Over the Wall/After the Fall: Post-Communist Cultures through an East-West Gaze

9: "Hurrah, I'm Still Alive!": East German Products Demonstrating East German Identities

181 nine ‘‘Hurrah, I’m Still Alive!’’ East German Products Demonstrating East German Identities Rainer Gries ‘‘Atlanta? New York?’’ The answer to these exceedingly cryptic questions is equally laconic—a simple, definite, self-confident: ‘‘Berlin!’’ Constituting the headline of an advertisement, this question-and-answer exchange invoking these three cities heralds a product’s return to the stage of the market place and of brand names. It is ‘‘Club Cola. Our Cola.’’ ‘‘Our Cola’’—who are ‘‘we’’? What kind of ‘‘we’’ could claim, in early 1992, that ‘‘the Cola from Berlin’’ is one of ‘‘ours’’? Who hides behind this strong possessive pronoun with its very own peculiar history in the GDR? How could advertising strategists dare to present this manner of word association in public , one which to this day resonates powerfully with the propagandistic slogans of times past? Indeed, in the GDR there was incessant talk of ‘‘our best’’: the people who worked for ‘‘our Republic,’’ loved ‘‘our socialist home,’’ defended ‘‘our fatherland.’’ As a historian, I wish to use objects traditionally associated with economic history in order to examine issues of culture and identity.1 By studying the economic, social, and cultural history of East German products both before and after the transition of 1989, one can explore questions of collective identity in East Germany. Such products trace paths that not only consist of a few Rainer Gries 182 First appearance of Club Cola after the transition: tastefully native and historically conscious. 1992. Photograph by Spreequell GmBH, Berlin. Used by permission. peripheral manifestations but also allow us to determine the structures of ‘‘identity formation’’ and ‘‘identity transformation.’’ In fact, quite beyond that, products themselves communicate messages that contribute significantly to the creation and articulation of social and cultural identity patterns. These are conveyed and reinforced in the communicative process through the medium of the product. Thus, the product and its connotations by no means reflect purely economic matters; they also reflect social and even political matters. An examination of the conditions that facilitated a successful relaunching of Club Cola, at least in the regional Berlin-Brandenburg soft-drink market, not only helps us comprehend the history and personality of the product but, far more significantly, enables us to reconstruct the history and fundamental building-blocks of its consumers’ identities. This narrow and almost symbiotic relationship becomes especially obvious in the case of Club Cola, given that this product was able to get by without need of character witnesses on its behalf after the transition of 1989. The East German Cola stands and speaks for itself, plays its own protagonist, and provides its own most convincing testimonial. Admittedly, when it was reintroduced, the Cola arrived with ‘‘new product design and improved quality,’’ but the aesthetic modernization actually proved to be quite modest and cautious. The half-liter reusable bottle remains, the brand label still has a red background,2 and the typography has been only subtly adapted to the new conditions. Club Cola in no way denies its GDR physiognomy or its history before 1989. In terms of its layout, the product remains true to itself. Celebrating its comeback in 1992, it does not project itself as some kind of completely restyled turncoat but as a tasteful historically conscious native (see Fig. 9.1). Without a doubt that is an important reason for its successful renaissance, but it also partly explains why Berlin’s media rolled out the red carpet to welcome it back as ‘‘the legendary’’ GDR soft drink and ‘‘a fine old acquaintance.’’3 ‘‘Hurrah, I’m Still Alive!’’ 183 A Short History of the Socialist Cola Club Cola is a typical ‘‘product of the East.’’ Originally it was intended as a ‘‘gift’’ of the German Socialist Unity Party (SED) to the state youth of the GDR. For the twentieth anniversary of the founding of the Socialist German Republic, on October 7, 1969, the heads of the Party were determined that there should also finally be a socialist Cola (Fig. 9.2). Every ten years the GDR wrote another chapter in the mythology of its founding, organizing pompous pageantry. Economic stabilization during the 1960s soon created the basis for Honecker’s ambitious 1971 program for ‘‘Unity of Economic and Social Policy ,’’ but it had also provided the impetus for the earlier decennial celebrations of 1969. The dramaturgy of the ‘‘XXth Birthday of the Republic’’4 took place in the...