words will ring true to many in the world, but perhaps it is also time that we grasp the East and West not as opposites but as complementary sides of the same coin. To accomplish this, it will take committed scholars and enthusiastic students in dialogue on a topic that perceives 21

Kaplan in Gogol, Taras Bulba, xii.

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the incredible power of expression not as a vehicle for guessing how future relations will develop but as a discursive tool with which we can actively shape our lives. WORKS CITED Bürger, Gottfried August. Bürgers Werke in einem Band. Weimar: Volksverlag, 1962. Buruma, Ian, and Avishai Margalit. Occidentalism: The West in the Eyes of Its Enemies. New York: Penguin Press, 2004. Fontane, Theodor. Sämtliche Werke. Vol. 7. München: Nymphenburger, 1959. Hesse, Hermann. The Journey to the East. Translated by Hilda Rosner. New York: Picador, 1956. Kaplan, Robert D. “Introduction.” In Taras Bulba, by Nikolai Gogol, xi-xxi. Translated by Peter Constantine. New York: Random House, Inc., 2004. Kontje, Todd. German Orientalisms. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 2004. Nietzsche, Friedrich. Beyond Good and Evil: Prelude to a Philosophy of the Future. Translated by Walter Kaufmann. 1966. Reprint, New York: Vintage Books, 1989. Said, Edward W. Orientalism. 25th ed. New York: Vintage Books, 2003. Spengler, Oswald. Der Untergang des Abendlandes:Umrisse einer Morphologie der Weltgeschichte. 2 vols. München: Beck, 1922-23. Stifter, Adalbert. Brigitte. 1970. Stuttgart: Reclam, 1994. Tawada, Yoko. Where Europe Begins. Translated by Susan Bernofsky and Yumi Selden. New York: New Directions, 2002.

PART I: EASTERN “GERMANIES”

Dis-membering and Re-membering the GDR: Material Culture and East Germany’s Self-Reflexive Memory in Good Bye, Lenin! Wendy Graham Westphal When the Wall fell fourteen years ago, the former German chancellor Willy Brandt prophesied optimistically: “Jetzt wächst zusammen, was zusammen gehört.”1 At the time, few probably anticipated that the non-material differences between East and West would be so tenacious and that integration on a social level would prove as difficult as it has been. While some Easterners embraced their new country with open arms and never looked back, others began the complex process of self-examination. Rather than completely forsake their past and welcome the changes and westernization of the East, many East Germans began to retrospectively identify themselves even more strongly with their common history. A type of wide-spread nostalgia particular to East Germany, dubbed Ostalgie, arose. This Ostalgie was and is expressed through a longing for the everyday aspects of their former lives in the GDR. 2 “Ossi Partys” with Honecker lookalikes, GDR games and the cult-like revival of East German products are manifestations of this development. Popular media and “serious” literature both soon followed on the heels of this trend. A few examples will help illustrate the resonance the contemporary memory of the former GDR has gained among the public: In the fall of 2003, for example, television broadcasting companies such as ZDF, Sat 1, MDR and RTL reacted to (and marketed) the feelings of nostalgia with hugely successful shows entitled “Die DDR Show” or “Die Ostalgie Show”. These shows included appearances from former East German entertainers and athletes, children dressed up in FDJ uniforms and also featured GDR products. This popular trend has since found its way into German music, film and literature. Songs like the eastern group “niemann’s” 2001 1

Friederike Eigler and Peter Pfeiffer, eds., Cultural Transformations in the New Germany: American and German Perspectives (Columbia: Camden House, 1993), 42. 2 See Daphne Berdahl, “‘(N)Ostalgie’ for the Present: Memory, Longing, and East German Things,” Ethnos 64, no. 2 (1999): 192-211; Martin Blum, “Re-making the East German Past: Ostalgie, Identity, and Material Culture,” Journal of Popular Culture 34, no. 3 (Winter 2000): 229-53; Paul Cooke, “Performing ‘Ostalgie’: Leander Haußmann’s Sonnenallee,” German Life and Letters 56, no. 2 (April 2003): 156-67; Claudia Sadowski-Smith, “Ostalgie: Revaluing the Past, Regressing into the Future,” GDR Bulletin 25 (Spring 1998): 1-6.

