How Germany Forgot the Horrors of Communism

25 years after the fall of the Berlin Wall, the former East Germany is seen as a quirk of history, not a monstrous police state.

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How Germany Forgot the Horrors of Communism

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Germany recently celebrated 25 years of reunification with a beautiful art installation retracing the path of the Berlin Wall and educational exhibits of its Cold War history. For many Germans, it was a rare moment of reflection on the horrors perpetrated by the German Democratic Republic (a.k.a. GDR, East Germany, DDR).

The phenomenon known as Ostalgie, or nostalgia for the East, along with favorable views of socialism, have led to a curious whitewashing of the GDR's legacy. Particularly among young Germans, the GDR is seen as a quirk of history, a strange but charming place with campy state-manufactured products and a culture of nude beaches and enthusiastic collectivism, rather than a monstrous police state which imprisoned, murdered, tortured, and spied on its own people.

Reason TV visited Berlin and spoke with DDR Museum Scientific Director Dr. Stefan Wolle, Students for Liberty's Frederik Cyrus Roeder, Prometheus think tank founder Clemens Schnieder, and Lichtgrenze artists Mark and Christopher Bauder about why Germans are so skittish about confronting the country's dark communist legacy.  

About 4 minutes.

Produced by Anthony L. Fisher.

Music: "Profound Groove On The Rise" by Jared C. Balogh (http://www.alteredstateofmine.net)

Scroll down for downloadable links, and subscribe to Reason TV's YouTube channel for daily content like this.

Comments

[Palin's Buttplug]

Open Society Capitalism has won in Germany. Good for them.

[wadair]

For now. However, many in the west are afraid of their freedom and wish to escape from it into authoritarianism, destructiveness or conformity. They seek freedom from rather than freedom to. See Erich Fromm, Escape from Freedom.

[Win Bear]

No, unfortunately not. In Germany, government has strong control over companies; many companies are part state owned. Furthermore, the German state is the largest employer in Germany, with churches being the largest private employer, not exactly "open society capitalism".

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[CE]

What kind of car can you afford?

[Sevo]

Naah.
They long for the Stasi pay-outs for ratting their neighbors. And the smell of a Trebbi in the morning.

[Rhywun]

The trouble with Trabis is they take too long to start in the morning.

[SusanM]

So long, in fact, that it's afternoon by that time.

[Drake]

How many people would trade freedom for 3 square meals and a warm bed? Half maybe would gladly be house slaves?

[SusanM]

Most of the ThinkProgress commenters for a start.

[Rhywun]

What if you tell them that real deal is for bread & water and a hard cot in a jail cell?

[SusanM]

It's always the Other Guy. They really never get that even blind obeisance is no guarantee that the state won't stomp on them. Like I said in the last thread, that DC couple who lost their kids to CPS had to believe that it was only "those people" that bad things happened to.

[Sevo]

"Like I said in the last thread, that DC couple who lost their kids to CPS had to believe that it was only "those people" that bad things happened to."

I need to keep a copy of the clip of the (lefty) woman who got her bill for the first month of O-care:
'I didn't know *I* was going to have to pay for it!'

[Kure'i]

My younger brother told me his Facebook feed had a few punk rawk-y leftists having a shit fit when they found out they had to pay a penalty for not buying Obamacare. This, after supporting it, and arguing with people endlessly about how great it was going to be.

It could have only been better if the penalty was going directly to buy Koch Bros. yacht equipment or something.

[sarcasmic]

Something about people who don't learn from history...

[Lord Humungus]

You know who else forgot the horrors of communism? A sizable number of people in our own country...

[wadair]

The poster named amercan socialist?

[John Galt]

That's the pathetic truth.

[sarcasmic]

Aw, come on! Everyone knows that communism only failed because the wrong people were in charge!

[Sevo]

And it's never really been tried! And Denmark! And stuff.

[straffinrun]

Give 80% of your stuff to strangers. They'll take gooood care of it.

[Rhywun]

I visited East Germany in '86. It felt *exactly* like you would expect a dour, totalitarian shithole to feel. Ostalgie victims are either too young and stupid to know what it was like, or haven't been deprogrammed from the brainwashing they got.

[SusanM]

The older ones are likely a) failures under capitalism (or the pale Euro-Substitue, anyway) and wishing for the good old days to solve all their problems and b) former failures of the Communist system who wished for capitalism to solve their problems.

[Rhywun]

Uggghhh the linked Spiegel article gives a hint at the full scale of the stupid: "'The people who live on the poverty line today also lack the freedom to travel.'"

On the bright side, it should be noted that there was an epic wave of movement to the West after the wall fell - those who chose to remain, well, it's not so surprising they're a bit clueless.

[Migrant Log Picker]

This, I visited east Berlin through checkpoint Charlie on a student trip in 1972.

I was a dumb high school kid at the time but stassi probably probably followed us when we visited a good museum, their museum has some great Egytptian artifacts that were stolen at the time. Awesome museum.

We ate lunch at a non descript peoples restaurant and the food sucked, the servers could not give a shit about us being in their restaurant.

