Is anyone knowledgable about German history?

[infopleaseta]

Hello, I am a regular, but I have name changed becuase of RL.

I have a few questions, about life and attitudes in east/west Germany before and after wall came down. They have impacted on personal life, and looking back it be good to understand a few things.

thanks.

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hi just bumping for evening ish crowd! you can cat me if better?

Just wanted to understand some info told to me. nothing weird, that might help me better understand someone in my family.

I´m in Germany and my dh is German. I could try asking him. What is it you´d like to know?

hi, thanks for the reply!

I wanted to know, before the wall came down, how former East German people were regarded in the West, if they had 'escaped or fled'

Also, after the wall came down, what west germans felt towards east germans.

My main point would be, would there have been more sympathy for someone who had fled.

thanks so much.

Well dh says that those East Germans who managed to escape before the wall came down were generally admired.
After the wall came down, there was general euphoria on both sides to begin with, but the reunion did cause many problems. There was a completely different mentality between the 2 countries and many west Germans resent/ed the money that was invested in the former East Germany. He thinks there was more sympathy for those who fled. Obviously he can´t speak for everyone, but that is his take on things. He was born in West Germany, but close to the border, so I´m not sure how much this affects his point of view. Hope this helps.

I´ve put a link to this thread on the German thread, so hopefully you might get some more replies.

Dh has just read what I´ve written and said sympathy is the wrong word. He means he probably has more admiration for those who were brave enough to escape.

thanks for that. So one would probably be seen more favourably, seen as brave if they had said they had come to the west before the wall came down?

This is about my ex husband. I think he had some difficult times when he came to west germany, after the reunification. He was a teenager.

Being caled a communist and such. He actually told me that he and heis family had fled before, and the lie came out 6 yrs later, when he admitted to me he had made it up. He said his reasons were that I might not be interested in him. It is really sad and explains what I can only call some sort of 'thing' that was deeply not right with him. I belive that his psyche, was affected iyswim, and it continues to this day. He is not always truthful, and seems to land himself in ridiculous situations. I know it has had alot to do with our break up, his attitdue iyswim.

thanks x

Have you read Stasiland by Anna Funder. It's a really fascinating exploration of people who lived and worked under the GDR regime, and informed for the Stasi - might be of interest to you.

I lived in Germany for 16 years, my DH is German.

DH said that there were so few people who managed to flee. He does not know anyone who escaped. After 1961 there was not much chance of escape. Many died trying.

He says that it is difficult to say if the people who fled would have been more or less accepted.

There has and still is a lot of bad feeling. Not immediately after the Wende, later once the financial implications became clear.

Do you know where your exH lived when he first moved to West Germany?

I've lived in Germany and studied German history. Can't guarantee what I say is totally right but here goes. As far as I know, West Germans felt a mixture of pity, solidarity but also sometimes a bit of contempt. The GDR's inhabitants, (it was known in German as the DDR (Deutsche Demokratische Republik) were sometimes jokingly referred to as 'der doofe Reste; (DDR), meaning 'the thickos who were left over), because they were perceived as not having had the brains to get out in the 1950s while they still could.

After the wall came down, West Germans paid a massive solidarity tax to rebuild East Germany, and to some extent this caused some bad feeling. Also, East Germans were perceived as being people who might expect the state to just give them handouts, lacking in entrepreneurial instincts (in common with all the Soviet bloc, people got used to the big brother state looking after them in good ways as well as bad). and also perceived as insular and brainwashed, wearing bad clothes, not wearing deodorant etc, having 'sad' hair like mullets and generally being looked down on as chavs. East Germans perceived West Germans as rich and complacent, and uncaring.

I couldn't say whether an escapee would be more favourably perceived but I imagine so, a bit. West Germany actually used to buy people from East Germany in order to 'free' them, a certain number of people every year. I would imagine that a dissident or democracy protestor would be more favourably perceived. I certainly wouldn't think an escapee or emigrant would be less favourably seen than any other East German. it depends on who is judging them and why.

Also any East German of over 35 carries a certain Soviet-man baggage or consciousness with them, just of having grown up in such an odd society. With the exposure of the society as such a joke, films such as Goodbye Lenin and The Lives of Others, I can quite understand how your ex H felt weird about it and possibly how he would have sought to romanticise his story by making up the escape thing, especially as he was a vulnerable teenager at the time of the wall coming down, and it probably affected him a lot being looked down on as a poor 'Ossi'.. He would need to come to terms with it and start to see his identity as something valid and not to be ashamed of, and find positive things in his east German upbringing.

It is interesting that your exH thought you might not be interested in him if you knew he was just an "ordinary" Eastener.

There was some research a few years ago on couples in which one partner was East German and the other West German. In 93% of such couples the woman was East German - i.e. in only 7% of cases was the man from the East. So it's understandable that your exH might have felt that being from the East made him less attractive to the opposite sex.

I agree with what everyone else has posted, btw.

they're interesting stats, dustbuster..

The thing is, your x H is presuming non-Germans would perceive him the same, but most non Germans wouldn't have that whole frame of reference, and would be more inclined to see it as quite cool to be from East Germany in a kind of retro Trabant type way. By being in the UK/outside Germany he's already freed himself from the stereotypes he would face in Germany itself, so he just has to let go and embrace his past and find cool things about it. There are also other routes out. For example I have a lovely gay friend who grew up in a godforsaken East German collective village with his destiny in the local factory mapped out. after the wall came down he became a fabulous pseudo 1930s Noel Coward type figure with slicked back hair and an art nouveau apartment, he remade himself and romanticised himself using the pre-war Weimar period. He was just too fabulous to live up to any grey image of the classic East German.

It must be hard though, coming from a society which is basically a kind of retro joke at best, I mean how do you validate yourself in that situation?

Interesting posts, I agree with Gemzooks. There was a certain amount of resentment towards the East Germans. I don't think I have heard of bullying or harrasment but then DH and I were both older when the wall came down so perhaps a schoolchild would have faced worse teasing.

Do you have children with your ex? And if so, do they have contact with relatives in Germany?

i hae a daughter with my ex. Post alot on loneparents, i am from the high seas so to speak!

he is always re inventing himself. He reinvented a new life leaving us. His parents are still in the west, almost as west of the west as you can be. They came from a town which was almost in Poland.

This is a really really helpful thread for me. When i told him I really didn't undersatnd about his shame about the east german thing, he was relieved. as you say it's a totally different thing for a westerner from London to be bothetred about!! He must have know it by then ( when he told me he'd lied about the fleeing th ing), as we had been together 6 yrs. It was a lie that was huge to him. I was shocked that he had lied,. but of course still felt the same.

am in contact with his family in west, lots of love there.

My experience of east-west is from living just over the line on the east side of Berlin the past few years and making friends with 'real' east Berliners. A lot of them said things were really alot tougher since the wall fell and some of the women even thought it was better before. But they are true east berliners who never left even after teh wall fell.