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hit “im osten” and films like Sonnenallee, Helden wie wir and, most recently, Good Bye, Lenin! attest to the public’s enduring fascination with the artistic portrayal of the way the GDR is remembered. Of these films, Good Bye, Lenin! has enjoyed the most success and has even been called one of the most successful German films of all time.3 Although the popular media’s attention span is generally short, the fact that the literary world has staked its claim on this topic means that it warrants an in-depth scholarly examination.4 After the Reunification, the difficulties surrounding the social integration of East and West Germans became apparent. As the friction between East and West increased, some Westerners indelicately joked that the Wall should be rebuilt. The most recent development which illustrates the East-West antagonisms is the founding of the political party, “Die Partei”. “Die Partei” was founded by the editor of the satirical magazine, Die Titanic, and its purported political goals clearly reflect the satirical slant of the magazine. Its slogan: “Baut die Mauer wieder auf” is not suggested as a serious alternative but indicates that mutual resentments still exist even fifteen years after the Fall of the Wall. 5 While Wolfgang Becker did not rebuild the Wall in his film, Good Bye, Lenin!, he did create a symbolic “island” in which the values of the GDR continued to exist (the film poster proclaims unequivocally: “Die DDR lebt weiter – auf 79 qm!”). The protagonist, Alex (played by Daniel Brühl), attempts to symbolically prolong the existence of the GDR for his critically ill mother (played by Katrin Sass), who is a strong believer in the socialist ideals of her country. At the outset of the film, Alex’s mother has a heart attack and falls into a coma. In a Rip-van-Winkle manner, she “sleeps” through the Fall of the Wall in 1989 and the first eight months of its immediate aftermath. In order to shield his mother from the upsetting news of the Reunification once she has awoken, Alex creates a series of news broadcasts with his West German friend and co-worker, Denis. In their three newscasts, Alex and Denis “re-write” history in order to explain the changes that his mother has noticed. The appearance of Coca-Cola advertisements, the massive 3 In the spring of 2003, Good Bye, Lenin! drew 6 million German viewers into the cinema and was subsequently honored with numerous film awards for the best European film (including nine German “Lolas”, the French “César”, the Spanish “Goya” and a nomination for the “Golden Globe”). 4 The coming-to-terms with the social and political changes in the East during and following 1989 has taken on various forms of expression in the rapidly growing genre now known as Wendeliteratur, or Reunification literature. Although I have not yet come across the term “Reunification film,” I think this designation suitably describes “Reunification literature’s” cinematic cousin, and I will use it in this sense in this paper. 5 “Baut die Mauer wieder auf!” = Rebuild the Wall! “Die Partei” was founded on August 2, 2004 by Martin Sonneborn, editor of the Titanic, and a group of West Germans. According to Sonneborn, the party had approximately 2,000 members as of September 25, 2004.

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influx of West Germans in East Berlin and even the Reunification itself are re-told in the newscasts in a way which restores some dignity to the memory of the events surrounding the Reunification. Thus, Wolfgang Becker turns the tables on the West Germans’ joking threat to rebuild the Wall. Instead of creating a “prison” to which the “Jammer-Ossis” are “sent back” by Westerners, he creates a symbolic “refuge” where the lost feelings of solidarity, self-worth and stability can be re-lived and remembered. The memory of East Germany is itself undergoing a formative process. In the new context of the post-Reunification society, past events are currently being reevaluated and re-contextualized. In general, I will show that the recollections of the GDR (as they are portrayed in Good Bye, Lenin!) have shifted from the public to the private sphere of memory. In the current transformation of the memory functions, the East German “public” or “cultural” memories have been de-valued and the symbols of more personal, “communicative” memories have taken their place. The material culture of the GDR (i.e., former East German products) therefore serves as a vehicle for the expression of new communicative memories. Ironically, the East German material culture is used to represent non-material motifs like the human de-valuation (unemployment and loss of feelings of selfworth) that followed the Reunification in the East. East German material culture has been chosen to symbolize the past because of the parallels between the “life cycles” (their de- and re-valuation) of the East German products and of the biographies of the East German citizens themselves. Moreover, the narration of the everyday aspects of their East German socialist lives and the material culture that accompanied it is itself a characteristic of the “communicative” memory. This shift in mnemonic techniques reflects the former East Germans’ need to distance themselves from the negative aspects of their political past while at the same time reinforcing their common identity and thereby countering feelings of inferiority in the face of Western dominance. My study draws on the research of Maurice Halbwachs and Jan Assmann and their theories of “collective”, “cultural” and “communicative” memories. Before I begin my analysis of the memory shift in Good Bye, Lenin!, however, it will be necessary to take a brief look at what exactly is meant by these terms. In his study Das kollektive Gedächtnis (The Collective Memory), Maurice Halbwachs claims that memories are selected and sustained not just by individuals, but also by certain groups. 6 This he calls a “collective memory”. Moreover, he shows that even private memories cannot be separated from the societal influences in which the individual lives. As a result, memories of 6

