Anna Saunders (Bristol) p.25-42
2004 Issue 3
Abstract
More than a decade since the fall of the Berlin Wall, todays young east Germans are familiar only with a united Germany. Having received their entire education since unification, and with little or no personal experience of the GDR, they are reliant on parents, teachers, school education and collective memory to help them understand the complexities of socialist society. To what extent do young east Germans’ perceptions of the GDR differ from those of their elders, who were brought up and educated before 1989, and how comparable are they to those of their western contemporaries?
This paper will firstly assess the way in which the GDR is presented to young people in eastern Germany through family narratives, the mass media and educational materials, and secondly draw on 43 interviews carried out in Sachsen-Anhalt in 2001 and 2002, in order to explore young people’s own perceptions of the GDR, and identify the varying importance of materials and attitudes to which they have been exposed. The analysis will reveal that the perspective from which young people view their immediate history is highly influential in shaping their attitudes, and that this generation’s perceptions of the GDR play a central role in identity formation in the present.