Arena Magazine No.3 February-March 1993 FEATURES GER-MONEY AND THE CHANGE Kate Rigby When I think of Germany in the night I am robbed of sleep. Heinrich Heine, 1843; cited by (ex-east German) theologian Hans Joachim Beeskow on the occasion of the 1990 elections 'Club cola', once the only brand of cola drink available in the eastern part of Germany, is again gaining popularity there. Proudly asserting its ability to survive on the new 'open' market under the slogan, 'Hurrah! I'm still alive!', it is one of a number of products manufactured in the former German Democratic Republic which are presently being promoted with appeal to the 'good old days'. Revealing once again the amoral opportunism of capitalism for which, as Marx and Engels observed, nothing is taboo, advertisers have now discovered that even nostalgia for 'really existing socialism' can be turned into a marketing strategy. What they are bargaining on, and thereby also fostering, is a certain sense of solidarity, a shared, exclusively eastern German identity, grounded in defiance against the view that everything about the world they have lost was inferior to the sparkling and prosperous west. The success of this strategy is a sure indication that although few would really want a return to Soviet-style socialism, many are less than happy about life under the new dispensation. Here at least, the Coke and Pepsi paradise of consumer capitalism appears to have gone a little flat. Reunification has certainly brought more goods, as well as more shops, to eastern Germany, but now that they have spent the surplus Deutschmarks that replaced their old Ostmarks, many eastern Germans are finding that they can afford less of what is available. Although wages have generally gone up in line with prices, there are now considerably fewer jobs. According to a recent study, up to 70 per cent of former East German jobs are likely to be made redundant or substantially modified in the process of restructuring, and a great many have gone already. In May this year, the Federal Office of Employment estimated the unemployment rate in the eastern states at 14.6 per cent. However, this does not include the figures for those who are currently engaged in government retraining schemes, who have little hope of finding work when they finish, those who are temporarily employed in job creation schemes, some of which the government plans to wind down in 1993, and those who are only working casually or on a part-time basis. Taking these figures into account lifts the unemployment rate to over 40 per cent, and in some areas it is even higher. Particularly hard hit, apart from first-time job- seekers and people with disabilities, are those in their late forties and fifties, many of whom face the prospect of never working again. Meanwhile, finding work, and for those who still have a job, finding their way there, has been made more difficult by the deterioration of the public transport system. Once seen as a model by West German transportation experts, this rather drab, but nevertheless very comprehensive and efficient system is now threatened with total collapse. It might be saved if it could be run by local authorities on the profits gained from supplying water and electricity, as is the practice in the west. This option appears to have been foreclosed, however, as the organization responsible for the process of privatization in the east - reassuringly called Treuhand (literally, 'truehand') - has already sold the water and electricity supply to western companies. Meanwhile, services continue to be cut back, while fares go up. The unemployed and pensioners are also being particularly hard hit by the rise in rents, which had increased by 500 per cent one year after reunification, and are expected to go higher still this year. Meanwhile, some unscrupulous property owners are resorting to sabotage and harassment in order to force long-term tenants to leave their flats and houses, so they can let them at a higher rate. For others, there is the possibility of losing their accommodation - in some cases, the flat or house they thought they owned - as the result of a claim by a former property owner in the west. Considering that 110,000 such claims are awaiting processing in Berlin alone, the number of people affected by the so called Huserstreit ('house fight') is not insubstantial. Ironically, the principle of private property ownership that underlies the Huserstreit and that is enshrined in the policy of 'restitution rather than compensation' written into the Unionsvertrag ('Treaty of Union'), is actually hampering the process of privatization. Nobody wants to purchase or invest in property, whether commercial or residential, if there is a chance that someone else is going to claim it, or if their own claim turns out not to be recognized. Overall, privatization is proving no less problematic here than elsewhere in Eastern Europe. More strongly motivated by economic rationalism than the patriotic desire to rebuild their newly reunified nation, western German investors have so far been less than enthusiastic about sinking their profits into ailing eastern industries. The disincentive is not always the dilapidated and archaic nature of east German plant, however. In the well- publicized case of the Saxon firm of DKK Scharfenstein it is arguably the very competitiveness of their product - a new PCB-free refrigeration system - which has led to its threatened collapse: no western companies want to take it over as they have already started investing in the production of their own 'eco-fridge', using a substance called R 134a, which does not deplete the ozone layer but which, unlike the Scharfenstein alternative, turns into a Greenhouse gas when it rises in the atmosphere. This is clearly not a typical instance, but it provides further evidence that the problems faced by people in the eastern states today cannot simply be written off as the legacy of the old system. In one respect, reunification has certainly eased the pain of east Germany's transition. West Germany's comprehensive and well-funded social security system has ensured that the unparalleled collapse of eastern German industry has not been accompanied by a drastic drop in living standards. It is nevertheless a cruel irony that the apparent triumph of the system which promises autonomy and self-realization for the individual has for many simply brought a new form of dependence on the state. A recent study by the