The Cold War: Crash Course US History # 37
Remembering the glory days of nudity, breast milk and recycling 25 years after the fall of the Berlin Wall.
By Paul Hockenos Paul Hockenos is a writer based in Berlin, his next book is Berlin Calling A Story of Anarchy, Loud Music, the Wall and the birth of the new Berlin.
BERLIN Living on the east side about Berlin since the fall of the Wall in November 1989, I have listened slang for Ossies Orientals speak both derogatory and positively on the state they grew up in socialist German Democratic Republic 1949- 1990 GDR most, of course, are grateful that the state police is history and they've adapted well to life in the Federal Republic polls show the former east Germans are happy with the unification and the current state of the nation that former West Germans.
But that doesn t mean citizens of the former GDR think everything in Germany today is simply wunderbar Facing West German snootiness us-always-knew-better attitude that rubs more than Orientals in the wrong direction they will sometimes even look overboard for what they lack in the GDR, a phenomenon known as Ostalgie and cleverly parodied in hit pop singer Kai Neumann Im Osten in 2001 in the East, and the film Wolfgang Becker 2003 Good Bye, Lenin.
This weekend, Germans celebrate 25 years since the wall was breached, opening the way for the reunification of Germany, but when I asked in my neighborhood which was better in the GDR, I'm a good dose It nostalgia is good, but not everything fits when you check the historical record.
1 Childcare Good nursery and preschool education are the most regularly cited alleged jewelry GDR There were many more working mothers in East Germany in the Federal Republic and there were stains free kindergarten for each child, starting a few weeks after birth also was told of a categorical tone by my teacher of the kindergarten child of an older woman from the east, that parents Eastern received 1,000 marks per child at birth, and children took the free breakfast and meals in kindergartens who had longer hours from 6 pm and 00 were open more days than today Moreover, all children apparently received Christmas gifts galore of Erich Honecker, the leader of the German Socialist unity Party is 1971-1989, when Christmas rolled around.
The RDA model indeed seems attractive at first sight, especially in light of the acute shortage of kindergarten spots across Germany today, a shortfall much more pronounced in western Germany, where less women work and there is far too little day care options lack Germany 120 000 nursery staff a result, probably, of the wages they receive dismally low in East Germany, the profession was respected and comparatively decent pay.
Reality In the GDR, the state-run nurseries and financed alone in the city, except for some kindergartens run by the church was the site of the first phase of the state of ideological indoctrination and he was on pretty thick one of the children's songs approved, for example, was that i want to be a mini-school age Nursery Volkspolizist would draw pictures of Grenzsoldaten border guards with orders to shoot to kill day care centers were rigid, authoritarian, and uninspired, programmed to encourage groups think and not punishments creativity could be severe, also standing in the corner, no meals, perhaps spanking same these days most draconian a professor of German nursery school receives is to speak in a loud voice and no wonder there was a place for every child the adult-child ratio was 1-9 Today, e st March 1 to 6 in East Germany and 1 to 3 8 to the west.
2 Recycling Recycling is vital for business in East Germany, and not first and foremost for environmental reasons The state has no raw materials and relied on recycling to fill the gap kids could collect bottles , scrap metal or paper and spray cans, paper bags, books, glasses, camera film, aluminum foil, and be paid for it fans of the old system say everyone participated and it was much better organized than the west German model, which now applies to the entire country and wouldn t really be hard to one-up my friend Kristin told young pioneers collected bottles and newspapers in the neighborhood and brought things to the collection center which was a good way to make new use of old stuff, created a sense of community and the children gave the opportunity to earn some money to ow hours you can fill your truck and win 8 or 10 points to 8 points that you could pay for your meals at school for three weeks.
Reality soon as the GDR agency in charge of recycling stopped paying in 1990, the volume of materials collected it plunged 90 percent Soon after, he was forced to close all 16000 recycling centers and fire 11 000 employees.
3 Bockwurst, small white flour bread, mustard from Bautzen, Spree River pickles didnt get a taste for foods of their childhood kitchen in northern Germany is nothing to gloat neither east nor west specialty Berlin is a hot dog smothered in fried ketchup with curry power thrown on top Ossies But say the GDR sausages were tastier and still swear that the best comes from the Thuringia region south Berlin.
Reality Thuringian meat products are attractive, especially for any American who grew up with baloney and olive bread But the fact is, you can get almost all the GDR today products in nearly all grocery stores or specialty, although they're now produced by private companies instead of state what I remember east Germany Bockwurst was not meat but the thin piece of white stale bread with cheap flour that came with it and it cost about a quarter.
