Check out part II of GDR Objectified’s Field Trip to Halle an der Saale. In this visit, we finish exploring the Neustadt, a socialist-era district on the city’s western edge which was once home to nearly 100,000 residents. We’re joined by Micha B., an eastern German who grew up there, so there’s some insider perspective on this fascinating place!
Join GDR Objectified for this Field Trip to Halle an der Saale where we look for remnants of East Germany in the cityscape. In this the first of two parts, we’ll explore the city centre before heading out to the town’s western end to begin exploring Neustadt, the GDR’s fourth “socialist city”.
Plastic pin produced for participants in the Spartakiade of the Combat Groups of the Working Class in Halle / Saale in 1973 (photo: Jo Zarth).
One of the distinguishing features of state socialism in the GDR was its use of awards, medals and commendations as a means of acknowledging and encouraging its citizenry along the ‘correct path’. Such items were distributed in workplaces, at schools and in all manner of social settings and as a result are still floating about in considerable numbers. In the early years after German unification, these items were everywhere in the former-East, and the seemingly exotic bits of socialist kitsch were eagerly snapped up by tourists as souvenirs. (Indeed, these things were so popular at one point that in the mid-late 90s it was not unusual to encounter knock-off versions for sale at some major tourist attractions like the Reichstag in Berlin.) While most of the object presented here are not particularly rare, they warrant a closer look as they do provide an interesting window into an East German society that has almost completely vanished.
This post presents my collection of such items. I got a few of mine from hawkers set up near the Reichstag and Brandenburg Gate or at flea markets in Leipzig and Berlin in the mid-90s, but most were passed on to me by friends clearing out their parents’ attics. As a result, I’m fairly confident that most of my stuff is authentic, but should the eagle-eyed among you spot any fakes in here, please do let me know!
In my last post, I started relating the life story of Dr. Johanna Goldberg, a retired physician from the eastern German city of Schwedt. The information found here is based on Dr. Goldberg’s autobiography Vom Prügelkind zur Ärztin (From Whipping Boy to Doctor) and a number of email exchanges I have had with her over the past year. I have decided to present her life in some detail as it illustrates a number of prominent themes of East German life in a remarkable way.
When we left the story, Johanna had just left behind the brutal foster family where she had spent her childhood to study at the Francke Foundations, a boarding school in the industrial city of Halle/Saale. Once here, she had immediately written to both her birth mother and grandmother in the hopes of establishing contact with her natural family . . .
The Francke Foundations in a photo from 1972 (photo: VH-Halle, Wikicommons).
As Johanna’s mother had emigrated to Denmark, a response from her took some time in coming, but the grandmother lived a short distance away in the town of Merseburg and soon Johanna was visiting there semi-regularly. During her first visit, Johanna’s relatives went to great pains to inform her “of all the ‘apparent’ sins of mother”, something that disturbed the girl greatly and caused her to reflect on whether “a person can be only bad and is he or she that for all time?” (pg 38)
When she questioned her grandmother about why she had stood aside and let Johanna be placed into foster care, the explanations were weak and unconvincing. First and foremost, the old woman referred to the counsel of her doctor who’d apparently pointed to Johanna’s bad eye and advised the grandmother that this indicated that the child would undoubtedly be mentally deficient (“blöd”). Johanna is appalled by this reasoning and particularly put off by the contradiction between her supposedly pious grandmother’s actions and religious beliefs: “That was too much hypocrisy for me!” (pg. 39)
Early last year, I published a post on a Reconstruction Card belonging to a “Johanna Goldberg”, a young woman who’d resided in East Berlin in the 1950s. This name’s possibly Jewish character had me speculating on who this individual was and what her story might be. At the time I promised to do some digging to see if I could find out the story of this person. While doing so, I came across a self-published autobiography entitled Vom Prügelkind zur Ärztin (From Whipping Boy to Doctor) by a Johanna Goldberg whose biographical information suggested that I might be on the right track. So, I bought the book and while reading, quickly realized that I had stumbled on to a remarkable individual.
Dr. Johanna Goldberg’s autobiography Vom Prügelkind zur Ärztin (From Whipping Boy to Doctor).
However, as this Johanna Goldberg’s life path took her from a childhood spent largely in foster care through to medical studies, marriage and eventually a position as doctor, I began to suspect that perhaps I had not found the person I was looking for. There was no mention here of a period spent in post-war Berlin or any reference to Jewish roots. So when I managed to locate the author and asked directly, I wasn’t too surprised to find the following response in my email inbox soon after:
“Dear Mr. Kleiner, many thanks for your letter and your project.
I am not the Johanna Goldberg from Treskowallee in Berlin whom you are looking for, but I suppose that I do indeed belong to the ‘Reconstruction’ generation [Aufbaugeneration] of Germans.”
And on the issue of a possible Jewish connection in her family:
“My husband’s family has no Jewish roots. They come from the Czech/German border region and there was, maybe still is, a village with that name there. But that was long ago.” (email, Feb. 22, 2013)
And with that, both my theories were, alas, shot down. My spirits soon lifted, however, when Dr. Goldberg declared herself ready to answer the many questions that had come to mind while reading her book and sure enough, several weeks later the first of several extensive emails arrived with detailed answers and reflections on themes that I had raised. Because of the way in which Dr. Goldberg’s life illustrates a number of recurring motifs of life in the GDR, I will dedicate my next three posts to presenting her biography.
East Germans seem to have had a thing for postcards. During its roughly forty years of existence, the GDR generated well over 30,000 (!) unique postcards, a rather remarkable number for a country which was never the most popular tourist destination. Many of these were put out by Bild und Heimat (which can be roughly translated as Picture and Home), a publisher from the small Saxon town of Reichenbach, and the producer of the vast majority of the cards in my small collection.