Sort of says it all about collective retards

[SFC B]

Eh, in my experience the wait staff in most every developed European country do not have a single fuck to give about the people there. Nice folks and very polite, but their 3 hours meals are dricven in part by the server being gone for an hour and everyone is just waiting for the check.

[HolgerDanske]

I was in West Berlin around the same time on a family vacation.

While still a child, I remember seeing the wall and a checkpoint, where cars were flowing somewhat freely into East Berlin, but armed East German guards were searching every car coming out of there.

Keeping people in, rather than out. More like a prison, than a border.

[Win Bear]

I visited East Germany in '86. It felt *exactly* like you would expect a dour, totalitarian shithole to feel.

True, it was a dour, totalitarian shithole. However, unlike its Soviet counterpart, it did not commit mass murder or other major atrocities, which is why I think people don't remember it as so horrible.

Keep in mind that many East Germans are probably economically little better off now than they were, and they probably feel worse off given that they are surrounded by wealthy westerners.

[Sevo]

"Keep in mind that many East Germans are probably economically little better off now than they were, and they probably feel worse off given that they are surrounded by wealthy westerners."

They had a Trebbi then, they've got one now. But now, a guy drives by in a BMW.
And, of course, it's the fault of the market! If they had communism back, he wouldn't have that BMW!

[HolgerDanske]

Maybe not mass murder, but they would murder people if they attempted to leave.

Perhaps mass murder is not necessary if enough people are intimidated into compliance, when their family, friends, and neighbors are constantly spying on them?

[straffinrun]

They may not remember thier communist past, but the ECB sure is trying to relive thier Weimar past.

Those who fail to study history are doomed to reprint it.

[John Galt]

DDR - Deutsche Demokratische Republik - like the vast majority of the rest of the world's democracies should help remind all who honestly and sincerely value individual liberty to just how horrible of a system democracies are.

Fortunately, I have an idea for a much better form of governance that would focus on guaranteeing liberty through the use of a contract which will function as the highest law of the nation and which would limit all actions of government to only those listed within the contract. To be absolutely certain liberties are always protected it wouldn't hurt to double down redundantly and make a separate list of important liberties which shall never be infringed upon under any circumstance.

It's my estimation that such a system should function well for up to a hundred or so years. After that people being people, and humans more often than not being their own worst enemies, those who have enjoyed liberty are bound to regress toward a democratic form of rule in which they can choose immediate rewards in exchange for surrendering their freedoms to malevolent beings who believe it's their right to rule in totalitarian fashion.

[sarcasmic]

Maybe you could write some papers about this under some assumed name.

[John Galt]

Great idea!

[Stoic]

I spent 6 weeks in Erfurt in 1997, and the general attitude of the people I spoke to was that the DDR wasn't so bad. The local unemployment rate was really high, so I'm sure that didn't help, but I think generally folks were in denial about what really happened under the DDR government. The folks in Berlin had the wall too look at every day as a reminder, but for those living farther from the border it was probably easier to accept the government propaganda.

[Sevo]

"I spent 6 weeks in Erfurt in 1997, and the general attitude of the people I spoke to was that the DDR wasn't so bad."

I wonder if part of this was the knowledge of the pervasive Stasi ratten?

[CE]

All the lefty environmentalists should study what happens to the environment when government runs everything, and compare that the environment in more capitalist/free countries.

[John C. Randolph]

Greentards don't care what happens to the environment. They just want to get in your face if you throw a soda can into the wrong bin.

-jcr

[Kure'i]

I remember Bruce Bawer writing about this a few years ago, and lamenting it.

I wonder if they have "quirky" shops at the old concentration camps, too. Or is that not "quirky" because the variety of socialist committing those atrocities were supposedly "right wing?"

My wife said that almost as soon as the dictator in her country fell to a coup, after 35 years of sugar lines, rationing, and isolation, people could hardly wait to reminisce about the "Good ol' days" under dictatorship.

[MarkLastname]

The Germans today largely compelled to hate their own history and culture prior to 1945 (I don't see why everything pre-1933 has to go out the window, but that seems to be what the academics want); despite that, Germans are a very communitarian people, so when pride in country is considered taboo or suspicious due to their history, they are basically grasping for anything that can give a sense of community, all the way down to the bottom of the barrel, reminiscing about the DDR. Other Germans instead abdicate nationality entirely and throw themselves into trying to create an EU superstate, choosing to identify as 'European' instead in an attempt to leave behind the feeling of collective guilt associated with their nationality. The German crisis of identity still plays a big role in their attitudes I think.

Of course we Americans should be well aware of this phenomenon: Look at all the lefties these days reminiscing about how great the 70s were compared to today. And they call us retrograde.

[Win Bear]

I don't see why everything pre-1933 has to go out the window, but that seems to be what the academics want

What parts do you actually like? The 30 years' war? Napoleon? Prussia? Kulturkampf? The Junkers? Even leaving the Nazis aside, Germany's history for the past few hundred years has been pretty dismal.

[Kure'i]

There is great music, art, literature, theater, and philosophy throughout the second half the 19th Century. Germany, before its collapse, was widely considered a high poinnt of civilization.

