Ostblog has noted recently (here, here, and here) reactions to Martina Rellin's book Klar bin ich eine Ost-Frau!. The publisher says:
In the tradition of Maxie Wander, Martina Rellin writes a remarkable and authentic book that sheds light on the differences and commonalities between East and West...In the process she makes the surprising discovery that eastern women are less oriented towards consumption, less anti-desire [lusfeindlich], more life-affirming, self-assured, and more willing to take risks than their counterparts in the West. And the experience of the Wende has left them even stronger than they already were.
Sounds like a good read, right? To be tied to Wander is a real honor; Wander's Guten Morgen, du Schöne is widely considered the most important description of women's lives in the GDR. Like Wander, Rellin conducted interviews with East German women (14 of them). But the response to Rellin's book (which I haven't read yet) is tepid at best. It seems that Rellin, a West German who's lived in the East for ten years still has something of the "Besserwisser" in her. Not to say "Besserwessi;" her position as a transplanted westerner shouldn't preclude her being able to make accurate or even insightful observations based on the interviews she conducted. But it seems that Rellin employs a lot of cliches. Marika Bent at the Märkische Allgemeine writes,
Whereas Maxie Wander wanted to convey a critical image of society, Rellin is interested in confirming her own image of the savvy, energetic, tolerant Eastern woman, whom she herself would like to emulate. Thus the book becomes suspenseful at certain points at which the interviewees fall out of these particular pigeonholes: "Lots of people in the West are just too lazy to work," says the organic farmer Conny, without even noticing the insulting stereotype she's using. Eastern women are, after all, just people (but so are Western women).
Hmm. Seems to put the lie to the publisher's description; repeating someone's stereotyped notion of the West German is no way to "shed light on the differences between East and West."
Birgit Walter at the Berliner Zeitung writes a terrific, scathing review of the book in which she focuses on Rellin's notion of the kind of life a woman should try to lead, tying womanhood to 'having it all:'
[The right kind of life to lead is] that of Eastern women, because they practice the lifestyle of "Full-time employment with child." Western women, on the other hand, "haven't yet internalized this necessity."[...]The single thesis of the book consists of the already sufficiently accepted fact that many more women were employed in the East than in the West...She posits that "the topic of the Ostfrau is becoming more and more current," because eastern women have "answers to questions we're increasingly concerned with." Rellin's answers are very simple: be self-assured, work, have children, save the nation from extinction, and then, well, you'll never be depressed again.
I think as more reviews are published this will develop into an interesting public discussion of East German identity past and present. Can't wait to have a look at the book myself.
Posted by Heather at March 19, 2004 11:44 AM
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