Ironically, the most significant work on social memory had almost itself become a victim of “academic forgetfulness.” It was Jan Assmann who, in 1986, revived the discussion of this work. See Jan Assmann, Das kulturelle Gedächtnis: Schrift, Erinnerung und politische Identität in frühen Hochkulturen (Munich: Verlag C.H. Beck, 1997), 45.

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both historical and personal events can change according to the current values and priorities of the group that remembers them. He writes: “Auf diese Weise verblaßt langsam die Vergangenheit, so wie sie mir früher erschien. Die neuen Bilder überdecken die alten.”7 In this sense, the current portrayal of the memory of the GDR is itself also a construct, despite the tendency to “document” the past by building the narratives around historical facts.8 An example from the film Good Bye, Lenin! which nicely supports Halbwachs’ findings is Alex’s description of his project. At the end of the movie, Alex admits that the “GDR” he creates for his mother is not what it was “really” like, but is actually better than the original: Das Land, das meine Mutter verließ, war ein Land, an das sie geglaubt hatte. Und das wir bis zu ihrer letzten Sekunde überleben ließen. Ein Land, das es in Wirklichkeit nie so gegeben hat.9

In his attempt to reconstruct everything that had melted away after the Wall fell, Alex (like Maurice Halbwachs) realizes that the past cannot be recaptured. Thus, memories of the past are as much constructs as the room Alex creates for his mother. Towards the end of the movie, when Alex reports that the GDR is granting “refugees” from the FRG political asylum, he again has to admit: Irgendwie musste ich zugeben, dass sich mein Spiel verselbstständigte. Die DDR, die ich für meine Mutter schuf, wurde immer mehr die DDR, die ich mir vielleicht gewünscht hätte.10

For Alex in Good Bye, Lenin!, the news broadcasts for his mother and the recreation of a room filled with GDR furniture (which is in the literal sense what Aleida Assmann calls an Erinnerungsraum or a “memory room”) are attempts to come to terms with the Reunification and the dream of the utopia that can never be fulfilled. Aleida Assmann adds to Halbwachs’ findings in her recent work on memory: “Aber die Erinnerungen stabilisieren nicht nur die Gruppe, die Gruppe 7

Maurice Halbwachs, Das kollektive Gedächtnis (Stuttgart: Ferdinand Enke Verlag, 1967), 59. 8 Interestingly, a paradox has arisen between the Reunification literature and film’s desire to “historicize” itself with documenting photographs, video and newscast clips and references to historical events or dates (This tendency can even be observed in completely fictional texts). At the same time, the Reunification works are aware of the subjectivity of their recollections. 9 Wolfgang Becker, Good Bye, Lenin! [the screen book to the movie], ed. Michael Toteberg (Berlin: Schwarzkopf & Schwarzkopf Verlag, 2003), 131. 10 Ibid., 104.

