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Hello Willy, Good Bye Lenin!: Transitions of an East German Family
DOI: 10.1353/scr.2005.0032
Abstract

This article discusses the film Good Bye Lenin! (2003) and the memories of one East German family's transition from the German Democratic Republic to the Federal Republic of Germany to focus on the two mothers (the film's and the real family's) and to expose a range of inconsistencies that mark the public memory work concerning former East Germany. These inconsistencies appear at the intersection of memory-making and historiography because they underscore recent debates about East Germans' "Ostalgie" as resistance to Western "museumification." They appear at the intersection of public and private memory, an intersection blocked with clashes and silences. They appear also at the intersection of fact and fiction, making the dialogue on how to remember the former East German state and culture one of pivotal importance for understanding the continued split in German culture and identity today. The German reception of Good Bye Lenin! has mostly focused on the film's rendering of the Wende, its expression of Ostalgia, and on its vision of a unified future within socialist political parameters. As such, the reception runs counter to the film's second story line of a family separated by politics and to the public and private memory work regarding the GDR's (and the FRG's) past that has barely begun. Good Bye Lenin!, by presenting two story lines, delivers what may seem a mere matter of selection: remembering either the "good" or the "bad" of the former East Germany. By making this selection, however, anyone involved in this memory work has already fallen into the film's trap. This trap is located precisely in the gulf that divides the memory work of East and West. But it is a generational one, as well, depending on the viewpoint of individual family members. Taken together—not as two sides of a coin but as two of many viewpoints—the cacophony of generational and EastÐWest perspectives prevent the German memory work from being straightforward or from being completed any time soon.


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