Ostalgie

GDR T-shirts, for sale in Berlin in 2004

Soviet and GDR Memorabilia for sale in Berlin in 2006

Ostalgie (German: [ˌʔɔstalˈɡiː]) is a German term referring to nostalgia for aspects of life in East Germany. It is a portmanteau of the German words Nostalgie (nostalgia) and Ost (east). Its anglicised equivalent, ostalgia (rhyming with "nostalgia"), is also sometimes used.

The term (along with the phrase "Soviet chic") is also occasionally used to refer to nostalgia for life under the socialist system in other former Eastern Bloc countries, such as Slovakia, the Czech Republic, Hungary, and Poland. As with nostalgia for the Soviet Union, there are various motivations, whether ideology, nationalism, wistfulness for a lost sense of social status or stability, or even aesthetics or irony.

History

Ostalgie is a complex term that should not be described as a simple emotion of nostalgia. As Ostalgie relates back to the history of the Cold War, it is better to examine this term in the context of history and current influence in Western society; in doing so, the meaning of this term becomes clearer.

The most noticeable differences would be the ruling political parties of East and West Germany. Policy differences of the two parties established the strategies for the process of "restoration" following World War II. In the West, a capitalist economic system was adopted under the Marshall Plan. On the other hand, the authority of East Germany was under massive pressure from the Soviet Union and adopted a more radical economic system that placed more intensive requirements on the individual. Divergence between the two states first appears in their difference in economic system choices. The structure of the two German societies and their people were inevitably distinct from each other under the broad background of the Cold War. Although both East and West Germans share the same language and history, their identities were changed in the dimension of having completely different social lives. Differences between West Germany and East Germany are evident before reunification.^[1]

After the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989 and the German reunification that followed a year later, many of the symbols of the German Democratic Republic were swept away. Almost all GDR brands (DDR in German) of products disappeared from the stores and were replaced by Western products. However, after some time many Eastern Germans began to miss more or less aspects of their former lives (like culture or the known brand marks). Ostalgie particularly refers to the nostalgia for aspects of regular daily life and culture in the former GDR, which disappeared after reunification.^[2]

The term was coined by the East German cabaret artist Uwe Steimle in 1992.^[3]

Influence

An Ost-Ampelmännchen crosswalk light

Old trabants still can be found on streets (2014 in Hungary)

Many businesses in Germany cater to those who feel Ostalgie and have begun providing them with artifacts that remind them of life under the GDR; artifacts that imitate the old ones. Available again are brands of East German food, old state television programmes on video tape and DVD, and the previously widespread Wartburg and Trabant cars. Life in the GDR has also been the subject of several films, including Leander Haußmann's Sonnenallee (1999), Wolfgang Becker's internationally successful Good Bye, Lenin! (2003), Carsten Fiebeler's Kleinruppin forever (2004).

Those seeking the preservation of East German culture banded together to save the "Eastern Crosswalk Man" (Ost-Ampelmännchen), an illuminated depiction of a man wearing a "perky", "cheerful" and potentially "petit bourgeois" hat (inspired by a summer photo of Erich Honecker in a straw hat)^[4] in crosswalk lights.^[5] Many German cities in and near the former East German border, including Berlin, Lübeck and Erfurt, still retain the use of the Ampelmännchen at all or some pedestrian crossings due to its cultural relevance, and many souvenirs sold in East Germany and in Berlin make use of the icon.

Another example of commercially memorialising East Germany would be the musealization of Halle-Neustadt. Halle-Neustadt, a city constructed by the East German Government, is now a kind of living museum for East German memory. But more than the meaning of living museum, tourism in Halle-Neustadt is evidence of commercialisation of Ostalgie. In this case, musealization of Ostalgie is somehow connected with a consumerist attitude. Ostalgie in this sense is not a realistic or pragmatic term. It is the artifacts, rather than the social life of East Germany that plays the main role in this commercialization. If the social life of East Germany is more complex than artifacts and symbols, it would be fair to say that musealization of Ostalgie in Halle-Neustadt creates a stereotype of East German life. That is to say, reflection of Ostalgie in Halle-Neustadt should not be considered as an accurate representation of East Germany.^[6]

Arguments

There is no doubt Ostalgie exists in current Germany through commodities and products. Influence of Ostalgie in market is realistic.^[7]

Indeed, ostalgie could be inspired by the longing of the Ossis (German for "Easterners", a term for former GDR citizens) for the social system and the sense of community of the GDR. When the renowned West-German magazine Der Spiegel asked former GDR-inhabitants whether the GDR "had more good sides than bad sides", 57% of them answered yes. To the statement of the interviewing journalist that "GDR inhabitants did not have the freedom to travel wherever they wanted", Germans replied that "present-day low-wage workers do not have that freedom either".^[8]

However, there are also arguments for the actual meaning of this term. The question is if Ostalgie is the expression of nostalgia of former residents of East Germany, or a fantasy created by West Germans? Some might argue that popularity of East German brands and products is a phenomenon resulting from former East German's yearning for getting lost things back. In this discourse, former East Germans are thought be kidding themselves by believing a sort of Utopia in the past.^[9] And on the other hand from Boyer's perspective, Ostalgie is more like a fantasy created by West Germans; a Westalgie. He argues against the common accepted idea of Ostalgie through analysis of multiple dimensions of public culture and discussion of German history.

