The Twilight of the Idols: East German Memory and Material Culture

Iconic Brands

“…Briefly, it is suggested that the qualitative value change is in part a result of disenchantment with Western goods and Western ways more generally. Economic instability, particularly the 1998 devaluation of the rouble, meant that Western goods were out of reach for many, exposing as a fantasy the socialist ideal of material abundance and a comfortable life for all that had been projected onto the West (Betts, 2000). Furthermore, as Fehérváry (2009) argued, Soviet citizens' longing for Western goods primarily reflected the desire for a superior 'political-economic system that allows for creative productivity, social relationships, aesthetic pleasures, and expression without fear of state retribution' (p. 427).…”

A Return to the National Paradigm? National History Writing in Germany, Italy, France, and Britain from 1945 to the Present

“…The myth of a "socialist nation" in the GDR unraveled in 1989/90, and although one finds considerable levels of Ostalgie in today's East Germany, only a small minority of East Germans would favor the return of the GDR and its ruling Communist Party. 179 Furthermore, silences surrounding what could be construed as stains on proud national traditions have all been made into major topics by historians. In France, not only collaboration under Vichy but also the dirty war in Algeria have become major topics of contemporary history.…”

Expressions of Experience and Experiences of Expression

“…What I want to focus on here, however, is a specific example of a counternarrative to the official histories and memories represented by the ZGF, a collection of East German "everyday objects" by a local nonprofit organization. The collection reflects the privileging of material culture in eastern German historical memory (Betts 2000), the most extensive and sophisticated example of which is the Museum for East German Everyday Life Culture in Eisenhüttenstadt, a truly professional undertaking; its mission entails the "museumification of the world of GDR objects as an active and mutual communication that allows for reflective thought in a period of individual and often painful reorientation" (Ludwig 1996;Ludwig andKuhn 1997a, 1997b). The "Zeitzeugen Ostalgie" project (Ostalgie Witnesses to History), however, is representative of more widespread practices of collecting, cataloging, and displaying "GDR everyday life."…”

“…. That is, the very lack of product innovation and repackaging assured that these objects-however privately experienced and remembered-would function as transgenerational markers of East German culture and identity" (Betts 2000). A warehouse of discarded used furniture for low-income families, the vast majority of which are GDR products, occupies an adjacent room; a separate ABM project of the Neue Arbeit Wurzen, these items represent for many not only the throwaway mentality of today's consumer society but also the dustbin of history to which the GDR and its products have been relegated, and from which the relics of Ostalgie have been culled.…”