Ostalgie

As nostalgia ( portmanteau of "east" and " nostalgia " ) the nostalgia for the GDR or the desire for certain lifestyles and everyday objects of the GDR is called. The word creation is the cabaret Uwe Steimle attributed.

Cause

The nostalgia was triggered among other things by a loss of identity in eastern Germany after German reunification. The collapse and the devaluation of the East German system of values ​​and the assumption of many West German and some young East Germans that East Germans could not have felt and lived in the midst of societal limits personal freedom, stoked after 1989 in many East Germans recalcitrance and longing emotions. Regardless arose as consequences of reunification high unemployment and a slowing economic development in the East. These two consequences are responsible for the occurrence of nostalgia. Since many people were disappointed after reunification, as these produced no improvement in their situation, arose from this bitterness a reminder of the " good old days ". Rolf Schneider puts it, that " from fugitive emotions and memories [ ... ] the image of a DDR [ arises ] that has never existed ".

Only extremely few former socially owned enterprises and combines survived the huge problems with privatization by the THA in the early 1990s. With the mass settlements disappeared within a very short time not only nearly all of the work and production on the territory of the GDR forever, but also the brands and products they manufacture. ( The few companies that crisis and privatization survived, then stabilized but mostly. Around the mid-1990s they began to improve their market position significantly, so that since then also companies on which the rights of the insolvent, as designated in the GDR state property are gone over again and again old and bring new products under the well-known GDR names on the market. )

The historian Beatrix Bouvier believes that a positive evaluation of GDR period was only possible by the fact that the GDR almost seamlessly merged into the Federal Republic of Germany. Thus, the benefits of increasingly verschuldenden and thus " on credit and at the expense of the future" living social policy in the GDR, the East Germans had indeed learned, but not the resulting " actual bankruptcy " of socialism in the GDR.

Emergence of the nostalgia parties 1994

The records entertainer Ralf Heckel ( born 1969, from Nordhausen ) "invented" in 1994 rather casually the nostalgia parties: Heckel tried back in Thuringia to a still to be contracted private broadcasting license. In connection with promotional events for this project gushed a nightclub operator of the mood of the FDJ Pentecostal meetings in the last GDR years. Heckel did arrive it a try and put this suggestion to - and after a short time had great response. So he built from the idea and organized according to own data from January 1995 to October 1999 more than 100 nostalgia parties with about 150,000 guests. The media coverage was nationwide and internationally in size. Heckel assessed the Ossi - party -ideological: "That was like a '50s party that no one is chasing the devil There are so many retro cults, why not one of those.? "

Examples

Items that are associated with nostalgia:

• Clothing from the GDR, such as FDJ shirts
• Food from the GDR, such as Club Cola
• Symbols from the GDR, such as the traffic light man or the coat of arms of the GDR
• The Trabant

Furthermore, there is beside ostalgischen events and radio broadcasts, who everyday life in the GDR and its related lifestyles and articles and memories of the GDR to the topic.

Criticism

It is criticized that in the context of nostalgic longing, the socio-political and economic conditions that prevailed in the GDR, hidden, repressed or would be glossed over. Under the motto " nostalgia - no thank you " criticize, for example, national associations of the Junge Union 's desire to restore the political conditions of the GDR. In November 2011, the CDU at its national convention in Leipzig at the initiative of the Junge Union, the examination of a ban of symbols, " which are in a special way for the communist regime of injustice " decided.

Franz -Robert Liskow, member of Stralsund city and county chairman of the Junge Union, criticized by his party colleagues in the West whose distance to the GDR history and their ignorance of the complexity of GDR everyday life, which includes membership in the FDJ 've heard. Rüdiger Behrendt, Chairman of the CDU in Pasewalker City Council and previously District Chairman of the Junge Union district of Uecker -Randow, points out that he had been FDJler and pioneer of self and so have not had any bad experiences. One should educate about the GDR, also its negative sides. But many GDR citizens had lived with the symbols. If you take away them this, go also lost a piece of identity. The hardliners in the JU rated Behrendt as " rebels, who sometimes may shoot out over the target. "

Movies

Sun avenue of Leander Haussmann in 1998 was one of the first commercially successful films after the turn, on unserious manner which traces retrospect life in the GDR, while also much emphasis on details, which he used also nostalgic feelings. The same also applies to the later films NVA (also by Haussmann ) and Kleinruppin forever and the sitcom My best years.

The film Good Bye, Lenin! served not only nostalgic feelings, he thematized beyond even the clinging to old memories of the GDR.