At der Spiegel, an interview with Rem Koolhas on the topic of the disappearance of East Germany's buildings. It's (obviously) in German, but here are a few excerpts:
RK: ... when Germany was unified, in my opinion the tremendous potential of showing respect for the different cultural and social projects on both sides was thrown away. I am still very upset by the way that East German buildings are aggressively erased [his word is "extinguished"-h], especially when this happens in the name of History. It's absurd to eliminate the historical in the name of History.
Spiegel: How, in your opinion, did it come to this?
RK: It was due less to ignorance than to intolerance. There was a predominantly dogmatic way of looking at the city of Berlin, one which sought to rid the city of the remainders of the ideology that had been fought against in the Cold War. The dismantling of the Palace of the Republic was also an act of revenge for the dismantling of the (City) Palace by the Communists. For me, not saving the Palace of the Republic was a similar crime.
...
Spiegel: [what about the idea to rebuild the Hohenzollern's City Palace?]
RK: This is a sad idea at its core, but it has a lot of supporters. In Germany, the weight of history makes it difficult to make rational decisions. And naturally, the idea of reconstructing the City Palace is also an attempt to erase a historical epoch--and simultaneously to show the people in eastern Germany: your life was for nothing.
[via Ostblog.]
Everyone's already linked to this, but in case you missed it: here is a story on Invisible Adjunct at the Chronicle for Higher Ed. Sigh.
FYI:
Jon Olsen has reviewed Goodbye, Lenin! for H-German.
(Haven't read this yet, but it's worth a look: Jon's dissertation deals with public memory and representation in the GDR.)
Ok, the title is a little jargony, but I was thinking about Tom's response to my post about the Ostalgie panels and I think he makes a good point that maybe better expresses some of the things I was getting at:
No matter how hard I try, I don't have the freedom to be objective regarding the GDR (not 'unfortunately,' I just don't). But this ambivalent (or multivalent) position in relation to the GDR on the one hand and to one's own history and the degree of 'arrival' [or 'at-home-ness'–h] in contemporary Germany on the other apparently creates a push-pull effect with considerable potential. It may be that, after the first wave–largely ignored in the West–and the second, more superficial wave of Ostalgie, we're now facing a third. Given that the "social advertising campaign" [of the federal govt., I assume–h] has run its course and capitalism can return to business as usual, this third wave might orient itself more towards the social basis and the conditions on/in relation to which the GDR was founded.
Hmm. Sounds very interesting to me. What resonance might the founding ideas of East German socialism have now (regardless of their later abuse)? How do they compare with what's going on in the FedRep at the moment? And in fact, could we maybe get similar results by turning to the roots of the SPD, which seems to be pretty far afield these days?
for Tom's original text,
So sehr ich mich auch bemühe, die Freiheit, objektiv zu sein, habe ich im Blick auf die DDR nicht. (nicht: leider, nur: nicht;) Aber genau diese ambivalente (oder multivalente) Haltung zur DDR einerseits, zur eigenen Geschichte und dem Grad des Ankommens im jetzigen Deutschland andererseits ergibt offensichtlich ein Spannungsfeld mit viel Potential. Möglicherweise steht uns nach der, im Westen kaum beachteten, ersten und der oberflächlichen zweiten Ostalgiewelle bald noch eine dritte bevor, die sich angesichts dessen, daß der Kapitalismus nach der sozialen Werbekampagne in Westdeutschland nun wieder zur Tagesordnung übergeht, auch an den sozialistischen Grundlagen und den Umständen der Entstehung der DDR orientiert.
Over at Living in Europe, Eamonn's got an interesting post about the German band Lali Puna. Noting that the band is mainly concerned with the status of things in the US, he writes
The bigger point, however, is...what she doesn't sing about, Germany. The country's lack of anything approaching a political dynamic that would galvanise an artist of Trebeljahr's ability suggests that it's not just the economy that's being suffocated; the remnants of a critical tradition are being stifled as well. The distant past of fascism, the middle past of terrorism and the recent past of communism are not exactly the stuff of pop song, but a complete turning of the back upon every aspect of a history, a culture, a society is worrying.
