Behind the East German Lie
May 18 | Posted by mrossol | Socialism, The LeftI’m first generation American, but ‘the East” was never far from my thoughts.
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After three generations, a family’s faith in the state disappears.
May 6, 2014 12:22 a.m. ET
From “Red Love: The Story of an East German Family,” a new memoir by Maxim Leo:
I think that for both my grandfathers the [German Democratic Republic] was a kind of dreamland, in which they could forget all the depressing things that had gone before. It was a new start, a chance to begin all over again. The persecution, the war, the imprisonment, all the terrible things that Gerhard and Werner had been through could be buried under that huge pile of the past. From now on all that mattered was the future. . . .
New faith for old suffering: that was the ideal behind the foundation of the GDR.
That is the explanation for the unbounded loyalty with which Gerhard and Werner were bound to that country until the bitter end. They could never unmask the great dream as a great lie because the lies they needed to live would have been exposed at the same time.
And their children? They were hurled into their fathers’ dreamlands, and had to dream along whether they wanted to or not. They didn’t know that founding ideal. And because they had nothing to overcome, nothing to hide, they found faith difficult too. They saw the poverty, the lies, the claustrophobia, the suspicion. And they heard their fathers’ phrases as they raved about the future. Much of the power and the euphoria had gone. And the grandchildren? They were glad when it was all over. They didn’t even have a guilty conscience at kicking the state. What did I get from the great dream? Small-minded prohibitions, petty principles and jeans that looked like elongated Youth Front shirts. The energy of the state had been used up in three generations. The GDR remained the country of old men, of the founding fathers, and their logic no longer made sense to anybody.
Notable & Quotable: Behind the East German Lie – WSJ.com.
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