• Nachrichten
• > Politik
• > Deutschland

Short End of the Street

By David Hudson

A light-hearted film recalling a bestselling author's youth in former East Germany opens this weekend, another sign of the swelling wave of nostalgia for the GDR. Also: Günter Grass to Oskar Lafontaine: "Shut up!"

The actual figures released on Tuesday are predictably being interpreted according to various political persuasions, but one trend is clear. Unemployment may be stabilized or even falling slightly in western Germany, but in the east, where it's already double that of the west, unemployment, the stated top priority of the "red-green" government, is on the rise.

Is it any wonder that as magazines, newspapers and television specials bombard the German public with jubilant blow-by-blow accounts of the fall of the Berlin Wall in November 1989, a considerable crowd is expected to show up on Thursday in "Die Tagung", a pub in an eastern district of Berlin, to celebrate another anniversary, namely, the founding of the German Democratic Republic (GDR) in October 1949? Communist East Germany may have been consigned to Ronald Reagan's "dustbin of history," but its memory is alive and well.

There's even a name for it. Combine the German words for "east" ("Ost") and "nostalgia" ("Nostalgie"), and you get "Ostalgie". A long series of "Ostalgie Nacht" parties drawing thousands per night wrapped up on the eve of Sunday's "Day of Unity" celebrations (see Monday's "Digest"). The centerpiece was an eleven-and-a-half foot tall, two-and-a-half ton bronze statue of Lenin salvaged from a storage room in Russia by "Ostalgie Nacht" organizer Ralf Heckel.

"People don't want to go back to the GDR," Heckel assures the "Berliner Zeitung". The dances to the old tunes by east German groups such as Die Puhdys, the dusting off of old GDR police uniforms and "FDJ" shirts (the equivalent, say, of wearing a Boy Scout shirt and scarf for kicks), the serving of cocktails such as the "General Secretary" - it's all in good fun, says Heckel. "I see our parties as a child of democracy!"

Another feature of the "Ostalgie Nacht" has been the showing of clips from "Sonnenallee," a film opening on Thursday based on the bestselling book by Thomas Brussig, Am kürzen Ende der Sonnenallee (At the Short End of Sonnenallee). Sonnenallee is a broad avenue in Berlin, and the Wall once cut right through it. Sonnenallee 1 to 370 were addresses in West Berlin; 371 to 411, East Berlin.

The movie, filmed at the famed Babelsberg Studios ("The Blue Angel", "Metropolis"), is a simple love story, but what sets it apart is the attention to the finest details and prevailing atmosphere of life in the GDR. "From top to bottom, [the GDR] made you want to barf," Brussig told DER SPIEGEL a few weeks ago, "but we had fun, too."

As for the "Ostalgie" parties, Brussig says, "They're not as political as they look. They celebrate the past just like 70s parties do." Heckel also emphasizes that the current wave of "Ostalgie", which includes countless GDR-themed bars and stores such as "Intershop 2000" which sell GDR products ranging from plastic dishware to instant lintel soup, is more a matter of lifestyle than ideology. "Why the FDJ shirt?" Heckel laughs. "I'll be honest with you: I was wearing a FDJ shirt when I had my first kiss."

Brussig and Heckel are no doubt right in their assessment of the appeal of the GDR from a distance to those who grew up there. But for the one out of five east Germans out of a job, those memories must seem all the sweeter.

In other news, the latest episode in the ongoing saga of Oskar Lafontaine vs. Gerhard Schröder stars none other than Nobel laureate Günter Grass (see the recent "Digests" on Lafontaine and Grass). Grass has told the weekly paper "Die Woche" that his friendship with Lafontaine, the former finance minister and chairman of the Social Democratic Party (SPD) who has been blasting away from the left at the centrist chancellor almost daily, is over. Lafontaine has simply done too much damage to the SPD, says Grass. Addressing Lafontaine directly, Grass adds, "Shut up! Drink your red wine, take a holiday, find yourself something useful to do!"

As for the chancellor himself, the outspoken author says Schröder simply hasn't grown into the role yet and he knows it. As chairman of the SPD, Schröder "will never be a Willy Brandt, never an August Bebel." Nevertheless, says Grass, "I've still got hope that he'll come through."

Germany and Europe on the Web today:

More than a hundred headstones in the Weissensee Jewish cemetery in Berlin were "smashed, knocked over or otherwise desecrated" this weekend. In the "New York Times", Roger Cohen interlaces his report on what is presumed to be a neo-Nazi attack with background on right-wing extremists in Germany and the election success enjoyed by Jörg Haider and his far-right Freedom Party in Austria this weekend. Edmund Stoiber, Bavaria's state premier, warrants a few paragraphs as well for his recommendation to Austrian conservatives that they form a coalition with Haider. Also in the "NYT": Donald G. McNeil Jr. on why Austrians aren't taking Haider's showing in the elections as seriously as the rest of the world is. Free registration required

"How seriously should we take Jörg Haider, the xenophobic 'yuppie fascist', and the gains made by his extreme right Freedom party? How seriously, for that matter, should we take Austria ?" Not very, the "Guardian" editorializes. Also: "The millennium's end may be the time for old warhorses to make bellicose predictions, but that has not stopped Germany looking askance at a rash of new books by ageing French authors warning that the old enemy is once again getting too big for its boots." Jon Henley reports. Free registration required

European Union officials working to expand membership to eastern countries would beg to differ with the "Guardian" with regard to the seriousness of Haider's rise. Michael Leidig and Toby Helm report in the "Daily Telegraph".

The "Times" of London runs an editorial by Michael Maier of Austria's high-profile paper, "Der Standard": "Haider won because he has made the Freedom Party into the most modern of Austria's three main parties, all of which are now conservative forces."

Klaus Zwickel was reelected president of IG Metall, Germany's largest trade union, at the ongoing congress in Hamburg on Tuesday. Zwickel received 87 percent of the vote, which might sound like a resounding mandate, but it falls short of the 92 percent he received in 1995. The odd angle here is Zwickel's age: 60. Odd because the union is urging the government to lower the retirement age in Germany to 60 in order to free up jobs for young Germans. Before the vote, John Schmid reviewed the union's demands and its troubled relationship with Chancellor Schröder in the "International Herald Tribune".

To celebrate the 1999 Nobel Prize for Literature, Random House has put up an excerpt from Günter Grass's The Tin Drum .