|
View the H-German Discussion Logs by month
View the Prior Message in H-German's October 2007 logs by: [date] [author] [thread] View the Next Message in H-German's October 2007 logs by: [date] [author] [thread] Visit the H-German home page.
Gerhard L. Weinberg suggested that "Ostalgie ... can be taken seriously only when there are lines outside the embassies in Germany of Cuba, North Korea, and Vietnam for those who so relish their lost state that they desperately want to move to one that retains its main features." This argument reminded me of an earlier exchange on this list (September 2006), in which Weinberg suggested that Ostalgie did not exist since most East Germans continue to emigrate to the United States and not to Communist dictatorships such as Cuba. The very fact that so many East Germans feel that they have no other choice as to leave their country, however, is implicit evidence for the problems that arose from German unification. This argument missed the opportunity to take seriously the phenomenon of Ostalgie, which is not a longing for oppression and a one party state but a faint memory of some aspects of one's own biography that was so quickly devaluated after German unification. Ostalgie is a direct outcome of the way the German unification was accomplished. It was not, however, a necessary outcome of the end of the East German dictatorship. Thomas Adam University of Texas at Arlington
 Humanities & Social Sciences Online 
|