Born in the GDR: Living in the Shadow of the Wall by Hester Vaizey (review)

This book is a good antidote to the polarized debate in Germany about how to judge the German Democratic Republic (the GDR, or East Germany). It has become de rigueur for German politicians to denounce the GDR as an Unrechtsstaat (translated variously as a “state without the rule of law,” a “dictatorship,” an “illegitimate state,” or a “criminal state”) dominated by the State Security Ministry’s secret police (Stasi) and the Berlin Wall. By contrast, many former East Germans defend the GDR as a benevolent welfare state in which most people found a niche and lived their lives peacefully. These either-or, black-and-white arguments largely ignore the truth that East Germans experienced life in the GDR in all sorts of ways. Just in time for the 25th anniversaries of the fall of the Berlin Wall and German reunification, Hester Vaizey’s engaging book presents us with East German life experiences that fit in with the black-and-white narratives of GDR history but also with the large gray area between these extremes.

By providing us with portraits of eight of the roughly 17 million people who grew up in the GDR, lived through the fall of the wall at a formative age, and then had to adjust to life in the completely different system of the united Germany, Vaizey’s book shows us a broad spectrum of lives lived in East Germany and assessments of both life in the GDR and its comparison with life in the united, democratic, capitalist Federal Republic of Germany (FRG). Vaizey’s eight portraits demonstrate that there is no one-size-fits-all understanding of either the GDR or the pros and cons of life in united Germany. Although the German journalist Anja Goerz has published a similar book (Der Osten ist ein Gefühl: Über die Mauer im Kopf, a best-seller when it was published in Germany in 2014) about her conversations with more than two dozen former East Germans, as well as a few West Germans, about their lives in the GDR and since unification, Vaizey’s book provides much more context and detail by focusing just on eight people and is also grounded in scholarly analysis. Born in the GDR will be quite useful for classes in German history, Communist history, and the transition from Communism to capitalism and democracy in Europe.

In an introduction that deals with post-1945 German history as well as the methodological challenges of oral history, Vaizey recognizes that she is really writing about memories of the GDR rather than how the GDR really was (although she conflates the two more in her conclusion). Her source base includes the answers to questionnaires she distributed to interviewees, her follow-up interviews, contemporaneous diaries, schoolwork, school reports, and, where applicable, Stasi files on the interviewees. After completing 30 interviews with former East Germans, she chose to focus on eight, although she refers to some of the others. Most of her protagonists are from cities: four are from Berlin, and the others are from Dresden, Eisenach, Prenzlau, and the village of Golzow in Brandenburg.

When the Wall opened in 1989, Vaizey’s subjects ranged in age from 10 to 28 years old. Some had felt constrained in the GDR; others had not. Some came into problematic contact with the Stasi; others did not. Mario had attempted to escape from the GDR, was caught and imprisoned by the Stasi, and still suffers from post-traumatic stress syndrome. Petra had been an ardent young socialist in the GDR and had hoped 1989 would result in a reformed socialist state instead of leading to the collapse of the GDR. Carola felt stifled by the restrictions on freedom in the GDR, and when she got a tourist visa to attend a relative’s 75th birthday in West Germany, she never returned to the GDR. As a pastor’s daughter, Katharina was discriminated against for being religious...