This book tells the story of the German Democratic Republic from “the inside out,” using the lens of generational change to deconstruct an intriguing array of social identities that had little to do with the “official GDR” version authoritarian rulers regularly sought to impose on their citizens. The author compares the “identities” of five societal subgroups (GDR writers and intellectuals; pastors and dissidents; women; youth; and working-class men), exploring the policies defining their lives and status before/during/after the 1989 Wende, as well as the diverging “exit, voice and loyalty” dilemmas encountered by each. The “dialectical” components treated in this work center on the extent to which eastern identities were lost, found and reconfigured across three generations, from 1949 to 1989, from 1990 to 2005, then up to 2020. It explores how the existence of a separate East German state and the socialization processes imposed on each subculture has not only complicated the search for national unity since 1990 but also -- perhaps more controversially―invoked new challenges directly related to ongoing East-West structural disparities since unification and the treatment of eastern Germans by often more privileged western Germans.
Author(s): Joyce Marie Mushaben
Publisher: Palgrave Macmillan
Year: 2023
Language: English
Pages: 560
City: Cham
Acknowledgements
Contents
Abbreviations
List of Figures
List of Tables
List of Boxes
Chapter 1: Introduction: Prelude to a German Revolution
Methodology
Part I: Dimensions of the Dialectical Identity
Chapter 2: Exit, Voice, and Loyalty: The Theoretical Parameters
A Concentric Approach to Identity Theory
Circle One: Identity as the Bio-Psychology of the Individual
Circle Two: Identity as Social Interaction
Circle Three: Identity as National Consciousness
The Circles Broken: Exit versus Voice
Expanding the Framework: Making the Case for Loyalty
Reinterpreting die Wende, 1989–1990
Identity from Below: Socialist Subcultures
Chapter 3: Selection by Consequences: What Did It Mean to Be GDR-German?
The Parameters of Political Legitimacy
A Spectre Haunting …: The Stalinist Legacy
Founding Narrative Versus Historical Record
The Quest for Socialist Legitimacy
Redefining the Significance of State, Nation, Nationality
“The Problem of Generations”
Love of the Socialist Fatherland: Ideal Versus the Real
Historicism Versus Materialism
Part II: The Deconstruction of Official GDR-Identity
Chapter 4: Real-Existing Socialism: Consumer Culture and Vitamin “B”
The Perils of Planning Under Real-Existing Socialism
Collective Reponses to Chronic Scarcities
Intershop Socialism and Its Discontents
Creating the “Socialist Consumer”
The Paradox of Real-Existing Materialism
Chapter 5: “Now out of Never”: Exit, Voice, and Riding the Revolutionary Bandwagon
Learning to Live with “Arrangements”
Protest Currents and the Velvet Revolution
Unanticipated Consequences: Freikauf, Expulsions, and Local Reactions
The Dialectical Forces of Exit and Voice
Ostalgie: Marketing East German Memories
Conclusion: Loyalty, Habitus, and “the Wall in One’s Head”
Chapter 6: Heimatgefühl and the Reconfiguration of Civil Society
Political “Representation Gaps” in the Eastern Länder
Die Grüne Liga (Green League) of Mecklenburg-Vorpommern
Volkssolidarität (People’s Solidarity): Landesverband Berlin
Runder Tisch gegen Gewalt (Round Table Against Violence) in Sachsen-Anhalt
Gleichstellungsstelle-Erfurt (Erfurt Office of Equal Opportunity), Thüringen
Forum Ostdeutschland (SPD) and Aufbau Ost (CDU) in Berlin/Brandenburg and Saxony
The PDS as “Comeback Kid”
“The End of Apprenticeship”
Part III: Reconstructing East-German Identities: Peer Cultures
Chapter 7: Conscience of the Nation: Writers, Artisans, and Intellectuals
Cultural Policies and the Forces of Socialist Realism
Anti-fascist Imperatives: Loyalty and the Aufbau Generation
“Profiles in Courage”: Christa Wolf and Stefan Heym
The Sixty-Eighters and the Dilemmas of Cultural Revolution
The Post-Wall Literaturstreit: “The West” Versus Christa Wolf
Loyalty, Voice, and the National Question
Chapter 8: From Losers to Winners, and Back: The Stasi, Pastors, and Dissidents
Shield and Sword of the Party: The Ministry for State Security
Opiate of the Masses: The SED and Religion, 1945–1970
From Peaceful Coexistence (1971–1979) to Church from Below (1980–1989)
(Re)Marginalized Voices: Pastors and Politics, 1990–1998
The Helsinki Factor: Loyalty as Dissent
Prosecuting the SED Dictatorship
Loyalty, Voice, and Retributive Justice
Chapter 9: From State Paternalism to Private Patriarchy: East German Women
Gender and Ideology: State Paternalism
Equality without Emancipation: Double Burdens and the “Right to Work”
Revenge of the Cradle: Reproductive Rights and Wrongs
Private Patriarchy and the Re-domestication of Eastern Women
Deutschland einig Mutterland: Gender Policies under Angela Merkel
Winning Women
Chapter 10: The Anti-political Identities of East German Youth
Redefining Class Consciousness: The Uniform Socialist Education System
Not-so-free “Free-time”: FDJ and the Jugendweihe
“Leave Us Kids Alone”: Finding Voice Through Music
From Voice to Exit: Normalos, Avantis, Gruftis, Punks, and Skins
Writing for the Panzerschrank at the Central Institute for Youth Research
Through the Looking Glass: Unification and Normative Loyalty
“Be careful what you pray for …”
Chapter 11: No Country for Old Men: Second-Class Citizenship and its Discontents
The Double Bind of Military Machismo
The Treuhand Versus the “Heroes of Labor”
A Clash of Male Cultures: Eastern Underlings, Western Bosses
Backlash: Far-right Populism and the New Misogynists
Relative Deprivation: Second-Class Citizenship and the “Unhappiness Curve”
Working-Class Men: Winning the Battle, Losing the War
Chapter 12: The Dialectical Identities of Germans United
Caught in the Middle: Die Wendekinder
The Post-Turnaround Generation: Difference Still Matters
The Blessings of Late Birth
Chapter 13: Epilogue: October 3, 2021
Index
