Cola in the German Democratic Republic. East German Fantasies on Western Consumption

Coca Cola is frequently used to signal the large-scale transformation from socialism to capitalism in eastern and middle Europe, which began in East Germany in the autumn of 1989. In the famous German Wende-movie Goodbye Lenin, ¹ the caffeinated drink figures prominently. The main character in this movie is a middle-aged woman who has fallen into coma during one of the mass demonstrations in Berlin, in November 1989. When she finally wakes up, about one year later, her country no longer exists. Her children successfully hide this fact from her, surrounding her with the material remnants of the past. One day, when she gets out of bed, she sees people attaching a huge banner of Coca Cola to the large flat in front of her apartment bloc. The scene marks the beginning of her awareness that the world in which she used to live is definitively gone.

Coca Cola is well-chosen to play this role. The brand deserves its worldwide fame primarily from being one of the main icons of American-inspired consumer culture and capitalism. ² Even though the American drink was not available in the German Democratic Republic (GDR), it was extremely popular. So much so, that from the end of the 1950s East Germany produced its own brands of cola. Their appeal, however, never even came close to the western brands. East Germans proudly displayed empty cans of Coca Cola in their living-room cabinets as visible emblem of western consumer society, the iconic status of which can hardly be overstated. The popularity of western Coke is a clear example of a concealed process of Americanization that has taken place in the socialist GDR. ³ This paper describes and analyzes this process, examining the history of cola in the former GDR. It aims to explain why the socialist state emulated the capitalist consumer culture, while vehemently condemning it at the same time. It claims that East German leaders had no other option but to copy elements of their political opponents' material world, in order to seize eastern Germans in the economy of their desire.

In as far as scholars have analyzed the appeal of western consumer goods in the socialist bloc, they have interpreted the strong desire for these objects as an implicit critique of socialist society, or as an expression of people's desire for change. ⁴ Katherine Verdery, for instance, formulated it quite pointedly: "Acquiring consumption goods and objects conferred an identity that set one off from socialism." ⁵ Although I subscribe to this interpretation, I think it is too narrow. Positing socialist state's inhabitants in opposition to the states in which they lived, unwillingly confirms a bipolarized frame of reference with regard to the socialist world as inhabited by clear-cut categories of oppressors and oppressed. This perspective is not only wrong ⁶ but also tends to victimize the people living under socialist rule, representing them as being passively inscribed by dictatorial rule. In my view, life in the GDR and the other countries of the socialist bloc is better understood if we focus on what political scientist Lisa Wedeen, writing about Syria, has aptly called the "ambiguities of domination." ⁷ In her analysis of the situation in Syria, she describes how people "have internalized their own surveillance" to such an extent, that it is imperceptible where compliance ends and coercion begins. ⁸ This is an extremely relevant insight to understand the dynamics of power and the relation between state and society in the former GDR.

In spite of widespread dissatisfaction among the population, East German state hegemony was firmly established and, as I will show in this paper, consumption played a vital role in this. The government's visions of a socialist utopia were explicitly materialist and one of the ways in which compliance was orchestrated was by providing East Germans with the copied icons of western consumer culture. East Germans' desire to participate in the western world of consumer affluence, which is usually regarded as a form of critique and dissent towards the state, is better understood...