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Ghost Strasse: Germany's East Trapped Between Past and Present
German unification was expected to be a triumph of the human spirit, of political resourcefulness, and of economic power. Instead, the process that began in late 1989 when the Berlin Wall came down, has turned into an unending chronicle of division rather than unification, and of economic bust rather than boom€”a story of lost opportunities, of misjudgments, of human alienation, of misspent money, of cultural arrogance, of unfulfilled promises. In Ghost Strasse, author and journalist Simon Burnett breathes life into the East German people, into their politics, and into the events that brought them to the present situation.
242 pages, Paperback
First published May 1, 2006
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December 5, 2023
"... an unending chronicle of division rather than unification, and of economic bust rather than boom..."
Simon Burnett does not have anything good to say about the DDR, or come to that the BRD. There are plenty of other books that analyse other aspects of the DDR including what can be seen as its more positive attributes (although Burnett would no doubt reject that any such existed). This book purely rails and rages against the worst excesses, crimes and stupidites carried out by the East German State. Written in a bitingly partisan and campaigning style it is hard not to be moved by the many tales of Stalinist pig headedness and criminality listed here. There is nothing really that is new in terms of human unpleasantness or which has not been used by regimes elsewhere east or west. However, that someone in authority thought that such means of attempting to control citizens were acceptable in a state which claimed moral superiority over the capitalist west shows how cynical and disconnected from the ideal much of the leadership was. Perhaps one of the most interesting areas covered here is the reminder of the level of cooperation between east and west that happened at times where it was mutually beneficial - especially the collaboration with the CSU in Bavaria through the DDR quasi official import/export company Koko. Other interesting case histories involve citizens caught up in games between the spy agencies of east and west resulting in deaths and an ongoing (at the time the book was written) wall of silence of obfuscation met by those trying to find out what really happened, who knew what, and finding it difficult, or impossible, to get justice. That the DDR emerged out of less than favourable conditions at the end of WWII did not help, those who were foundational in the leadership had survived the Stalinist purges and been through the Stalin era Moscow school of HR, the core of the apple was rotten from the start.
Burnett does not come across as overly sympathetic to the DDR population, but he at least presents a good overview (although much better and more detailed versions can be found elsewhere) of the West German "anschluss" (especially the restitution debacle) which he acknowledges resulted in a backlash against the West and a protective reactionary introversion into the comfort of a rose tinted past. He is particularly scathing of the PDS which he unfairly writes off as a party of unreformed Stalinists and nostalgists (although certain incidents he records certainly left the party in a poor light). He covers the rise of neo-Nazism in the East with some interesting ideas about its origins and how the media coverage of neo-Nazism both helped to feed its rise and to undermine investment and recovery by scaring off foreign investment. He also highlights the failures of the West German takeover which pretty much guaranteed failure in the pursuit of profit and an unfair takeover which created a second class German citizenry.
Grim and necessary reading which still should not be allowed to negate in its entirety a country which for all its faults was still home to many people who wanted the utopian socialist myth it presented to become a reality.
"After the Berlin Wall fell, they saw their culture ripped apart and discarded like an old rag. They were left in no doubt that they were inferior."
Simon Burnett does not have anything good to say about the DDR, or come to that the BRD. There are plenty of other books that analyse other aspects of the DDR including what can be seen as its more positive attributes (although Burnett would no doubt reject that any such existed). This book purely rails and rages against the worst excesses, crimes and stupidites carried out by the East German State. Written in a bitingly partisan and campaigning style it is hard not to be moved by the many tales of Stalinist pig headedness and criminality listed here. There is nothing really that is new in terms of human unpleasantness or which has not been used by regimes elsewhere east or west. However, that someone in authority thought that such means of attempting to control citizens were acceptable in a state which claimed moral superiority over the capitalist west shows how cynical and disconnected from the ideal much of the leadership was. Perhaps one of the most interesting areas covered here is the reminder of the level of cooperation between east and west that happened at times where it was mutually beneficial - especially the collaboration with the CSU in Bavaria through the DDR quasi official import/export company Koko. Other interesting case histories involve citizens caught up in games between the spy agencies of east and west resulting in deaths and an ongoing (at the time the book was written) wall of silence of obfuscation met by those trying to find out what really happened, who knew what, and finding it difficult, or impossible, to get justice. That the DDR emerged out of less than favourable conditions at the end of WWII did not help, those who were foundational in the leadership had survived the Stalinist purges and been through the Stalin era Moscow school of HR, the core of the apple was rotten from the start.
Burnett does not come across as overly sympathetic to the DDR population, but he at least presents a good overview (although much better and more detailed versions can be found elsewhere) of the West German "anschluss" (especially the restitution debacle) which he acknowledges resulted in a backlash against the West and a protective reactionary introversion into the comfort of a rose tinted past. He is particularly scathing of the PDS which he unfairly writes off as a party of unreformed Stalinists and nostalgists (although certain incidents he records certainly left the party in a poor light). He covers the rise of neo-Nazism in the East with some interesting ideas about its origins and how the media coverage of neo-Nazism both helped to feed its rise and to undermine investment and recovery by scaring off foreign investment. He also highlights the failures of the West German takeover which pretty much guaranteed failure in the pursuit of profit and an unfair takeover which created a second class German citizenry.
Grim and necessary reading which still should not be allowed to negate in its entirety a country which for all its faults was still home to many people who wanted the utopian socialist myth it presented to become a reality.
"After the Berlin Wall fell, they saw their culture ripped apart and discarded like an old rag. They were left in no doubt that they were inferior."
Displaying 1 of 1 review