Nostalgic Germans long for the Wall

Berlin is choc-a-bloc with journalists and cameramen seeking to record and celebrate the 10th anniversary of the fall of the Berlin Wall. But they arrive at a time when the yearnings for the edifice which divided hearts and minds for three long decades have never been stronger.

'Ostaligie' is the name given for the current mood of Germans for the good old, bad old days of the DDR. The patina of time has given 'Die Mauer' a new appeal and a new image - and many, many Germans wish it was still in place.

This month a cute little art-house film called Sonnennalle was propelled from fringe appeal to mammoth success by cinema-goers riding the wave of this ostaligie. Taking its name from an actual Berlin street bisected by The Wall, the film tells in heart-warming and funny terms the story of a group of eastern youngsters eager to break out of a wretched system and get their hands on western clothes, western music and western girls.

But shining through the fun poked at the dismal apartments and the bri-nylon clothes is a rose-tinged longing for the old order a time when everyone knew what was what and nobody minded that there were two Germanies instead of one.

That great divide exists still and is growing bigger - as evidenced by a recent survey of travel habits. Germans holiday with gusto in places as remote as Alaska, the Maldives, the Sahara, and the Argentine Pampas.

Where you won't find them is in eastern Germany. Ten years since the Iron curtain was torn down a full 43% of 'wessis' have never set foot in what was once the German Democratic Republic. It prompted Germany's leading newspaper Die Welt to comment: "For us, Magdeburg is as far away as Manhattan. Terra incognita: East Germany."

A magazine called Max carried out the survey which showed 43% of Germans aged between 16 and 49 who live in the west had never ventured among their 'ossi' cousins who they described as 'maudlin,' 'gold diggers' and 'tax swindlers.'

Ossis, for their part, see wessis as money-obsessed, uncaring and self-centred, although they are much more willing to travel into what was once forbidden territory - 90% have made at least one trip west, 61% have been five times or more.

Segments off both populations share a common sentiment, that the wall should be rebuilt. 13% of west Germans and 11% of east Germans want to be back behind a barrier that still exits deeply in their psyches.

Indeed, a common phrase in Germany is: 'Die Mauer steht noch in den Koepfen' - the wall still stands in the mind - and is a key to the understanding, or rather the lack of it, that exists between two cultures artificially forged into one after 40 years of Cold War apartheid.

Another palpable segment of ostaligie exists in the demand for the comestibles one could buy behind the wall. It is now schicki-micki - trendy - to stock cupboards with the mustard, sausages, coffee, shaving foam and chocolates of the old east Germany.

West Germans can't get enough of many of the products that were made in east Germany. While the polluting Trabant cars and the clunky Foron fridges are a thing of the past, products like Bauten mustard, Sonja coffee filters, Florena shaving cream, Timms lemon-flavoured vodka and Halberstaeder frankfurters are now hot items.

"It's important that 40 years of culture are preserved and there is no better way to do this than to eat and drink the everyday products of that culture," said Hartwig Lund, a businessman who opened an outlet for eastern goods in Berlin this week.

Klaus Juttamann, a DDR historian, said: "For all the high-falutin phrases about freedom and opportunity, both sides of the divide long for the time when they were living apart. In the DDR you had full employment, full health care, kindergartens, a job for life and food on the shelves. In short, it wasn't all bad and many have failed to come to terms with life among the enemy."

Copyright 1999
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