Unfortunately, so many big academics left and moved here that we inherited all the shitty intellectual trends, resulting in the morass known as university Humanities departments.

[Win Bear]

There is great music, art, literature, theater, and philosophy throughout the second half the 19th Century.

Those are the achievements of individuals, not the nation. And the reason Germans read, composed, and wrote so much is because they couldn't do much else; society was so rigid and stifling.

Unfortunately, so many big academics left and moved here that we inherited all the shitty intellectual trends,

And that's the other thing: a lot of German intellectual achievement was meaningless drivel or worse: Marx, Freud, Schopenhauer, Hegel, etc., and the legacy of that haunts us to this day.

[Kure'i]

Yes, those are achievements of individuals. However, they are also parts of German history and Germany's cultural legacy, and you asked what parts were admirable.

A lot of their philosophy is drivel, yes, but that's the case with much of philosophy, period. I don't think those you mentioned compare unfavorably to the stuff contemplated by the ancient Greeks, for example. And for all the bad, there was some really pioneering stuff in there. You mentioned Freud, for example -- what were his contemporaries thinking about the workings of the mind? In his historical context, he was putting some very creative material on the table for the world. The same goes for the phenomenological movement, Nietzsche, and the German/Scandinavian theater movement around the turn of the century.

I'd imagine German technical innovation was good at the time, too, but that's just a guess -- it's not my area of knowledge, and I'm fully prepared to eat my words if I'm wrong about that.

[Win Bear]

Yes, those are achievements of individuals. However, they are also parts of German history and Germany's cultural legacy, and you asked what parts were admirable.

Prior to the late 19th century, there was no such thing as "Germany". For Germans today to claim that history as "German" means little more than support for a fiction created by conquerors and nationalists.

I don't think those you mentioned compare unfavorably to the stuff contemplated by the ancient Greeks, for example.

I think that's damning with faint praise.

[Scarecrow Repair]

There are two things which made the Nazis more stark and memorable than Communists, even Stalin.

1. Hitler started a world war, Stalin did not.

2. Hitler transformed a civilized nation into hell. Stalin transformed a backwards peasant kingdom (tsardom?) into a modern dictatorship.

This last also explains, for me, why it was so easy for so many Stalinist apologists to get away with their lies and even to believe their own lies: Russia was a strange, distant, unknown land before Stalin, and he could control the propaganda much more easily. But enough people had traveled to Germany or knew Germans or did business with Germans that Hitler's changes were much more noticeable.

But the first explains Hitler's shock value. Stalin killed more people and lasted longer, but it was all internal. He wasn't responsible for killing Frenchmen or Brits. His were all much more private. Same as when some local minor crime makes local headlines while far more heinous crimes are lost because they happened somewhere else.

[Win Bear]

2. Hitler transformed a civilized nation into hell.

What "civilized nation"? The Weimar Republic? The German Empire? Germany wasn't a "nation", let alone a civilized one, it was an assemblage of squabbling, warring, oppressive states until well into the 19th century. It got unified under Prussia into a bleak, intolerant, and militaristic regime under an idiot emperor and an amoral chancellor, then was at the center of a bloody and vicious war, existed briefly under a dysfunctional democracy, before the German people overwhelmingly put a madman in charge. There are many reasons Nazi Germany is remembered so well, but a German fall from grace isn't one of them, because Germany never had any.

[Scarecrow Repair]

The many Germanic kingdoms which formed Germany in 1870 were far more civilized and modern than Russia.

[utabintarbo]

Not a high bar, indeed.

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[Business Consultant]

Oh, that light installation was truly touching and symbolic. I think that was the best way they could mark this occasion. It also reminds us we should be peacekeepers of our land, so there would not be a chance for another wall.

[antodav]

How quickly and tragically people forget. Or, as is the case here in America, tragic that they never knew at all. History will repeat itself within another generation if the present one is not educated about what really happened to the last.

[catbonez]

This anti German effluence is childish, win bear. I get it. You have a real bias against all things German. Pretty creative stuff there.

[jgress]

I was in Berlin a month ago and stayed with a nice couple. Unfortunately, I let myself get into a political conversation with the lady and she had major Ostalgie. To be fair, unification happened just as she had finished her seamstress training and was going to start her career; all the economic upheaval destroyed that future for her and she took many years to find her feet in the new system, so she understandably preferred the security of the old system. But also I think she still suffers from the brainwashing of her education: the DDR was all about equality and fairness and community and the surveillance and the persecution was this minor, unimportant thing on the side. The debate got really heated when she refused to accept that the USA played any significant role in defeating Hitler, even after I granted that the USSR bore the brunt of the casualties. Apparently the only thing the US managed was not to prosecute every single Nazi after the war.

But yeah, I also agree with the historian in the video who thinks the DDR is not comparable with Nazism. However awful the DDR was, they didn't have death camps or gulags: being an East German citizen was not the living hell for most that it was for Jews under Hitler, or for just about any Russian under Stalin during the Great Terror.

[SomePhilosopher]

That awkward moment when America wonders why another country is skittish about facing their dark history, SMH.

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