"The Taste Remains": Consumption, (N)ostalgia, and the Production of East Germany

Ten years after German reunification, a relic from the past appeared in an industrial corner of what was once East Berlin: an original "Intershop." Part of a chain of state retail establishments set up by the German Democratic Republic (GDR) for hard currency sales, the Intershop had formerly served as a type of duty-free store for Western time travelers on their rare visits to the world of the East. In socialist days, these stores stocked scarce consumer and luxury items such as chocolate, electronics, and perfume. For all but the privileged few, these shops were a constant reminder of not only the material failings of the GDR economy, but also the incongruity of the socialist ideal with the state's own hard currency-seeking activities.

Today's Intershop is a distorted commentary on the events of the last ten years: old GDR products are offered that, in some cases, are now almost equally as scarce as the Western goods once were. The rebirth of the Intershop can be traced to a 1999 exhibition, conceived by two western Germans, on everyday life in the socialist East. The decision to house the exhibit in an old Intershop worked in accordance with the show's emphasis on design, as the structure was essentially a kind of transportable barracks, easily assembled or stored and easily recognizable to easterners and westerners alike. ¹ The exhibit sought to capture the material culture of a rapidly vanishing era through commercial products and quotidian accoutrements. Inspired perhaps by these historical and aesthetic sensibilities, visitors consistently attempted to purchase the items on display. To accommodate a demand for items that, at that time, could only be found in flea markets or wholesale warehouses, the curators-turned-owners split the Intershop into a historical exhibit and a version of its original role as a retail shop. From senior citizens seeking familiar products to young, western collectors of kitsch, visitors came to peruse the shelves for GDR brands and memorabilia. ²

The new Intershop arrived on a wave of Ostalgia, by now a household word for the perceived nostalgia for the East (Ost) that presents itself in the form of theme parties, newly revived products, and a general flowering of things eastern. If, shortly after unification, East Germans famously abhorred anything made in the East (even milk and eggs) in favor of items from the West, ten years later the situation is substantially reversed. Ostprodukte (East products)—everyday items from the GDR that are still or once again available—have been making a comeback. These goods consist especially of foodstuffs (e.g., chocolate, beer, mustard) and household products such as the beloved dishwashing detergent Spee. Some of these items are available in GDR specialty shops, others in ordinary grocery stores displaying the sign "we sell East products," and most can be found on the Internet.

In conversations with Germans the newfound popularity of former GDR products usually appears as that ephemera of a questionable nostalgia evoked by the very term Ostalgia. The term embraces a spectrum of colloquial usage that is both pejorative and playful. When referring to the habits of easterners, Ostalgia confirms a widespread western image of East Germans as deluded ingrates longing pathetically (if understandably) for the socialist past. Yet when the subject is the knowingly ironic westerner (or the "sophisticated" easterner) enjoying the retro aura of GDR era design, Ostalgia appears as a (p)ostmodern artifact valued precisely for its lack of emotional attachment to a specific past. Thus I see Ostalgia as simultaneously two forms of nostalgia, forms that are similar to the distinctions Marilyn Ivy (1995) discerns in relation to nostalgia in Japan: a "modernist" nostalgia (see Jameson 1991: 19) in former East Germany and a "nostalgia of style" primarily (but not exclusively) in the West.

The production and consumption of Ostprodukte function as the main symbolic locations for the crystallization of these...