The Sexual Unification of Germany

Sexuality is as much about words, images, ritual, and fantasy as it is about the body: the way we think about sex fashions the way we live it.

—Jeffrey Weeks, Sexuality and Its Discontents: Meanings, Myths and Modern Sexualities

Until The Wende, or "turning point," in 1989 the two Germanys appeared to harbor diametrically opposed and mutually hostile attitudes to sexuality. West Germans (the Federal Republic of Germany, or FRG), saw the German Democratic Republic, or GDR, as backward, repressed, and nonerotic, while people in the GDR associated Western capitalism with exploitative, consumer-oriented attitudes toward sex that were outdated and damaging. Because scholars have tended to regard sexual behavior as private, trivial, or sensational (not surprising, given its treatment in the more louche publications), serious discussion of sexuality as an issue during the Unification process has largely been restricted to the issue of reproductive rights. That narrow focus is unfortunate, because an exploration of more general sexual practices and attitudes is highly revealing. After forty years of separately developed approaches to sexuality, reunified Germans struggled to establish a "working moral consensus," a sexual code for the new Germany. In this effort, Western media led the way, creating a normative, value-laden image of GDR sexuality. This article aims to explore how these media images were received in the GDR and to assess their impact on sexual attitudes and practices in East Germany since that time. The article will focus on four specific publications: the mass-circulation daily tabloid BILD-Zeitung, the weekly magazine Neue Revue, the soft-porn monthly Playboy, and Super-Illu, a magazine created by the (Western) Burda group in August 1990 specifically for the Eastern market. The very crassness of tabloid reporting of sexual issues helps to bring into focus some of the mechanisms that were more subtly at work in other aspects of the Unification process.

German Unification took place at great speed and had the effect of compressing a lifelong socialization process into an extremely short space of time. The structures and values of the new unified Germany were largely imposed upon Easterners by the West. An explicit example of the imposition of norms is the retraining/grooming courses available to GDR citizens who hoped to succeed in the new work environment; these courses provided instruction in how to walk, talk, dress, and smell like Westerners.¹ The term Unification suggests a merger of two systems, but in fact the GDR joined West Germany under Article 23 of the Federal Basic Law, which entailed adopting FRG laws and the constitution in their entirety. Even aspects of GDR life that were more favorable than West German provisions, such as state-funded childcare and maternity benefits, were dismissed as ideologically tainted and not worth saving or were considered to be too costly.

The "New" Sexuality in the GDR

Before looking at the media's representation of GDR sexuality after the Wende, it is useful to outline the ruling Socialist Unity Party's (SED) understanding of the role and expression of sexuality under Socialism. In the GDR sexuality was a matter of concern to the state. Sexual fulfillment was a right and a duty for all citizens as one aspect of the "fully developed Socialist personality."² One contributor to an anthology on women and Socialism published in 1978 wrote glowingly: "Socialist society has created the most free and the most humane sexual morality ever. Socialist society has opened up the same sexual freedoms to men and women. Love has become the sole yardstick of what is moral, in sex and in the family."³ GDR society was not—ideally—a prudish one. It was supposed to facilitate an optimum of sexual pleasure. As one tract put it: "Communism shouldn't bring asceticism, but rather lust for life, energy for life—and that includes a fulfilled love life."⁴

This healthy, balanced sexual identity, enjoyed equally by men and women, received strong support in GDR legal codes. The GDR sought to establish a sexual morality firmly based on the writings of Friedrich Engels and August Bebel and, by 1989, had achieved an atmosphere...