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stabilisiert auch die Erinnerungen.” 11 One can view the recent publication of narratives about the GDR as fulfilling the latter role, i.e., that of the group stabilizing the memories, since certain aspects of life in the GDR are frequently remembered (the East German Alltag and its material culture) and other aspects (such as political ideology or indoctrination practices) are not at all central collective memory themes. More recently, Jan Assmann has expanded upon Maurice Halbwachs’ theory of collective memory in his book Das kulturelle Gedächtnis. Jan Assmann differentiates between two sub-divisions of collective memory: “communicative” and “cultural” memories, which he sees as bipolar elements in the memory framework. 12 The communicative memory represents the person-to-person narration of recent events which the individual personally experienced. Since the individuals are the “memory carriers,” Jan Assmann suggests that the lifespan of the communicative memories is limited to a period of approximately forty to eighty years. Once the carriers of the memories have died, new communicative memories replace the old ones. 13 Jan Assmann labels the narration of these remembered events “‘Geschicht[en] des Alltags’, eine ‘Geschichte von unten’”. 14 It is these “stories of the everyday” and the narration of everyday material culture which have come to dominate the literary and cinematic memory of life in the GDR. Jan Assmann goes on to contrast these more “organic” communicative memories with the much more formal “cultural” memories. He argues that cultural memories represent ideas and beliefs which the group has carried beyond the temporal limits of the personal memories. They are sometimes mythical or religious beliefs (like the celebration of Christmas or other historically-based religious or political holidays) which the group has institutionalized although there are no personal memories of the events in question. He writes that the cultural memory stabilizes the long-term identity of the group and adds: “Das ist keine 11 Aleida Assmann, Erinnerungsräume: Formen und Wandlungen des kulturellen Gedächtnisses (Munich: Verlag C.H. Beck, 1999), 131. 12 “Der Polarität der kollektiven Erinnerung entspricht also in der Zeitdimension die Polarität zwischen Fest und Alltag, und in der Sozialdimension die Polarität zwischen einer wissenssoziologischen Elite, den Spezialisten des kulturellen Gedächtnisses, und der Allgemeinheit der Gruppe.” Jan Assmann, Das kulturelle Gedächtnis: Schrift, Erinnerung und politische Identität in frühen Hochkulturen (Munich: Verlag C.H.Beck, 1997), 55. 13 “Das kommunikative Gedächtnis umfaßt Erinnerungen, die sich auf die rezente Vergangenheit beziehen. Es sind diese Erinnerungen, die der Mensch mit seinen Zeitgenossen teilt. Der typische Fall ist das Generationen-Gedächtnis. Dieses Gedächtnis wächst der Gruppe historisch zu; es entsteht in der Zeit und vergeht mit ihr, genauer: mit seinen Trägern. Wenn die Träger, die es verkörperten, gestorben sind, weicht es einem neuen Gedächtnis.” Ibid., 51. 14 Ibid., 51.

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Alltagsidentität.” 15 Jan Assmann describes the main difference between the communicative and cultural memories as the cultural memory’s reliance on ritualized ceremonies. He writes that: “Der Hauptunterschied gegenüber dem kommunikativen Gedächtnis ist seine Geformtheit und die Zeremonialität seiner Anlässe.”16 The rigid adherence to the celebration of formalized ceremonies helps sustain a collective identity which transcends the everyday relationships. Thus, national and religious identity is reinforced through the propagation of cultural memories. Using Good Bye, Lenin! as an example, this paper will show that the recollections of the GDR are currently shifting from the general sphere of cultural to communicative memories and that the material culture of the GDR is the vehicle through which this shift is carried out. These definitions represent what Jan Assmann sees as the two types of memory frameworks. The exclusivity of these two definitions and their temporal limitations, however, restrict the examination of memories that do not fit neatly into one group or the other. While Jan Assmann does not explore the “gray” area between cultural and communicative memory continuum, his description of the two as the outermost poles allows us to consider recollections that have elements of both cultural and communicative memories, while still working within his general framework.17 As part of an effort to legitimatize its existence as a sovereign state, East Germany invested a great amount of energy in the attempt to create its own “cultural” memory. These efforts include the ceremonial celebration of state holidays (parades), raising of political heroes to an almost mythical status through public memorials (of historical figures like Rosa Luxemburg, Karl Liebknecht, Ernst Thälmann, Karl Marx and Lenin) and the official cultivation of the “myths” surrounding the “founding fathers” of the GDR. While the political fostering of these types of memories was temporally limited to the forty years that East 15 “Das kulturelle Gedächtnis richtet sich auf Fixpunkte in der Vergangenheit. [...] Vergangenheit gerinnt hier vielmehr zu symbolischen Figuren, an die sich die Erinnerung heftet. Die Vätergeschichten, Exodus, Wüstenwanderung, Landnahme, Exil sind etwa solche Einnerungsfiguren [...]. Auch Mythen sind Erinnerungsfiguren: Der Unterschied zwischen Mythos und Geschichte wird hier hinfällig. Für das kulturelle Gedächtnis zählt nicht faktische, sondern nur erinnerte Geschichte. Man könnte auch sagen, daß im kulturellen Gedächtnis faktische Geschichte in erinnerte und damit in Mythos transformiert wird. [...] In der Erinnerung an ihre Geschichte und in der Vergegenwärtigung der fundierenden Erinnerungsfiguren vergewissert sich eine Gruppe ihrer Identität. Das ist keine Alltagsidentität.” Ibid., 52-53. 16 Ibid., 58. 17 Jan Assmann’s temporal limitation of the cultural memories is problematic, since some governments attempt to create a cultural memory of themselves and succeed, even though the memories do not extend into the distant past.

