1989 in European Vernacular Memory

2017 ◽  
Vol 31 (3) ◽  
pp. 456-478 ◽  
Author(s):  
Lars Breuer ◽  
Anna Delius
Keyword(s):  
Focus Groups ◽  
Social Integration ◽  
Special Section ◽  
West Germany ◽  
Historical Event ◽  
Berlin Wall ◽  
National History ◽  
East And West Germany ◽  
The United Kingdom ◽  
Made In

This article is part of the special section titled The Genealogies of Memory, guest edited by Ferenc Laczó and Joanna Wawrzyniak In our contribution, we examine the vernacular memory of the end of Communism and the year 1989 in Europe. Analyzing sixteen focus groups conducted in Germany, Poland, Spain, and the United Kingdom, we concentrate on the question whether the events related to 1989 might have the disposition to become a transnational European lieu de mémoire. We show that 1989 is not a salient historical event for British and Spanish participants, while Polish and German respondents do connect it with patterns of national identity building. Differences between vernacular and official memories could be revealed as respondents hardly mentioned the democratic achievements made in the course of the transitions. A transnational dimension was only found in Poland, where respondents articulate a feeling of neglect toward their own national history. The Solidarity movement is being interpreted as a motor of liberation and Europeanization of Poland and as a pioneer of democratization on a European scale. German respondents remain in their national frame, focusing on flashbulb memories of the fall of the Berlin Wall and the issue of social integration of East and West Germany after 1990, which they evaluate as imperfect. The strong national bias of Polish and German focus groups raises doubts as to whether 1989 can become a transnational basis for a shared European memory.

Human Capital, Job Tasks and Technology in East Germany After Reunification

2007 ◽  
Vol 201 ◽  
pp. 97-106 ◽  
Author(s):  
Alexandra Spitz-Oener
Keyword(s):  
East Germany ◽  
Age Groups ◽  
West Germany ◽  
Historical Event ◽  
Berlin Wall ◽  
The West ◽  
Job Tasks ◽  
East And West Germany ◽  
East German ◽  
Surprising Finding

At the time of the fall of the Berlin Wall, employees in East Germany were at least as well educated as employees in West Germany in terms of formal educational qualifications. However, it is unclear to what extent the skills and knowledge acquired through the East German education system, and through employment in a socialist labour market, are transferable to the new market-based economy. This study aims to shed light on this issue by giving a comprehensive description of the work of those employees who remained employed after the first phase of restructuring (i.e. in 1991) in East Germany, and comparing it with work in West Germany. Overall, the similarity between workplaces in East and West Germany soon after reunicication is striking. In addition, the patterns of task changes between 1991 and 1999 were very similar in both parts of Germany. Neither the level of task inputs in1991 nor the changes in task inputs between 1991 and 1999 were driven by cohort effects, a surprising finding given how differently the age groups were affected by the historical event. The Largest difference between the east and the west exists in terms of workplace computerisation. Although East Germany has caught up rapidly, it was still lagging behind the west in terms of computer use in 1999.

Post-unification (East) German Documentary and the Contradictions of Identity

2015 ◽  
Author(s):  
Barton Byg
Keyword(s):  
West Germany ◽  
Berlin Wall ◽  
Post Cold War ◽  
East And West Germany ◽  
East German ◽  
Innovative Enterprise ◽  
East And West ◽  
The Individual

This chapter focuses on the three major themes that have helped make the integration between East and West German documentary filmmakers successful and have contributed new strengths to German independent documentary as a productive and innovative enterprise. It first illustrates the phenomenon of collaboration between filmmakers from both East and West Germany, which preceded the fall of the Berlin Wall and provides the basis for unique accomplishments in documentary. Then, partly based on these East–West collaborations, it discuss examples of German documentary's frequent explorations of non-European topics, which challenge the clear separation of European and non-European in both politics and film art. Here, the film collaborations between Helga Reidemeister and Lars Barthel will serve as a case study. Finally, also as a result of decades of experimentation with the nature of the film medium's presentation of ‘reality’, ‘history’, and the individual human subject, Thomas Heise's German ‘portrait film’ Barluschke (1997) is explored as an example of this defining quality of independent German documentary filmmaking in the context of the post-Cold War.

scholarly journals Reinventing Consumption Traditions through the Process of Unification of a Country: Understanding “Good Bye Lenin!”

2016 ◽  
Vol 5 (1) ◽  
pp. 137-153
Author(s):  
Ece Ceren Engür
Keyword(s):  
Everyday Life ◽  
West Germany ◽  
Berlin Wall ◽  
East And West Germany ◽  
East And West ◽  
The Times

This paper focuses on the change of consumption traditions in terms of re-unification of a country. The discussion bases on the movie, “Good Bye Lenin!”(2003) and chases the transformations on consumption trends in order to understand how the re-unification of East and West Germany influences the practices of everyday life after a four decade long segregation. The movie displays the 1990’s Germany during the times when the Berlin Wall falls and frames a family portrait which is dominated by an idealist and traditional mother character in the last days of her life.

