East Germany Even 28 years after reunification I do not know one half of my country
Of course, the headline is not a universal statement, but refers to my limited horizon. But let me tell you how I feel.
Last winter, when I was living in Montenegro, I met a woman who was either old enough or educated enough to know that until recently there were two Germany. While we strolled through the port of Budva, she asked me how it was now with the reunification and if there were still differences between East and West.
I was pleased with the question, because it was finally a new one, and sat down to a monologue with well-read knowledge about population development, economic power, infrastructure and so on. at. It is quite dangerous to ask me any questions, should I warn all those who will meet me in person. But that evening on the Adriatic, after only a few seconds, I stopped myself, stopped, and said thoughtfully:
"To be honest, I know less about East Germany than about Montenegro."
To realize that was a bit of a shock to me. Not only was I - born in West Germany in 1975 and thus socialized in the FRG - not once in the GDR, who brazenly ceased to exist before I began to travel, but since then I have not really been to East Germany.
Of course, I've been to Berlin several times already. But our smart and top-organized capital is somehow over the East-West dichotomy and more in line with New York and London. Otherwise, I was, if I remember correctly, only twice in East Germany, in Hohenstein-Ernstthal and in Rostock, each for a court date.
But at that time, my life was still dominated by work, appointments and stress, so that I quickly dived and dozed off with the Reichsbahn back and forth. Only in Rostock I had to spend two nights because of the distance and got a bit lost during an evening walk in a Plattenbauviertel. In both cities, I thought to myself, "Pretty nice, but where are the people going?" Or maybe just everyone was with Bruce Springsteen or another FDJ concert.
Incidentally, my lack of knowledge about East Germany does not arise from a dislike of the East, as I unfortunately find in many West Germans and Western Europeans. On the contrary, I find Eastern Europe much more fascinating than Western Europe. So far, I have not set foot in some western states because I was too busy exploring other continents.
But for a politically and historically interested person, 28 years after reunification, it still seems to me a criminal negligence, one half of my own country, which has a very different history, not yet thoroughly explored and researched. Somehow it's funny that I know countries like Transnistria and Abkhazia or distant islands like Easter Island better than East Germany. Yes, even in Evin Prison in Tehran I have spent more nights than in the five new states.
To change that is my purpose. And I do not mean only a few days in Görlitz or Eisenhüttenstadt, but an extended and intensive exploration of (unknown) Germany. Just as I usually explore distant countries.
Of course East Germany is not to be reduced to East German history, especially not a generation later. But as a history student, my interest lies more in the past than in the future.
At a seminar on the "short summer of the GDR in 1965" at the Fernuniversität in Hagen, I realized how little we Western and now all-German know about the GDR history. Apart from popular uprising in 1953, building the wall in 1961 and the fall of the wall in 1989, actually nothing. Next to me sat a student who had grown up in the GDR and explained to me how surreal she felt: "The professor talks about the GDR as about a distant country or ancient Egypt. But here are people in the room who grew up there. Why does nobody ask us? "
For today's national holiday that would not be a bad idea for us West Germans. Just ask East German acquaintances, friends or colleagues to tell.