8

Dis-membering and Re-membering the GDR

Germany existed, they nevertheless contain characteristics typical of what Jan Assmann calls “cultural” memories. Following the Fall of the Wall, the cultural memory of the GDR was no longer politically supported and the fact that aspects of the cultural memory are not central to the Reunification works suggests that these “memories” were either not internalized or were rejected by the GDR citizens. Consequently, communicative memories of common experiences in the everyday East German world dominate in the artistic portrayal of life in the GDR. This memory shift signifies a dual need for the former East Germans: the need to distance themselves from their political past (and its cultural memory) while at the same time asserting their collective distinctiveness (Eigenart, Jan Assmann) in the face of the West, through the cultivation of collective communicative memories of the everyday life in the GDR. The film Good Bye, Lenin! depicts this shift away from the cultural memory and towards the everyday, communicative memories. The viewer is already prepared for this transition by the film’s title: Good Bye, Lenin! The use of the English term “Good Bye” informs the audience that the cultural memories of the East are not just being cast off, but they will be replaced by a westernized (or even Americanized) identity. In the film, “Lenin” stands not only for his own person and doctrines, but represents all “founding fathers” of socialist or communist states and their ideology. As I previously mentioned, the raising of these and other historical figures to almost mythical status by East German propaganda, was part of the state’s efforts to create a cultural memory of itself. Thus, the farewell to these political figures represents the farewell to the cultural memories for which they stood. The scene from which the title is drawn is the mother’s heavily symbolic encounter with the dismantled statue of Lenin. Upon leaving her apartment for the very first time, she is confronted with the statue of Lenin that is being flown away. The images and music of this scene are permitted to speak for themselves, as there is no dialog. Lenin, dangling on ropes from the helicopter, is flown down the street. As he approaches the mother, his outstretched arm seems to beckon to her. Then, as he passes, the unreturned greeting becomes a farewell. In the “moment of silence” created in this scene, the entire former East German society (for which the idealistic mother stands) becomes aware of the de-valuation of symbols of the GDR’s cultural memory and bids farewell to Lenin and the ideological and political aspects of their lives. Jan Assmann states that the communicative memory consists principally of “Geschichten des Alltags.” In contemporary representations of East Germany, it is precisely these stories of the “everyday” which dominate the artistic portrayal of life in the GDR. Everyday life was intertwined with the material culture of the former republic and thus unambiguously strong bonds to products manufactured in the GDR are expressed in many Reunification works. However, these products do not just serve as “props” in creating a realistic portrayal of their lives. Rather, the

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memory of the GDR’s material culture is one of the vehicles through which the memory shift from the cultural to the communicative memory is taking place. Since their disappearance (and, in some cases, subsequent reappearance) following the Wende, GDR products have been decontextualized: their original “use-value” has given way to a “symbolic-value”. East German products now serve as mnemonic devices which strengthen the group’s collective tie to a communicatively remembered past. Individuals partake in a collective identity through their connection to common symbols or souvenirs of this shared past.18 The souvenirs of East German material culture do therefore not just represent the shift of collective memories to the sphere of communicative memory through its physical representation of the “everyday”. The actual personal narration of the products’ meaning is a characteristic of the communicative memory. Susan Stewart, a scholar of material culture, explains that the relationship between the souvenir and narration is deeply intertwined: We need and desire souvenirs of events that are reportable, events whose materiality has escaped us, events that thereby exist only through the invention of narrative.19

Thus, the material culture of the GDR does not just represent the shift to the sphere of communicative memory through its physical representation of the “everyday”. Moreover, the actual narration of the products’ meaning is itself a characteristic of the communicative memory. Since the public monuments of the GDR (which were in part symbols of a cultural memory) have largely disappeared, the desire to maintain a physical connection to the former society has moved from the public realm to the private, or from the cultural to the communicative, through the souvenir. Good Bye, Lenin! is a textbook example of this shift. By collecting “souvenirs” of the GDR and re-creating his mother’s East German bedroom, Alex moves souvenirs from a country which no longer exists into the private sphere. Regarding the realm in which the souvenir exists, Susan Stewart explains that the souvenir represents a: [...] transformation of exterior into interior. The souvenir reduces the public, the monumental, and the three-dimensional into the miniature, that which can be enveloped by the body, or into the two-dimensional representation [...].20 18

