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SPIEGEL: The 1989 change in the GDR saw some East Germans as a peaceful revolution and a victory for freedom. Another party retrospectively judges the change as defeat, and even perceives reunification as a hostile takeover of East Germany by the West. Where does this great contrast come from?
Leistner: These are two highly condensed narratives about extremely complex events. They make the story more tangible, but in some cases they also reflect individual experiences. As early as the 1990s, negative terms such as crisis, bankruptcy and even colonization appeared in connection with the fall of the Berlin Wall, even of people whose existence was damaged by reunification. So negative images, as Pegida has shown, are not necessarily represented by losers.
SPIEGEL: Does the emotional impact of the events at that time shape the performance?
Leistner: Yes. Many opposition members in the GDR, for example, experienced 1989 as a totally intoxicating departure, an attempt to change the GDR, and then, from the fall onwards, as a radical drop into insignificance because there was no response from the population. to your ideas. Many members of the opposition and their ideas have basically been overwhelmed by the East Germans’ desire for prosperity and freedom.
SPIEGEL: Most East Germans were not actively involved in the opposition. How did you experience the turning point?
Leistner: Millions of people were affected by the collapse of the East German economy and the loss of their jobs. In addition, there was the demotion of many working women to housewives, the elimination of parts of the East German intelligentsia, the loneliness of SED victims and other fates. For many people, the social awakening and democratic liberation were accompanied by enormous disappointments and great uncertainty. Some of these were shocking experiences that affected almost every East German family.
SPIEGEL: Did the changes make people feel primarily threatened?
Leistner: In any case, many did not experience reunification as reunification on equal terms. Artists, for example, writers, actors, musicians, had to experience that their work was suddenly hardly appreciated.
SPIEGEL: Did many people expect a revolution in 1989, for freedom and consumption, but at the same time they wanted their professional and social life to remain unchanged?
Leistner: You could say it. But you must always be aware of the enormous dynamics of development: in the summer of 1989 no one could foresee the collapse of the GDR. The collapse was completely unexpected, as a result of which there was, as it were, an excess of various hopes.
SPIEGEL: Also the hope that the break is not too big?
Leistner: Yes. Populist expectations of prosperity, such as the saying about “flourishing landscapes” by then Federal Chancellor Helmut Kohl, also played a role. However, this quickly turned out to be an illusion.
SPIEGEL: Why is it still difficult for many people to understand the turning point of 1989 as a complex historical process that simple explanations do not do justice to?
Leistner: Simplifying narratives get caught, also in terms of the politics of memory. In reunified Germany, efforts are still being made to overload 1989 as a moment of identity creation. In ceremonial speeches and expositions in public debate with the GDR, people perceive 1989 as an act of self-liberation and as a complete process. An extremely shortened narrative, because for many people it was not always a success story, nor was it completed. The individual biographical catastrophes that the collapse of the GDR led to were not recognized for a long time, sometimes even stigmatized.
Trabi’s Charred Shipwreck (1990): “Some Shocking Experiences”
Photo: imago stock & people / imago / Sven Simon
SPIEGEL: What did that do?
Leistner: This generated a lot of challenge among the people, recently a negative pride from the unadjusted and also a great criticism of the dominance of the West German elites and their perspectives.
SPIEGEL: And did this challenge reinforce a one-sided vision of the change of course?
Leistner: Yes. People who criticize reunification often have the feeling that social change has gripped them without being able to help shape it. That is why today, if you simplify it, these two perspectives clash: reunification as a success story and the malicious takeover of the East by the West, basically a variant of the exchange of change and a variant of rupture.
SPIEGEL: Has the tendency to perceive reunification as annexation increased in recent years?
Leistner: At least for some people, even the absurd equating of the SED dictatorship with a supposed Merkel dictatorship in right-wing circles.
SPIEGEL: What mistakes were made in the West?
Leistner: What many West Germans do not recognize to this day: in the West, only little has changed as a result of reunification, but in the East almost everything has changed. Due to this non-simultaneity, there are completely different memories between the West and the East.
SPIEGEL: Do right-wing circles in East Germany take this consciously?
Leistner: Yes. So the AfD in East Germany not only appeals to the role of victim of East Germans, but rather tries to address East German self-confidence, even to present East Germany as the best Germany. It is almost tragic: it was basically the electoral successes of the AfD in East Germany that led to more attention being paid to the history of East Germany after 1989.
SPIEGEL: What would have to change for the turning point to become a common date in German history and not remain an event that divides East and West for many people?
Leistner: The empathic vision of West Germany is still lacking, there is a lack of understanding to recognize that the first experiences with the democratic society of West Germany were not all positive for many East Germans. Many people in the West still do not understand the impact of the almost ultra-rapid transformation that affected the East Germans. To this day, on the other hand, the accusation of ingratitude leveled at East Germans in the West can still be heard.
