In contrast to what happened after the end of national-socialist dictatorship in 1945, reviewing communist rule in the GDR began very soon and intensely. In fact, the will to lay open the shortfalls and mechanisms of SED rule had in itself been a motive of the revolutionary events of 1989. The accession of the GDR to the Federal Republic of Germany on 3 October 1990 caused the discussion on the past and on the significance of 1989 in Germany to develop under specific conditions. Like in other Eastern or Eastern-Central European states, the state socialist past and its overthrow were embedded into a renewed national historical narrative. While in those other countries the societies had to agree upon their individual common history, German unification in addition resulted in a controversial meeting, sometimes in agreement, of different historical discourses from the East and the West. The following article presents important perspectives on the GDR past, addresses public commemoration of 1989 in Germany in 2009, and positions the ‘brüche. DRESDEN | 1989 | DRESDEN’ exhibition created within the context of the ‘Vastly Equal’ project within this larger framework.

I.

While in other European countries the nation classically forms the frame of reference, it has been taken up hesitantly and not without controversy as a positively associated fulcrum of historico-political selfreflexion in Germany in 2009. The national-socialist crimes committed before 1945 in the name of the German nation, the division of Germany until 1990, as well as the decreasing importance of national state identity through comprehensive integration into European structures are vital reasons for the fact that discourses on the past in Germany have been pursued largely without any national pathos. Yet, twenty years after 1989 the outlines of a view of history can be noticed that (retroactively) creates a new national narrative. Parts of the German political elite have seized the East German revolution of 1989 and the subsequent unification of both German states as an opportunity to revive the nation state as a category of political practice. The fact that the science of contemporary history, never operating in separation from its own present, in some ways participated in politically charging the past, only goes to show its affinity to politico-normative discourse, which is not without its problems and is being critically discussed.

II.

Acknowledged as a political fact for years, the existence of many contrasting memories of the GDR and in particular of 1989 has become an object of scientific investigation. Historian Martin Sabrow identified three concepts of memory with regard to the GDR: a normatively structured ‘dictatorship memory’ aiming at victim-perpetrator contrasts; an ‘adjustment memory’ aiming at individual self-assertion, and a ‘progress memory’, which even in retrospective continues to claim legitimacy of the GDR as an alternative to the Western state. Indeed, many historico-political controversies since 1989 can be categorized accordingly, no matter if the actions of the secret service and its informers, the role of the communist party and other mass organisations, or daily life in general under the dictatorship were being discussed. Mingling politicomoral, legal, and scientific criteria has often hampered the view on history until 1989.

The ‘dictatorship memory’ plays an outstanding role within the culture of commemoration and memory fostered by the state. This can be recognised in speeches delivered by high-ranking politicians on selected days of commemoration of GDR history, including of the East German uprising of 17 June 1953 and the anniversaries of the construction of the Berlin wall on 13 August 1961 and the opening of the wall on 9 November 1989. The significance of the historical narrative, emphasizing the aspect of suppression on the one hand, and opposition and resistance on the other, is tangibly reflected in state funding for memorials addressing the issues of German division (such as the border museums) and repression (such as former prisons).

In united Germany after 1990, the political ‘de-legitimization’ of the GDR goes together with current political considerations. Even if none of the significant players in East or West Germany had foreseen them, German unity acquired in 1990 and the partial renaissance of a national historical narrative provided historico- political ammunition, in particular during chancellor Helmut Kohl’s conservative-liberal term in office, against all political opponents who—from a subsequent perspective—had not spoken up firmly enough against the rulers in the GDR, and even more so against those who had accepted or supported German separation. By no means were such arguments primarily East-Western debates. As Australian historian Andrew H. Beattie pointedly put it, conservatives and liberals in (partial) interaction with the politico-moral potential of former East German members of the opposition always aimed at denouncing the GDR itself (rather than specific options of action in it) and, above all, socialism as such or its Marxist principles, and thus, the left-wing in Federal Germany before 1990. But from the perspective of the latter as well as some East German civil rights activists, ‘de-legitimizing’ the GDR never contradicted criticizing the West German (earlier) history characterized by conservatism.

The predominance of the dictatorship memory has set clear political standards and promoted the idea of an ‘anti-totalitarian consensus’. On the other hand, an opportunity to derive refined statements on the GDR and its transformation processes was lost through the narrowed focus on the SED system of or claim to power. Also, the biased negative focus on the GDR went against the political elites’ aspirations to contribute towards the ‘inner unity’ of the country. This is one reason why East Germans continue to speak of a ‘history of victors’ even though vital decisions on how to handle the heritage of the dictatorship, such as the files of the former state security service, were taken or pre-formed even before the accession of the GDR to Federal Germany in 1990. It was only through East German pressure that the all-German legislator was made to legally grant storage and the option to access GDR secret service files.