Berlin Centre for Social Research found that 16 per cent of their respondents in the eastern states felt 'unhappy and depressed', 20 per cent felt 'isolated', 28 per cent had 'anxieties and worries', while over 30 per cent said that life had become so 'complicated' that they felt completely disoriented. Other surveys indicate that, despite their newly won democratic rights, many former East Germans feel no less powerless to run their own lives and determine their own futures than before. Small wonder then, that the reassuring familiarity of those products which have so far survived 'the Change' has become a selling point. Small wonder too that many in the east feel that, rather than 'coming home' to a shared Germany, they have been colonized yet again by a foreign power. After forty years of divergent development, easterners and westerners barely even speak the same language. In fact, the main thing that appears to be holding the country together at present is the single Deutschmark - and, if the graffiti that can be found on toilet doors in the Humboldt University in Berlin, as well as on the walls of ruined apartment blocks in Leipzig are any indication, not even this is universally welcome: it reads, 'Fuck-off Germoney'. In a sense, Germany is even more divided today than it was before 1989. Then, there was at least the illusion of a shared nationhood underlying the artificial division into two states. Reunification has revealed that the very different histories lived by East and West Germans since the Second World War have left a mark not only on their cities and landscapes, but also on their psyches. And it is not only the 'Wall in the head' between 'Ossis' and 'Wessis' that presently divides Germans. Within the eastern states themselves, communities, neighbourhoods and even families are being torn apart by the countless betrayals that have come to light since the Stasi files were opened to the public. To heal these wounds, as well as those inflicted by the shared Nazi past and its aftermath, it is necessary that these divisions and conflicts be admitted and worked through together. If this does not happen, more may well be tempted to seek the false unity that is forged at the expense of the other - joining the ranks of the alienated, strangers in their own land, who find a sense of belonging by ostracizing and scape-goating other outsiders, 'guestworkers', immigrants, asylum seekers, and, as always, Jews. Joining the powerless, disgraced and disempowered are many sons of former Stasi officials who vent their frustration against those who are even more vulnerable than themselves. The reappearance of fascist bully-boys on German streets, mainly in the east, is certainly the most ugly manifestation of the Change. In my view, however, there is as yet no cause to fear a reversion to Nazism in Germany. Those who openly oppose hostility to foreigners, such as the 300,000 who took to the streets of Munich on 6 December and the many others who have rallied elsewhere, still vastly outnumber those who throw Molotov cocktails at migrant hostels. The recent spate of riots and attacks is unlikely to develop into a serious political movement with widespread support if the underlying economic and psycho-social causes are addressed. The prosperous, pluralistic, westward-looking Germany that the eastern states have joined can hardly be compared with the Weimar Republic. Moreover, the revival of fascism should itself guarantee that the ongoing process of coming to terms with the Nazi past will not be forgotten, but will instead be recognized as an integral part of the process of de- Stalinization. Whether or not there was any alternative to reunification remains a matter of debate in Germany. Given that this was the option chosen by the vast majority of easterners, however, it is unfortunate that the context and manner in which unification was achieved has allowed them so little opportunity to make a positive contribution to the shaping of a new Germany. Among other things, reunification should have provided an opportunity for more widespread public debate on constitutional reform. As it is, the only articles that look like being amended are the ones on abortion, which will almost certainly be liberalized, and asylum, which is set to become more restrictive. However, the dream of finding a third way, beyond the opposition of communism and capitalism, is not yet dead in Germany, and the fascists have by no means monopolized the space of alternative politics. Recent regional elections in the east have seen gains to the reformed Socialist Unity Party, the Party for a Socialist Democracy, and it is to be hoped that over the next few years the Greens, possibly in alliance with the eastern alternative party, B-ndnis 90, will regain some of the ground lost in the 1990 elections. Meanwhile, Rudolf Bahro, formerly of East Germany and co- founder of the Greens (which he has since left), is managing to persuade some state premiers that a new form of communalism can be built on the rubble of 'really existing socialism'. As a first step towards establishing a network of autonomous communities in the abandoned farms and workshops of the east, Bahro has already obtained a subsidy from the Christian Democrat government of Saxony for an alternative village of three hundred people, and the state premiers of Brandenburg and Mecklenburg-Vorpommern have also expressed interest in supporting selected eco-projects. Which forces ultimately prevail in Germany will depend largely upon developments in Europe as a whole, as well as on the global changes that are beginning to take place as we move into the new millennium. Even now it is clear, however, that although the east appears to have been annexed by the west, the new Germany will not be simply the former Federal Republic writ large. Kate Rigby teaches in the German Department at Monash University. ----------------------------------------------------------- Arena Magazine is published six times a year by: Arena Printing and Publishing Pty Ltd 35 Argyle Street, Fitzroy, 3065, Australia. Email: . The material in Arena Magazine is copyright. Permission is given to republish articles, in either electronic or paper form, so long as: (1) it is for non-profit purposes; (2) that the text of all work remains intact (including this copyright notice); and (3) notification is sent to Arena Publishing, either by snail or email. Applications from commercial publishers will be considered.