Aleida Assmann, Erinnerungsräume, 132. Susan Stewart, On Longing: Narratives of the Miniature, the Gigantic, the Souvenir, the Collection (Baltimore and London: The Johns Hopkins University Press, 1984), 135. Italics mine. 20 Ibid., 137. 19

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Dis-membering and Re-membering the GDR

The slogan on the posters that advertised the film summed up this transition from the public to private realm with the promise “die DDR lebt weiter – auf 79 qm!”. This movement is reflective of the memory shift from the cultural to the communicative memory spheres. The mother’s apartment is an artistic construct in which the GDR products continue to exist as both actual consumer items and symbols of a lost way of life (or as reality, for the mother, and symbols of the communicative memory, for others). Good Bye, Lenin! engages with and highlights the duality of the product signification. This duality of meaning points to the transition that the memory processes are undergoing in the East. The material culture’s central role in relaying memories of the GDR is evident in Good Bye, Lenin!. In the film, Alex’s epic search for the East German Spreewaldgurken (or even an old jar with the label still affixed!) is both a running gag and a symbol for how completely the East was won as a market for Western goods. With loving care, Alex fills empty GDR jars with Western products in an attempt to convincingly re-create East Germany for his bedridden mother. When Alex and Laura move into an apartment that has been abandoned by East Germans who emigrated to the West, Laura’s joy at discovering a working telephone in the apartment is exceeded only by Alex’s ecstasy at finding a supply of Tempobohnen, Globus Grüne Erbsen and Mokka-Fix Gold in their original packages! In the movie, the material culture unequivocally stands for the non-material aspects of their lives that were lost in the tumultuous years following the Reunification.21 Just as the products of the former East stand for the socialist country, the products of the West stand for capitalism and the Western economic conquest in the East. The Coca-Cola advertisement that is hung across the street from the mother’s room symbolizes the unstoppable invasion of Western consumerism. In an attempt to account for the presence of the advertisement, Alex explains in his news report that “der originäre Geschmack von Coca-Cola [wurde] bereits in den 50er Jahren in den Laboratorien der DDR entwickelt.”22 Alex’s mother responds in astonishment, “Coca-Cola ist ein sozialistisches Getränk?”23 Alex’s attempt to rewrite history thus begins with the re-evaluation of their own material culture. 21 In addition to the high unemployment (which still affects over 20% of Easterners), East Germans especially lament the loss of solidarity and of social contacts (which were encouraged in work-related social groups) that were a part of their lives in the GDR. Furthermore, studies have shown that many former East Germans are plagued by feelings of inferior self-worth (which is often tied into the re-structuring of institutions and the subsequent unemployment in the East) and consequently perceive themselves as secondclass citizens in the reunited country. 22 Becker, Lenin, 79. 23 Ibid., 79.

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The reference to products, both Eastern and Western, plays a central role in other Reunification works, as well. In Thomas Brussig’s novel Sonnenallee, the uncle from the West “smuggles” Western candy and coffee into the East on his visits to the family. In the autobiographical work Zonenkinder, Jana Hensel laments about how the products of the East were quickly replaced by those of the West: Statt Otto & Alwin-Bildchen sammelten wir Überraschungseier, statt Puffreis aßen wir Popkorn, die ‘Bravo’ ersetzte die ‘Trommel’, und statt an verregneten Sonntagnachmittagen Kastanienmännchen zu basteln, Bierdeckel zwischen die Speichen unserer Fahrräder zu montieren oder Mau-Mau zu spielen, saßen wir nun vor Monopoly oder lasen Micky-maus.24 Why has Reunification literature and film chosen to focus on the products as their symbols for the past? While I cannot extensively explore this question here, I will briefly point out several possible reasons. On the most superficial level, everyday consumer items were the common denominator for East Germans and are as such especially well-suited to serve as universal symbols of a common identity. The lack of selection meant that the consumer’s bond to the goods was focused on a few products (rather than strewn amongst twenty or thirty different brands.) Additionally, the physical appearance of the products’ packaging, which often remained unchanged over decades also recalls the lost stability that existed in the GDR.25 Furthermore, the detailed knowledge of the physical qualities and peculiarities of the various products (what Martin Blum calls the “product biographies”) reminds the easterners that their everyday knowledge was previously valued (and of great 26 pragmatic use) and counters their feelings of inferiority. Consequently, the discarding of these products stands for the loss of East German identity and for the rising feelings of inadequacy. More than just the characteristics of the products themselves, I posit that the nostalgia for the products also calls to mind the social relationships and the work involved in attaining or “earning” harder-to-get products. I am referring to the social relationships 27 28 (“Vitamin B”) that were necessary to obtain Mangelwaren—or so-called “Bückwaren.”

