Ecologies of Affect: Placing Nostalgia, Desire, and Hope

1. “Not everything was good, but many things were better”: Nostalgia for East Germany and Its Politics

Not everything was good, but many things were better” Nostalgia for East Germany and Its Politics ANNE WINKLER Prologue During a recent trip to Berlin, I wandered through the shops of Alexanderplatz in search of objects invoking the East German past. This square, once the symbolic centre of the German Democratic Republic, is tied inextricably to one of the most vivid memories of my East German childhood. It was early 1990, and I was about to begin a new life with my family in Canada. My grade eight class was in Berlin on Jugendweihefahrt, a trip we took as part of a secular rite of passage celebrating our transition into adulthood. Before returning to our hometown, we visited Alexanderplatz with its soaring Fernsehturm (Television Tower) and futuristic Weltuhr (World Clock), and the nearby Rote Rathaus (Red City Hall). My classmates and I knew with certainty that this place embodied our nation’s technological superiority , worldliness, and commitment to socialism, a socialism that, ironically, was crumbling into non-existence at that very moment. I remember distinctly our excitement when we spotted a vendor who was selling Coca-Cola at the base of the television tower. Many of my classmates spent a significant portion of their allowance on their very first can of Coca-Cola, a drink most of them knew only from western television and magazine ads. Eighteen years later, again at the base of the television tower, I entered a souvenir shop looking for items that would help me think about what ideas about the East circulate in today’s Germany. What I found was a coffee mug, a mug so kitschy that I was a little embarrassed to buy it (see Figure 1.1). Large red letters on the rim of the mug read “Ostalgie,” “In memory of East 19 1 “ 20 NOSTALGIA Germany,” and “Not everything was good, but many things were better.” Eleven cartoon images “memorialize” lost facets of East German life. This chapter explores why and how this mug matters. Introduction In the aftermath of the collapse of socialism in Europe, nostalgic framings of the recent past emerged unexpectedly. In Russia, Poland, the nations of the former Yugoslavia, and other countries, cultural practices appeared that dwelled on ostensibly positive aspects of everyday life under socialism. In this chapter, I examine this phenomenon’s German variant, Ostalgie (nostalgia for the East). Broadly, Ostalgie is the preoccupation with unique facets of the former German Democratic Republic (GDR). It consists of such diverse articulations as the popularity of consumer goods that mimic those that were available in the GDR, television variety programs exploring the nation’s oddities, and the “museumification” of East German everyday life. Cultural analyses1 place the origin of Ostalgie in a collective sense of loss and dislocation that resulted from the unequal merging of two cultures (e.g., Bach 2002; Berdahl 2005; Betts 2000; Blum 2000; Boyer 2006; Cooke 2004a; Cooke 2004b). These works explore the ways in which Ostalgie entails counter-hegemonic practices that give voice to aspects of the East German past that dominant discourses fail or refuse to address. In addition to outlining the forms that Ostalgie takes, this chapter has two further goals. I highlight the politics of this contemporary form of nostalgia, both in its practice and scholarly analysis. Furthermore, I am concerned with the future-oriented claims Ostalgie and other historicizing discourses make. I suggest that a study of Ostalgie that takes into consideration its relation to other narratives constructing what kind of a place East Germany was offers possibilities for nuanced understandings of the politics of nostalgia. This chapter has three parts. I begin with descriptions of ostalgic practices and products. In addition, I conduct a cursory reading of a self-designated nostalgic object; I consider an Ostalgie coffee mug’s form and content and relate its messages to cultural and socio-economic changes that the unification of Germany brought with it. The mug serves as a departure point for the analysis that follows, while also grounding it. Throughout the text, I return to this object to illustrate my developing argument. I do so sparingly and hesitantly, however, because I do not wish to propose that the mug can stand in for Ostalgie in all its variation. I would merely like to suggest that this example of ostalgic material culture hints at the contradictions, complexities , and political character of the practice. In the second part of this...