Totalitarian Busybodies

The horrors of the Stasi's East Germany.

Glenn Garvin from the January 2006 issue

(Page 3 of 3)

That, more than any fundamental principles of Marxism, may have been the real danger of communism. Anytime you create a massive state apparatus capable of repression--no matter how supposedly enlightened the intent--it will fall into the hands of bullies and busybodies. By the time East Germany was created in 1945, nobody could possibly have believed that Marxist economics was going to rescue the world's poor from predatory capitalism. Three decades of squalid poverty and famine in the Soviet Union had busted that idea to pieces. But Communist political theory was still a splendid excuse to peek inside your neighbor's window and tattle about what you saw.

Even if Funder occasionally colors a bit outside the lines, she gets the basic picture. It would be hard to find a more clear-eyed and contemptuous portrait of communism in action, and her rage at the tormenters of people like Miriam Weber and Frau Paul is palpable. So is her disgust for ostalgie, the absurd and obscene sentimentalization of East Germany that goes on at acutely hip parties where an old ID card is the price of admission and everybody calls each other "comrade."

Funder approvingly quotes Weber (who these days works at a radio station and is trying to pry open the records of her husband's death) on this "crazy nostalgia" for a pastel-colored East Germany, "a harmless welfare state that looked after people's needs." Adds Weber: "Most of the people at these parties are too young to remember anyway. They are just looking for something to yearn for."

That is as succinct and accurate a summary as could possibly be written of After the Wall, Jana Hensel's idiotic ode to her imaginary youth. Only 13 when the Wall fell, she recalls life in the East as "a fairy-tale time" that she'd like to revisit. "I'd like to retrace where we come from," she writes, "to rediscover lost memories and forgotten experiences." She's referring not to examining the memory of Stalinism to avoid its recurrence but to the dashing red scarf of the Young Pioneers and Manne Murmelauge, the freckle-faced mascot of a Communist kiddie magazine who gave tips on holding better bake sales for the Sandinistas.

We all make mistakes at 13, and I've got the Cowsills records to prove it. The problem is that Hensel's judgment hasn't improved since then. Her primary concerns in the decade after the Wall fell were how to dress like a West German girl ("Western women displayed a clear sense of ease when dealing with brand-name fashions") and her hick parents, who tragically enjoyed having actual consumer goods to shop for at Christmas. This last is the stuff of epic anguish--there's an entire chapter titled "On Our Battles With Bad Taste." (Coming from a woman who admits her favorite meal is fried baloney and macaroni, the irony is unspeakable.) Even now, Hensel says, she and her friends vote for the Democratic Socialist Party--the reconstituted Communists --because the party spokesman is "so amusing."

When the Wall fell, there was widespread fear in Europe of what a reunified Germany, which launched two world wars in barely a quarter century, might have on its mind. My guess, guys, is that you can skip a generation before starting to worry. Hensel and her friends are too busy trying to build an ideology around Lee Press-On Nails to cast hungry eyes on the Sudetenland.�

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Pingback| 10.22.09 @ 11:14PM

Posted without comment « OnParkStreet links to this page. Here’s an excerpt:

…journalist Anna Funder in Stasiland: True Stories from Behind the Berlin Wall. “Everyone suspected everyone else, and the mistrust this bred was the foundation of social existence.” -  Glenn Garvin, Reason 3. The pivotal scene in the magnificent new ( OPS: it’s a 2006 film) German movie The Lives of Others–which won the Oscar for Best Foreign Language Film last week–takes place in an…

Pingback| 10.22.09 @ 11:25PM

Chicago Boyz » Blog Archive » Posted without comment links to this page. Here’s an excerpt:

…journalist Anna Funder in Stasiland: True Stories from Behind the Berlin Wall. “Everyone suspected everyone else, and the mistrust this bred was the foundation of social existence.” -  Glenn Garvin, Reason 3. The pivotal scene in the magnificent new ( OPS: it’s a 2006 film) German movie The Lives of Others–which won the Oscar for Best Foreign Language Film last week–takes place in an…

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