4 jokes were funnier across Central and Eastern Europe tell the best jokes were for communist regimes and therefore was something subversive about them in the GDR, the butt of laughter was often Erich Honecker, material shortages the Communist Party and West Germans here is a Why is there no bank robberies in the GDR because you had to wait 12 years for a get-away car a more what is the difference between a fox and a Wessi the fox is clever and pretends to be mute with West Germans it's the opposite.
Reality Check Okay, maybe these Aren laugh t aloud, but Ossi macabre humor didn t die with RDA s Here is a post-Wall Germany Ossi at Wessi We are a nation The Wessi to Ossi Yes, we.
5 of the mother's milk banks Breastfeeding women in the GDR could give milk for mothers who couldn produce t themselves because babies are born prematurely or mothers were ill there was the milk station ' a mother in each municipality, which often pick up the bike with pumped milk and families pay for that 1989 was a record year GDR mothers donated 200,000 liters of milk West Germany was nothing comparable mothers who couldn t produce milk powder used that existed to the east, too, but in smaller quantities all but a handful of milk banks were closed in 1990.
Whether it was actually any good to start is contested terrain course, nothing could be healthier for a baby than breast milk but only if the conditions are completely hygienic and giving milk not carry diseases, such as hepatitis and HIV Apparently, this is not so easy to be tested, which is why some doctors now refer patients away, however, you do not have to live in a communist country to share breast milk with your neighbors there are now 15 mother of milk banks in unified Germany France and Scandinavia, they use banks ve milk for decades.
6 If nudism skinny-dipping is your passion, the GDR would certainly have been the place for you flinch on the beaches of the Baltic Sea or in the Mecklenburg region where the whole family, junior high school during the next -door neighbors, the postman all disassembled for sunbathing, swimming, and then maybe even some vigorous laps tennis naked tradition has its roots in leftist culture of avant-garde of the 1920s, a First, it was -your-face, anti-bourgeois clothes, so tense and, secondly, it was radically egalitarian in birthday suit all people are equal there were camps, farms and packages holiday which were extremely popular not only among hard core nudity.
Reality Check nudism may not be quite the fad here as it used to be, but there is still a world of difference between the way most Europeans and non-Europeans treat the naked body in eastern Germany today, you still prepare you see serious skin should you was along one of its rivers again, Ossi nudist roots or weren t purely leftist political culture anyway the whole thing back to nature was a big problem for the Nazis, as Just look at the body in the Leni Riefenstahl films such as Triumph of the will and Olympia.
7 female models Several women indicated to me that the RDA models weren t anorexic waifs or larger than life sex bombs, but rather women means there was no Kate Moss East German In fact, many professionals weren t at all, but the models hobby flipping through a few old copies of magazines like Für Dich for you and Modische Maschen Stitches fashion most clothes look dowdy and, indeed, the models are women of all day but of course the pretty side, they certainly are less makeup and show less skin than in Vogue no sex advice, but rather focus on work, motherhood, and political parties for the whole culture of the libertine body, all this strikes me as terribly prudish.
Reality The GDR women's magazine Sibylle was in a league by itself and blocked or the tastes of the formless mode or single-Jane models of the GDR In fact, he has pushed the boundaries when it came to fashion and was considered vaguely oppositional to do so and even if the models may not have violated sexuality, skaters made up for anyone remember Katarina Witt in the 1988 winter Olympics.
8 The Community solidarity Ossies often refer to a time when he wasn t every man or woman for himself is said that there was a much stronger sense of camaraderie and collective identity in the old days that was does not German nationalism knew one of the neighbors and talked with them, eg This was destroyed by the money first, business-über-alles neoliberalism, they say.
Reality Check I remember the relief, just after the fall of the wall, those who hadn t fit in very narrow parameters of the state they described in terms of an obsessive control freak Inexplicably, they're some of the same people today who say they lack the solidarity of the GDR and this was not only the secret police, the owners of the factory, and educators who were all on the back, but their neighbors and colleagues if nt you stand, you were an outcast again, jealousy was common in a country where so much money and consumer goods from outside the formal economy, whether in the form of benefits the faithful plan or care packages for people with relatives in the West Finally, of course, there was the secret police, the Stasi, who had recruited hundreds of thousands of informal collaborators of the population, created an atmosphere of fear, mistrust and paranoia not the community or solidarity.
Some, of course, don t have the nostalgia I asked my neighbor Gerd Poppe, a dissident in East Germany and one of the brave souls behind the democratic movement that eventually toppled the regime, it failed in life before the fall of the Berlin Wall not a damn thing he responded All aspects of the system has been imbued with the ideology of the dictatorship, say back no aspect opponents steadfastly regime was conceivable outside of the one-party parameters it's miss of the German Democratic Republic, although all in the united Germany is not always wunderbar.
8 things were better in Germany of foreign policy East, best, east, germany.