Displeasure with the dichotomy of victim and perpetrator in public discourse as well as the conviction that the GDR had had its own political legitimacy are the main arguments of those—mainly, if not exclusively, in Eastern Germany—denying the officially prevailing historical view and in retrospective preferably pointing out the socio-political benefits of the GDR. This view can be found within the environment of former GDR functionaries and DIE LINKE (‘The Left-Wing’) party, successor of the SED, but it can also be noted among younger people, whose appreciation of the past can rather be attributed to dissatisfaction with the present conditions. Hence, not every idealizing look back means a desire for the conditions of the times before 1989. These players have little power to follow through and little acceptance.

A medium variation of interpretation of the GDR, the above mentioned ‘adjustment memory’, assumes that the majority of the GDR population typically took to individually holding their ground and participating to a limited extent within a party rule that was perceived as irremediable. This perspective links the lifeworld biographical aspect with a view on the political system. It grants history—in numerous nuances— its complexity and contextuality. But this view has a smaller chance of being heard in a public debate limited to catchphrases. Just like the ‘dictatorship memory’—even if less emphatically—it refers to the year 1989 as the first successful liberation revolution in Germany.

III.

The official historico-political face of the Federal Republic of Germany in 2009 was shaped by the public commemoration of the revolution and the opening of the Berlin wall in the GDR in 1989. Federal and state policy, foundations, research institutes, communities and artistic institutions, as well as publishing houses, daily and weekly newspapers and the Bundesstiftung zur Aufarbeitung der SED-Diktatur—a federal foundation with the task of dealing with the problems of the GDR period—, the Federal Commissioner for the Documents of the State Security Service of the former GDR (BStU) and many memorials provided an overwhelming tableau of events and publications in 2009. In addition to state impulses, such as the funding programme named ‘20 Years of Peaceful Revolution and German Unity’, one trademark of the commemorative year 2009 was the multitude of activities that grew ‘from the grassroots’ and were granted funding. This had been predecessed by a new edition of the governmental memorial scheme and an agreement within the grand coalition of CDU/CSU and SPD on historico-political principles for the anniversary year. The controversial discussion about memorial work has made clear that in addition to claiming historicomoral criteria, politics of history will always include negotiating financial issues and balancing institutional self-interest.

Commemoration of 9 November 1989, the day when the wall came down in Berlin, stood out from the marathon of events in 2009. Even though 3 October has been celebrated as the Day of German Unity since 1990, 9 November 1989 won the run for the national holiday in the hearts of people. The joy over the resulting political unity and the attempt to determine its position in the more recent German history serve to explain the extravagantly staging of the official celebrations in Berlin. They culminated in a happening around the Brandenburger Tor on 9 November 2009, where, with a number of guests of state present, about 1000 colourfully designed Styrofoam dominoes were made to fall along the former boundary line between East and West. Reactions to this varied. While some found the action not serious enough in view of the dictatorial past, other thought it was too uncritical and ostentatious. The celebrations included guests who had welcomed the fall of the Berlin wall right from the beginning, but also others whose first reactions had been those of doubt or even rejection. After all, 9 November 2009 integrated figures as different as the last head of state and party of the Soviet Union, Mikhail Gorbachev, and one of the most prominent figures in the effort to bring the Eastern bloc down, Lech Walesa. With regard to Gorbachev, who in the past did not aim to give up Soviet power and its sphere of influence, this matter of course is surprising, to say the least.

The growing distance to the historical event itself combined with altered political challenges have created a new ‘narrative of freedom’ that can be used for purposes in foreign policy, or have resulted in the fall of the Berlin wall being integrated into such a narrative. American Secretary of State Hillary Clinton took the welcome opportunity on 9 November 2009 to thank the Germans for their participation in the ‘fight against terrorism in Afghanistan’. Added to this were her hopes for Germany’s continuing military involvement in the memory of a historical event with positive associations.

The wall plays an outstanding role in the memory of 1989 because it has always been a metaphor of the division of Germany, of Europe and of the world, but at the same time can be associated with a real place. Another reason for specially commemorating the fall of the wall is the fact that millions experienced it personally. To have a personal relation with 9 November 1989 in Germany is a matter of course to the extent that even the story of having slept through the event or having regarded it unimportant at first is worth telling. Subsequent generations will not be able to feel the importance to this extent. So far, the whole world has been visiting Berlin to take a look at the most renowned relict of the cold war. Meanwhile, there are only a few spots left where the boundary line of the former border can still be traced. This increases the significance of the Berlin Wall Memorial at Bernauer Straße in Berlin. It has become the focal point of commemorating the Wall.

IV.

The iconic significance of the fall of the Wall also raises questions. It is true that it came as a result of the growing protest in the GDR against the policy of state and party leadership. This protest, though, was favoured by certain conditions: In addition to a staggering Soviet Union and the inter-German competition of systems, the democratic movements in Eastern(-Central) Europe played an important role. Concerns in those countries, as well as in Germany, that the renaissance of a national perspective on history could displace the preliminary work by the neighbours on the way to freedom have mostly proved unfounded. It was former Solidarnosc leader and later Polish president Lech Walesa who—as a reference to the domino effect Poland’s democratization had had on the development in other states of the Eastern bloc—knocked over the first domino on 9 November 2009.