Boyer's Argument of Ostalgie as "West-algie"

First, he argues that the idea of Nostalgia is not new; it is developed as a symptom reflecting disorder of body for centuries. But what is interesting for Boyer about the idea of nostalgia is that nostalgia is found somehow connected with the notion of nation. That is to say, nostalgia is somehow related with nationalism. In this context, miss for the homeland generates love for everything in home country and then transformed to exclusion against foreign stuffs with desire of performing patriotism. But as it has been emphasized by Boyer, the usage of nostalgia is not as serious as it used to be. While in past time, nostalgia is realistic and strengthened by limitation of technology, people's feeling for this word now is relatively lighter due to advancement of society. After demonstration of heaviness of the word nostalgia, Boyer goes on further to conclude that nostalgia in some levels is justified as the physical state of nationalism. And relates this point to discussion of Ostalgie, it is just theoretically impossible to think Ostalgie to be East German's nostalgia. Since nostalgia is connected with the combination of nationalism and departure from nation, it would be very hard to think the cheerful event of reunification become a source of it.

Second, Boyer discusses nostalgia in context of Second World War, which is a huge historic event in Germany and creates the predicament of Vergangenheitsbelastung (the past). According to Boyer, the imposed division between West Germany and East Germany is not merely a geopolitical fact that punishes German war crime. More than that, German people also use this geopolitical fact as a deferred confrontation against ethnology during Holocaust. History of Third Reich, which makes German postwar generation shameful and anxious about the past, is clearly a historical burden. And to overcome this burden, one strategy that both Germanys adopt is to claim the other side of Germany is more "German", that the other side is fascism and should be more responsible for war crime during World War II. Boyer goes on further to explain that identification of each state is actually dependent on each other. West Germany needs the existence of East Germany to reflect its own contextual identity, and so does East Germany. The situation has changed since the reunification; the previous "two German States" exist no more, and now East Germany is no longer a valid imagined enemy. But the strategy of constructing a "West German-ness" has not totally vanished. Reunification has not changed the social structure of West Germany significantly, most institutions in West Germany are preserved. So, the strategy of treating East Germany as a perceived enemy could also be preserved after reunification. That is to say, Ostalgie as an idea created in this context could also possibly be used by the West Germans to construct an imaginary image of East Germany, even though East Germany no longer exists in the modern world geography.

Third, Boyer examines current West-East relationship, and what he finds is that West German opinion is dominant in discourse of the West-East relationship and refuses to treat input and opinions from former East German members seriously. Boyer admits that it is possible for former East Germans to fantasize some aspects of the GDR but, he also argues, none of them would fantasize actually returning to the historic GDR. Boyer argues the current construction of Ostalgie has created a "no-place" of East Germany. East Germany in this discourse is only "realistic" from a West German perspective. The East German perspective (despite its individual history, policy, structure, way of life, and outlook), is somehow invalid and thus unable to challenge the imagined "western" image of East Germany. Since the differences between West and East are realistic and profound at both the social and political level, the construction of a "no-place" East Germany is just a utopia (or indeed dystopia) of West German creation.^[10]

There are also authors, such as Enns Anthony, who suggest that understanding the Ostalgie phenomenon should go "beyond the simple question of whose representation of the GDR is more valid or authentic". Moreover, what matters is the observation of the actual situation of the former residents of the GDR.^[11]

See also

• Ampelmännchen: the waiting/walking man used in East German pedestrian traffic lights, which became a distinctive mascot for the Ostalgie movement
• Culture of the German Democratic Republic
• DDR Museum, Berlin has exhibitions on life in East Germany and extensive collections of Ostalgie items.
• Die anderen Bands
• Good Bye, Lenin!: A satirical film involving a post-reunification deception. (2002)
• Go Trabi Go: an early post-unification comedy film in which an East German family go on their first holiday in the West in their Trabant 601 (1991).
• Net shopping bag: The ubiquitous DDR Einkaufsnetz is now a retro fashion item.^[12][13]
• Ostrock
• Sonnenallee: Film that has been accused of "glorifying" the GDR (1999)
• The Lives of Others: a German film seen as a counterpoint to Ostalgie.
• Trabant: East German automobile produced until 1991; for some, an icon of East Germany.
• Vita Cola: an example of a product revived by Ostalgie
• Yugo-nostalgia: a similar phenomenon in the former Yugoslavia
• Nostalgia for the Soviet Union

Books and games

• Banchelli, Eva: Taste the East: Linguaggi e forme dell'Ostalgie, Sestante Edizioni, Bergamo 2006, ISBN 88-87445-92-3.
• Banchelli, Eva: Ostalgie: eine vorläufige Bilanz, in Fabrizio Cambi (Hg.): Gedächtnis und Identitat. Die deutsche Literatur der Wiedervereinigung, Würzburg, Koenigshausen & Neumann, 2008, pp. 57–68.
• Berdahl, Daphne: On the Social Life of Postsocialism: Memory, Consumption, Germany (2009)
• Rota, Andrea: Testi pubblicitari ostalgici: una breve analisi semiotica, In Linguistica e filologia 24/2007, pp. 137–152, ISSN|1594–6517.
• Pence, Katherine and Paul Betts. Socialist Modern: East German Everyday Culture and Politics, Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 2008
• "Ostalgie" (2018) - the video-game, where the playground is East Germany during the late Perestroika and the dissolution of Warsaw Pact.

References

External links

Look up Ostalgie in Wiktionary, the free dictionary.

• "Ostalgie", post from The New York Times
• "Ostalgie" discussion on H-German
• Kristen R. Ghodsee, "Red Nostalgia? Communism, Women's Emancipation, and Economic Transformation in Bulgaria."