I don't know the band's music, but from the little bit I've heard and lyrics I've read, I would be inclined to agree with Eamonn; and while I can't think of any counter-examples at the moment, there must be some [good] bands who are singing about the state of things in Germany? Little help? (I so seldom listen to new music--tsk.)
I heard a number of excellent and useful definitions of Ostalgie at the German Culture Panels of the Popular Culture Association conference this weekend. Sebastian Heiduschke suggested that Ostalgie was a means of laying claim to a collective memory--and pointed out that the term was already appearing in 1991 (huh; the earliest reference I'd found was in 1996). Perhaps the best-developed interpretation was that presented by Joe Jozwiak and Elisabeth Mermann-Jozwiak, which applied post-colonial theory to Sonnenallee and Goodbye, Lenin. Someone made the excellent point that if we think of unification as a type of colonialization, and former East Germans as a marginalized group within German society, we can use postcolonial theory to understand the possibilities of multiple viewpoints.
...
Another very keen observation by the same person (unfortunately I never learned this woman's name) was that if Ostalgie is recalling a past that never was quite as it is remembered, a model for understanding it might be the Heimat movement of the 1950s. This, I think, was the most striking observation for me.
Both Anne Hector (who spoke on Christoph Hein's Willenbrock and Jana Hensel's Zonenkinder) and I found ourselves pushing an Anti-Ostalgie, a term which cropped up in a few other papers, as well. I'm still not sure what this is, but I think that for me, it involves a multivalent perspective on the GDR. This might be something between collective memory and biography or personal experience. At times I feel that outside observers, like myself, can compile statistical information and perhaps even interpret historical documents in factual terms, but that no one can tell the East Germans what happened to them. The "GDR" (i.e., not the state but the larger phenomenon) is too bound up in life experience, in the subjectivity of the people who lived there/then and now live somewhere/time else.
Ostblog notes the passing of Wolfgang Mattheuer, one of the more famous artists of the GDR. [Here's a memorial story at the Märkische Allgemeine.]
I feel a conflicted empathy of some mysterious kind towards the artists I "work on:" I just finished a draft of a paper on the Nationalgalerie's Kunst in der DDR, thinking a lot about Western perceptions of Eastern artists and their work, and the self-definition of Eastern artists. Perhaps because of that temporary, extra-deep immersion, Mattheuer's death hits me extra hard.
[I'm purposely avoiding, for now, the debates around M's position as a favored artist in the GDR. Will do later, though, maybe after the panels on Ostalgie this weekend.]
It's a busy week for me. I'm hoping to finish a rewrite of my earlier post about Der Watzman sometime soon, but I thought in the meantime I'd link to the Koordinierungsstelle für Kulturgutverluste (English language page):
The Koordinierungsstelle für Kulturgutverluste is Germany’s central office for the documentation of lost cultural property. Its main task is to register and document search requests and found-object reports about cultural objects taken from their owner(s) in connection with Nazi persecution or relocated as a result of the Second World War. Publication on the Internet makes it possible to search for these objects and the circumstances of their loss world-wide. In this way, the Office seeks to assist the locating and identification of these objects and to facilitate their return.
The site includes a searchable database which "contains data on cultural objects which as a result of Nazi persecution or the direct consequences of the Second World War were removed and relocated, stored or seized from their owners, particularly Jews, or on cultural objects where, because of gaps in their provenance, such a story of loss cannot be ruled out as a possibility."
A fun, if a little snippy, review of the Baselitz retrospective at Deutschland Radio [German]; the show's press release [in English]. More to follow...
So this notice came through that Schroeder had resigned...turns out it might, just maybe, be a hoax for April 1. But in the process of examining this story, a friend stumbled onto the humble homepage of Fischers Joschka. Go there now. Really. You cannot survive a moment longer without knowing how Joschka "wirkt," "kämpft" and "lebt." Besonders schön ist der kämpfende Joschka.
It's no secret that planning for (or even thinking about) having a baby at the ABD stage is perplexing. The dissertation is the first baby, and we've got to ride out these last nine months before considering another, more complicated, nine months. But Belle Waring has a suggestion for when that time does come: do it in Singapore! For cheap and competent medical care! I'm writing this one down.