(Deutsche Welle Chinese website) On November 9, 1989, the Berlin Wall fell, and both East and West Germany cheered. Yet 37 years later, it seems many people still hold considerable prejudices against each other: the survey showed that only a minority of respondents believed there was a strong sense of community between western Germans and westerners, and many still believed there were significant differences.
Three German writers and artists shared their respective views.
Winter boots and candy!
Writer Lea Streisan, born in 1979, experienced the fall of the Berlin Wall firsthand in East Berlin as a child. She has repeatedly written about and reflected on her experiences in East Germany in books and articles. In her 2019 novel Hufeland Ecke Bötzow (Ulstein Verlag), she tells the story of the reunification period from the perspective of a child.
"November 9, 1989, was a wonderful day," she told Deutsche Welle. Only 10 years old at the time, she was overjoyed because her mother used the 100 marks welcome money that all East Germans received to buy her a pair of practical winter boots in West Berlin. A friend of her parents also asked her to buy a lot of candy in the supermarket and eat it until Christmas.
“But what happened over the next year was bittersweet: the whole system was torn down with astonishing speed, and a whole new one was built, as if it was all, ‘Please,’” Streisand recalled. "I think it's just too fast for people."
The people of East Germany ultimately brought about this change through the civil rights movement and countless demonstrations. For many, however, the goal is not to directly dissolve the state but to reform it. Anke Feuchtenberger is one of them. She was born in East Berlin in 1963 and grew up there and in the former East German state of Pomerania. Today, she lives back in Pomerania, but splits her time between the two places as a lecturer at the University of Applied Sciences in Hamburg. Often cited as Germany's most influential cartoonist, Feuchtenberg also enjoys an international reputation.
“Back then, as artists, we were trying to change things through posters and leaflets, to fight for more freedom, not to abolish socialism altogether,” she recalls. The fall of the Berlin Wall left her with mixed feelings: “I soon realized that the creative and revolutionary aspects of our movement were quickly being erased by consumerism, while the already obvious nationalist tendencies were reinforced,” Fichtenberg recalled. “That frightened me.”
For photographer Simon Menner, who was born in Emmendingen, Baden-Württemberg in 1978, the fall of the Berlin Wall was "very abstract" to him as a child. Berlin was far away—he lives in Berlin today. He said that the image of East Germany shown in movies and documentaries about the reunification period was very bleak, "but the West in the 1980s was actually equally bleak and dull."
Stasi photo "treasure"
This imbalance worries him deeply—in part because he himself has inadvertently contributed to it. Menna's work focuses on state surveillance and how it operates. In the archives of the East German Ministry of Security (Stasi) (now part of the Federal Archives and freely accessible), he discovered a trove of photographs that both fascinated and horrified him. He hopes more people can learn about it. His photo book Top Secret (2012, Hatje Cantz) contains a series of photographs that provide a unique insight into the workings of the Stasi. The photos are sometimes creepy, sometimes curious, sometimes even absurd.
Simon Menna also wanted to access the photo archives of the West German Federal Intelligence Service (BND). “I tried for a year but never succeeded.” In hindsight, he feels his project was problematic because it was too one-sided, focusing only on the history of East Germany. Menna believes that West German intelligence agencies "were not innocent" in the 1960s, and now "it's time" to take a critical look at this history. In his view, facing up to Germany's shared history is a prerequisite for true reunification.
Lea Streisand believes that literature can help promote mutual understanding. “Literature conveys experiences that others have not experienced,” she said. “You can immerse yourself in the inner world of people who have had different experiences than you, and thus understand what they have experienced.”
Interest in these types of stories remains strong. In 2023, Anke Feuchtenberg published the nearly 500-page illustrated novel "Comrade Cuckoo" (published by Reprodukt Publishing House). This is the first graphic novel to be nominated in the fiction category at the Leipzig Book Fair.
The story begins with the protagonist's childhood in the fictional East German village of Pritschitanow in the 1960s to the post-reunification era. Feuchtenberg incorporates autobiographical memories of her upbringing, combined with elements of fantasy and fiction. The artist said she was surprised that "so many years after the fall of the Berlin Wall, my story still resonated so strongly in the Western States." Kerstin, the protagonist, rarely sees her parents because they work both jobs, a fact often mentioned at readings. In East Germany, everyone had the right to work, but work was also considered a civic duty. So is the reason for concern in the Western States because it has long been far less common in the Western States for both parents to work full-time than in the former East Germany? Fichtenberger believes this is very likely.
What does the future look like?
As they look to the future together, the two women from eastern Germany are more optimistic than Simone Menna from western Germany. “In Berlin, I often didn’t even notice whether I was in the original West Berlin or East Berlin,” Menna said. "But when it comes to socio-political issues, politicians should listen more carefully to the opinions of both the elderly and the young, otherwise there will be trouble in the near future," he said of the AfD's recent electoral success.
"It's important to think outside the box because people all over the world are facing problems. It's not helpful to always look at the divide between West and East," said Anke Feuchtenberg. “For me personally, the conversation about borders no longer exists,” she said. On the one hand, this is because she has traveled abroad many times and has been to many parts of the world. On the other hand, she lives close to the Polish border and often sees animals that have no interest in the "border": "They come from the east or the west, whatever they want." This is why she gave "Comrade Cuckoo" a subtitle: "German Animals in the German Forest", "because it is very funny and interesting that I give nationalities to animals."
Lea Streisand believes that "our children will no longer be interested in East and West," she said. "Young people don't care where their parents are from. They care about whether they can find a job that can support their family, whether they have to go to war. They care about this completely different thing."