24

Jana Hensel, Zonenkinder (Reinbek bei Hamburg: Rowohlt, 2003), 20. See: Martin Blum, “Re-making the East German Past: Ostalgie, Identity, and Material Culture,” Journal of Popular Culture 34, no. 3 (Winter 2000): 229-53. 26 A concrete example of this tendency can be found in the board and card games (such as “Kost the Ost”, “Es geht seinen Gang” or “Überholen ohne einzuholen”) which were produced following the Reunification and which “test” the players’ knowledge of East Germany and East German products. The questions to the games are such, that the average West German can generally not win. Thus, the games create a forum in which the East Germans can feel like the “winners” and in which their unique knowledge of life in the GDR (and its products) is rewarded, rather than discredited. 27 Matthias Biskupek, Was heißt eigentlich DDR? (Berlin: Eulenspiegel Verlag, 2003), 3941. 25

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Dis-membering and Re-membering the GDR

Consequently, the products of the GDR are not just intimately tied to the individual’s own biography, but also to the individual’s relationship with others in the GDR. Thus, the memories of the products of the GDR are examples of communicative memories in that they 29 represent “Erinnerungen, die der Mensch mit seinen Zeitgenossen teilt.” In addition, Daphne Berdahl speculates that there is a relationship between the need for a Gedächtnisort (memory place) and the Ostalgie for the GDR material culture: In the context of profound displacement following re-unification, reflected in the popular saying that we have “emigrated without leaving [home],” Ostalgie can be an attempt to reclaim a kind of Heimat (home or homeland), albeit a romanticized and hazily glorified one (Huyssen 1995).30

Therefore, having lost their Heimat in the public sphere following the Reunification, East Germans try to restore what is lost by collecting souvenirs of their past in the private sphere. Finally, the use of consumer products to create and stabilize an after-the-fact East German identity mobilizes Western values and thus reflects a type of ironic resistance. By harnessing the values of Western consumerism and applying them to Eastern products, former East Germans throw the consumerism (that was new in the East) back into the West’s face, albeit with an unexpected twist: the products represent a socialist and not a capitalist system. What all of these explanations have in common is the relationship between the individual and the product. Ultimately, it is the recollection of the personal biographies that the products stimulate that gives the material culture its significant role in the recollection of the GDR. Reunification literature and film draws upon this personal bond to symbolize the human transformations of de- and re-valuation following the Fall of the Wall. The contemporary Japanese-German writer Yoko Tawada states that: “Die Fragmente, aus denen man sein Leben rekonstruieren könnte, müssen im Müll gesucht werden.”31 Tim Putnam and Valerie Swales posit in “Between Keeping and Not-Keeping” that the throwing-away of objects is a reflection of personal, emotional changes: Beyond their immediate functions, objects articulate psychic and social life, and both personal and cultural transformation involves changes in objects and in how they are kept. The “putting-away” or “not-keeping” of objects is therefore an 28

Stefan Sommer, Das große Lexikon des DDR-Alltags (Berlin: Schwarzkopf & Schwarzkopf, 2003), 94-95. 29 Jan Assmann, Das kulturelle Gedächtnis, 50. 30 Daphne Berdahl, “‘N(O)stalgie’ for the Present: Memory, Longing, and East German Things,” Ethnos 64, no. 2 (1999): 202. 31 Yoko Tawada, “Der Sammler und der Tod: Bruce Chatwins Utz,” in Sammeln-AusstellenWegwerfen, ed. Ecker, Stange and Vedder (Königstein/Tanus: Ulrike Helmer Verlag, 2001), 190.