The transnational context of 1989 points to another European commemoration day in 2009, the 70th anniversary of the beginning of World War Two, which gained less presence in the media in Germany, but still appropriate attention among the historico-political elites. The significance of 1939 for the states of Eastern and Central-Eastern Europe, in particular for Poland, as the beginning of a double subjection by Germany and the Soviet Union, is a fact that remains anchored more strongly in the German historical conscience.

2009 also was an occasion to commemorate other events besides those of 1989 and 1939 in Germany: it was the 60th anniversary of the foundation of two German states, the 71st anniversary of national socialist pogroms against the Jewish population in 1938, the 90th return of the proclamation of the Weimar Republic and the beginning of World War One 95 years before, significant for all the other events. If we count Hitler’s attempted coup in Munich in 1923 into this, we find that four of these events (foundation of the republic in 1918, pogroms in 1938, and the fall of the Wall in 1989) took place on a 9 November. No other date represents the discontinuities in Germany in the 20th century to this extent. When German Chancellor Angela Merkel appeared before the US Congress later in 2009, she spoke of an inner historical link of 9 November 1989 and 9 November 1938. This awareness and the acceptance of German responsibility are preconditions for Germany, after a long path towards ‘peace with itself’ (Klaus-Dietmar Henke), to appear before the world in moral credibility.

Historical search for and provision of meaning have progressed in Germany since 1989; yet, not all questions on GDR history and how to handle it have been answered. Advocates of the ‘dictatorship memory’ will continue to criticize the fact that the victims find too little mention, while others will always find that in retrospection too little is said about daily life. The GDR and its end will remain to be seen as not belonging to all-German history in the Western part of Germany. But in contrast to many states with a past under dictatorship, a variety of interpretations of history is accepted as legitimate in Germany and gives rise to negotiation processes. The fact that public and private memory often differ considerably is neither new, nor is it, as such, threatening. Differences render the culture of remembrance pluralistic and controversial. It is not at all a bad thing for a society to be able to remember the rules of democracy by having a dispute over its own past.

These negotiation processes also include the successful striving of East German cities, Leipzig in particular, for adequate acknowledgement of their role in the changes of 1989, as well as questions about the heritage of that autumn. On 9 October 2009, Leipzig commemorated the 20th return of this particular Monday demonstration in 1989 with a festival of lights. On that day in 1989, considered the breakthrough of the revolution, 70,000 people had protested peacefully against the rule of the communist party. The official ceremony of Federal Germany on occasion of 9 October 1989 served to honour this. It also provided a platform for demands to continue revolutionary protests against the principles of today’s economic world and the social failures caused by it, and for demands made by some of the leading members of the opposition in the GDR in 1989 to place more weight on the political instrument of referendum in Federal Germany.

The first 20 years after 1989 were—in comparison—an institutional and financial Eldorado for those taking part in coming to terms with the past. Many historico-political careers were due to the will to deal with the GDR past more rapidly and sustainably than had been done with the national socialist past after 1945. This has been rewarded with enormous scientific achievements. But in the future, science (of history) will have to position the end of the 20th century within larger contexts in an effort to provide more than short-term representations of the transformation processes in Eastern Germany and Eastern(-Central) Europe. An ‘understanding’ science of history must reveal its role as a critical corrective clearly against the ‘judging’ politics of history, rather than copy the standards of the latter while just augmenting it empirically.

V.

In view of the conflicts in interpreting history as mentioned above, the ‘Vastly Equal’ project with its exhibitions in Bratislava/Žilina, Dresden, Prague, and Wroclaw, created by young people, represents a considerable challenge as well as an adequate way of appreciating the turning point in history in 1989. The cross-border approach was appropriate to history, and the focus on the manifold transformation processes mastered by the citizens of the four cities since the 1980s never lost its view on the dictatorial conditions existing until 1989. The ‘brüche. DRESDEN | 1989 | DRESDEN’ exhibition highlighted important aspects of the history of the city of Dresden and their controversial interpretation after 1989. The complex and differentiating presentation of its contents, grasping individual experience as well as its politico-historical conditions, may be assigned, within the context illustrated at the beginning, to the ‘adjustment memory’ which sees ‘1989’ as an awakening of the people to freedom. In no way did the exhibition claim to determine a way of interpreting history for its visitors.

Sources: Klaus-Dietmar Henke (Hrsg.), Revolution und Vereinigung 1989/90. Als in Deutschland die Realität die Phantasie überholte, München 2009. Martin Sabrow (Hrsg.), Erinnerungsorte der DDR, München 2009.

Sebastian Richter, born 1976, is a research assistant at the Chair in Contemporary History at Dresden Technical University. He acted as a mentor to the Dresden team.