Chapter I. The Economy in 1979

1980 ◽  
Vol 91 ◽  
pp. 8-26
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
United Kingdom ◽  
The United States ◽  
Oecd Countries ◽  
West Germany ◽  
The Other ◽  
The United Kingdom ◽  
The Uk ◽  
Made In

The United Kingdom economy remained almost stagnant in 1979 with GDP being only 0.6 per cent higher than in 1978. Not only is this a dismal end to a generally depressed period of seven years but the outlook for the beginning of the 1980s is even worse, as we discuss in chapter II on the home economy. In comparison with the United States, Japan, West Germany, France and the OECD countries as a whole the UK performance has been slow, as is clear from chart I. However if similar comparisons with the other countries had been made in 1969 or 1959 the UK performance would also have been seen to be relatively slow. This picture of a stagnant aggregate economy in 1979 covers up an underlying picture of considerable fluctuation in the components of the economy.

scholarly journals Hidden Behind the Wall: West German State Building and the Emergence of the Iron Curtain

2011 ◽  
Vol 44 (3) ◽  
pp. 506-535 ◽  
Author(s):  
Sagi Schaefer
Keyword(s):  
German Economy ◽  
State Building ◽  
West Germany ◽  
State Agencies ◽  
Iron Curtain ◽  
Berlin Wall ◽  
German State ◽  
East And West Germany ◽  
East German

It is widely accepted that the inter-German border was constructed by East German authorities to halt the emigration to the west, which had damaged the East German economy and undermined the East German state agencies' power. This article argues that this is an inaccurate understanding, which mistakenly treats perceptions and insights gained from studying the Berlin Wall as representative of the mostly rural border between East and West Germany. It emphasizes crucial transformations of frontier society during the 1950s, highlighting the important role of western as well as eastern policy in shaping them.

Cultural Transmission Versus Perceptions of the Economy

1996 ◽  
Vol 29 (1) ◽  
pp. 78-104 ◽  
Author(s):  
ROBERT ROHRSCHNEIDER
Keyword(s):  
Cultural Transmission ◽  
German Economy ◽  
West Germany ◽  
West German Economy ◽  
Berlin Wall ◽  
The West ◽  
Economic Values ◽  
East And West Germany ◽  
Economic Culture ◽  
Social Market

The formal division of Germany in 1949 and the fall of the Berlin wall in 1989 demarcate a monumental quasi-experiment. Whereas the political culture aspects of this experiment have been studied extensively, the implications of these events for the economic culture in West and East Germany have received less attention. This article attempts to fill this gap in scholarship by examining the basic economic values of parliamentarians in East and West Germany. To this end, I interviewed 168 parliamentarians from the united Parliament in Berlin (79 from the East, 89 from the West). The study finds that the socialist order successfully imbued East MPs with socialist economic values—especially among the postwar cohort—independent of MPs' evaluation of contemporary economic conditions. In contrast, West MPs' economic values reflect the social market system of the West German economy. These results suggest that basic institutional arrangements, once put into place, have a substantial influence on individuals' ideological predispositions.

20 Years of (Re)Unification: The Representation of Post 1989 Berlin in the Achtung Berlin! Film Series

2016 ◽  
Author(s):  
Susanna Miller ◽  
Tara Nadolny ◽  
Trevor Blakeney ◽  
Jude Hirman ◽  
Flavia Zaka
Keyword(s):  
The Self ◽  
West Germany ◽  
The Political ◽  
Berlin Wall ◽  
Success Story ◽  
Strong Connection ◽  
German Film ◽  
East And West Germany ◽  
In Trans ◽  
Film Series

Twenty years have passed since the political unification of East and West Germany. In 1989, the fall of the Wall had symbolically presaged this ostensive reuniting of two halves of not only a divided city, but a divided nation. Since this new “year zero”, filmmakers have documented the reshaping of Berlin, a metonymy for the Federal Republic. While scholarship on literary works situate this "New Berlin Republic," an equivalent does not exist for film. We aim to explore the new capital by focusing on Achtung Berlin! because of the importance of this festival to the German film landscape as a whole and the metropole in particular. Achtung Berlin!, the self titled “New Berlin Film Awards,” is a unique contributor to the creation of the New Republic. Begun in 2005 in response to a lack of German content in Berlin’s festivals, Achtung Berlin! presents contemporary films whose production have a strong connection to Berlin and the surrounding state of Brandenburg. Analyzing Achtung Berlin! and its films, we address (re)unification by utilizing the notion of “space” in its shifting forms. The interrelated themes of identity, urbanness, and mobility in (trans)national perspectives reveal the contested nature of the aftermath of the Berlin Wall‐ whose fall stands as a concrete "success" story in the amalgamation of "a" people. Our project endeavors to account both for Berlin's unification and the dis/contents that are still issues today.

The German Democratic Republic

2009 ◽  
Vol 23 (4) ◽  
pp. 509-517 ◽  
Author(s):  
Łukasz Gałecki ◽  
Andrzej W. Tymowski
Keyword(s):  
German Democratic Republic ◽  
Collective Identity ◽  
Democratic Republic ◽  
West Germany ◽  
Communist Regime ◽  
Berlin Wall ◽  
National History ◽  
Real Socialism ◽  
Long Time ◽  
Integral Element

The 1989 revolution in the German Democratic Republic (GDR) constituted an integral element of wider revolutionary processes in Eastern Europe. But in contrast to what happened in Poland, Hungary, and Czechoslovakia, where the abrogation of real socialism meant return to one’s own national history, to distinctive national and state traditions, what happened in the GDR left its citizens in a great void, because they lacked a collective identity of their own. The crisis of GDR society came down to the fact that rejecting socialism meant rejecting one’s own country, and this had for a long time been against the wishes of the majority. As 1989 unfolded, opposition intellectuals continued to see the only alternative to the GDR to be a new, improved, but still socialist GDR. Meanwhile, the popular demonstration in Leipzig on 9 October 1989 signaled the end of the Communist regime. The destruction of the Berlin Wall on 9 November 1989 was its last dying breath. The paradox was that although the popular call for reunification with West Germany succeeded, the result was widespread frustration, not satisfaction. Moreover, it must be said that the pre-1989 opposition played only a small role in the transformation.

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