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inescapable and sometimes painful aspect of self-transformation, accurately described as a feeling of being cut off from part of oneself.32

Good bye, Lenin! illustrates the verity of both statements since the film is based on portrayal of the devaluation and revaluation of East German products, which consequently symbolize the de-valuation of their users’ lives through unemployment and the accompanying feeling of inadequacy. In the East, the Reunification brought many Western goods, which were frequently of superior quality and which certainly carried a stamp of superior status. As a result, almost all Eastern goods were replaced bit-by-bit with Western goods. With this transition, the Eastern products were unwanted, were thrown away, and became waste. In Good Bye, Lenin! the drastic devaluation of all Eastern goods and its symbolic relationship to losses at the human level is poignantly depicted. In his never-ending search for a Spreewaldgurken jar, Alex roots through the garbage dumpsters outside his apartment building. An elderly neighbor, Herr Ganske, thinks he is searching for food and makes the connection between the throwing away of Eastern goods and the new standing of the East Germans clear for the viewer: “So weit haben die uns schon. Dass wir im Müll rumfischen müssen.”33 When Alex asks Herr Ganske if is he has a jar of Spreewaldgurken, the man immediately replies by informing Alex about his personal problems: “Tut mir leid, junger Mann. Ich bin selbst arbeitslos.”34 In this scene, the relationship between the devaluation of material goods and the new (inferior) standing of the East Germans in the soon-to-be reunited Germany is clearly depicted. The search through the garbage is also symbolic of the Easterners’ struggle to salvage aspects of their previous identity that they had considered casting off after the Reunification. In another scene, Alex’s mother reveals that she has hidden her life savings of 30,000 East German Marks in the living room cabinet. In horror, Alex realizes that the cabinet is standing on the sidewalk among other discarded furniture for the Sperrmüll. Alex searches frantically through the drawers of the cabinets lining the street until he finally finds the money. Like the discarded furniture, though, the money of the East, which is directly symbolic of the East Germans’ life-long labor for the state, also proves to be worthless since the bank’s exchange deadline has already passed. Enraged, Alex throws the money away, thus perpetuating the revaluation-devaluation circle. Only through Alex’s efforts to rebuild an East German microcosm for his mother does it become clear how 32

Tim Putnam and Valerie Swales, “Between Keeping and Not-Keeping,” in SammelnAusstellen-Wegwerfen, ed. Ecker, Stange and Vedder (Königstein/Tanus: Ulrike Helmer Verlag, 2001), 281. 33 Becker, Lenin, 56. 34 Ibid., 56.

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completely the East has changed and how quickly the Eastern way of life was discarded. The disposal of the GDR’s material culture is therefore symbolic for the East German’s feelings of inadequacy following the Reunification. Where does Alex look for the East? In the garbage. In his efforts to recreate the GDR, Alex re-values its material culture. By extending this re-valuation process to East German individuals as well, Alex attempts to give the GDR citizens back a feeling of self-worth that many had lost. The cycle of de-valuation and re-valuation on a human level is exemplified in the movie by Alex’s encounter with the East German Cosmonaut Sigmund Jähn. Sigmund Jähn was the first German in space and was a national hero for the East Germans. The film begins with a scene from Alex’s childhood, in which he watches the television broadcast of Sigmund Jähn’s flight into space in 1978. In this scene, which uses actual documentary footage, Jähn is clearly depicted as a hero figure for both the young Alex as well as for the entire country. The subsequent transformation of Sigmund Jähn’s social position in the film from cosmonaut to taxi driver thus contrasts radically with his former standing as a national hero. On leaving the hospital one night, Alex sees Sigmund Jähn standing next to his taxi and reflects: Da war er. Idol meiner Jugend. Wie ein beschworener Geist aus meiner Kindheit. Sigmund Jähn. Er gab keine Autogramme. Redete nicht zu Pionieren über die Geheimnisse des Universums, die Freiheit in der Schwerelosigkeit oder die Unendlichkeit des Kosmos. Er fuhr nur ein kleines, stinkendes Lada-Taxi.35

In the movie, Sigmund Jähn is ashamed of his new situation as a taxi-driver and at first denies that he is the former cosmonaut. His loss of pride and feeling of self-worth is representative for the de-valuation that many East Germans felt. To combat these feelings, Alex constructs a world in his news broadcasts in which the East Germans maintain their dignity during the Reunification process. Sigmund Jähn serves as the centerpiece of this symbolic re-valuation process. At the film’s climax in the final news broadcast, Alex has Sigmund Jähn replace Erich Honecker as secretary general of the GDR and in a grand gesture, it is Jähn who opens the border to the West. Through his simulated newscasts, Alex gives the East Germans back a piece of their dignity and symbolically re-instates cultural heroes like Sigmund Jähn. The fate of Sigmund Jähn in the movie is a fictional construct which stands for the transformation of the individual’s status in the reunited Germany. The film convincingly depicts the changed standing of the East Germans after the Wende, and its use of documentary evidence (such as actual news clips) to support the 35

Ibid., 114.