Here’s where things stand now, organized by the GDR’s own administrative districts.
Berlin – Capital of the German Democratic Republic
Cottbus District
Dresden District
Erfurt District
Frankfurt (Oder) District
Gera District
Halle District
Karl-Marx-Stadt District
Leipzig District
Magdeburg District
Potsdam District
Rostock District
Suhl District
Schwerin & Neubrandenburg Districts
Shamefully, I have no exponents from these districts. I will work to remedy this!
The Use of Postcards in East Germany
East Germans certainly used postcards much in the way these are typically used today: as a means to send vacation greetings or a quick hello to friends and family. However,this use accounted for only some of the postcard mail that circulated in the country. Indeed, the large number of different motifs churned out in the GDR reflects a strong demand for this item and a short consideration of the context of postcards’ use in the country is helpful to understand what was driving consumers to use so many postcards.
One of the hallmarks of East German life was its slow pace and I would argue that this tempo was a result of a number of factors. First, the transport infrastructure for both people and goods was generally old and didn’t facilitate quick movement. Second, the country’s socialist planned economy did away with competition, a corollary of which was that the dynamism which this can bring to public life was largely absent from the GDR. Finally, communications were dramatically different from both what we know today and what was typical in the Western world in the 1970s and 80s.
From our 21st century perspective, it’s difficult to imagine just how different communication was in East Germany, but this was a country where only 24.6% of the population had access to a telephone at home (1989 figures). If one did not have an obliging neighbour or didn’t wish to conduct personal conversations in someone else’s home, the other options were to try using a phone booth (these were few and far between and often out of service) or line up at a post office to use one of the phones found there.
The reverse of card pictured left: “Can you please come to my place on Monday, February 7th?” – a postcard sent within Karl Marx Stadt to set up a visit between two friends.
Given these hurdles, it’s not surprising that many East Germans simply did not use the phone all that often outside of their work settings. Instead, it was common for friends to simply drop in on one another unannounced in order to catch up on things. (Indeed, this aspect of the East German culture has largely disappeared but is often fondly recalled as one of the elements of the GDR lifestyle that people miss today.) When it was necessary or desirable to make more formal arrangements, people would often use a postcard to communicate with friends or family, and my collection of postcards has several examples of postcards used in just this way.
For instance, one postcard sees the writer informing the recipients of her train’s planned arrival time on an impending visit. Another postcard from a Leipzig resident to a relative in a small town asks for specific instructions regarding purchases the city dweller is going to make on the relative’s behalf. Most interesting are a series of postcards written by one Leipziger to a good friend who lived across town. These postcards communicate the sort of everyday content (e.g. work schedule, plans for meeting for a concert or for a coffee) which a West German (or Canadian) would have normally carried out in a phone call in the 80s (or, in an email, text message or tweet in more recent times). For an outsider, the tone and content of these postcards are more than a bit odd as they represent a kind of communication that is completely foreign (in all this word implies). The way in which the most basic of exchanges were stretched out over a period of days gives a clear sense of the different way in which time was often experienced in the GDR.
Motifs
East German postcards are largely comparable to those found elsewhere. Most presented either historic or important buildings, natural landscapes, artwork and the like. Naturally there is an emphasis on “socialist themes” and this makes postcards a useful means of assessing the regime’s priorities. It was not uncommon to find postcards depicting major industrial plants and housing estates which the Party erected as part of its housing program in the 70s and 80s. My collection has examples fro most of these categories, but I have a particular fondness for those which document GDR-specific scenes (e.g. housing estates, “socialist” streetscapes, etc.).
Related Themes – Further Reading
The DDR-Postkarten-Museum has been the first destination for anyone interested in East German postcards for a while now. This website presents a private collection of some 33,000 different postcards produced in the GDR 40+ years of existence. At present, the site is being reorganized as part of a process which will see Berlin’s DDR Museum take on the oversight of this fascinating archive. Apparently the site will be back up “soon” and you can register your email address with them at the link above to be informed when things are up and running again.
English artist/photographer Martin Parr’s Langweilige Postkarten (Boring Postcards) has edited a most enjoyable collection of postcards with prosaic motifs which were produced in the two Germanies between the end of WWII and German unification in 1990. Housing estates, autobahns, highway rest stops, hotels/holiday camps get the bulk of the attention and what is most remarkable are the clear parallels in aesthetic sensibility on display on either side of the Iron Curtain.
To get a sense of the motifs common to the East German postcard, there’s a nice online collection of some which were produced for the city of Schwedt, the GDR’s third “socialist city” (read: planned city) and home to the country’s only oil refinery. The postcards are from the mid-50s to the late 60s and can be found at:
http://www.portal-schwedt.de/stadtportrait/bildervonschwedt/ddransichtskarten/index.html
Mail Art in the GDR
One interesting topic related to postcards in the GDR but which is not (yet!) represented in my collection is the phenomenon of Mail Art. This movement involved a small group of underground artists who used mail art as a means of both circumventing the strict public controls placed on artists and their work in the East and to overcome the isolation many of them experienced working in such a society. Mail Art took many different forms but often directly addressed notions of artistic freedom and the surveillance regime in place in the GDR (which included close controls of the postal system).
For an overview of the Mail Art movement in Eastern Europe, including the GDR, see this piece by Hungarian artist Bálint Szombathy found in issue 21of the journal Left Curve. It was written on the occasion of an exhibit of Mail Art in the eastern German city of Schwerin and provides some background on the Mail Art movement in Eastern Europe, including the GDR.
