Material Fantasies

Front matter

To Maurits and Rifka, in memoriam Leonard van Es

Expectations of the Western Consumer World among East Germans

Milena Veenis

Preface

In 1994, the former socialist part of Germany, the German Democratic Republic (GDR), was probably one of the most fascinating places for an anthropologist to conduct research. Five years earlier, the Fall of the Berlin Wall had initiated the collapse of the socialist regime in Eastern Germany and the start of German reunification. Although heartily welcomed, this prompted the complete breakdown of East German society and the fast disintegration of all existing material, social, and conceptual standards. The ensuing turmoil could be seen, heard, and felt throughout the country. The general atmosphere was tense, and conversations on the most mundane topics could suddenly derail - ostensibly for no reason. Whereas anthropologists have generally come to accept that a society’s social and cultural structures are not fixed but rather constructed, it was a shock to witness the panic and pain this confrontation caused in everyday life. People were frantically searching for new safeguards.

Since then much has changed - not just the material, social, and psychological make-up of the former socialist society, but also the way it is remembered. Initially, the painful breakdown of everything trusted and secure caused people to experience any criticism of their history as extraordinarily hurtful, but as time passed, people’s memories on the GDR have grown more differentiated. In 1994, longing and nostalgia for the past, anger and denial with regard to criticizing it were common reactions to the complete reshuffling and widespread critique of former East Germans’ existence. Barely twenty year later, these responses have made way for a more nuanced and critical perspective on the GDR. This shift is clearly illustrated in cinematic form by two films about the GDR that received wide acclaim also outside Germany: Goodbye Lenin (2003) and Das Leben der Anderen (‘The Lives of Others, 2007).' Although not denying or ignoring the dictatorial aspects of the GDR, the former film excels in its endearing, somewhat nostalgic depiction of the socialist past, whereas the latter conveys a far darker mood. Goodbye Lenin’s main message is roughly: “life under socialism may have been cramped, and we may not have had much, but what we had was comfy and cozy,’ while The Lives of

1 Since both films have been made by West Germans, they do not represent East Germans’ shifting valuations of their past. They are used here merely to illustrate, primarily for non-Germans, the two extremes of how the GDR is and has been recollected.

Others reveals the almost unperceivable corruption of human relationships under socialist dictatorship. From humoristic-nostalgic and tenderly ironic, to gloomy and (self)critical: the two films represent the sequence of collective memories of the GDR in a nutshell.

Based on historical ethnographic material, this book presents a theoretical analysis of a society adrift. It describes the situation I encountered in 1993 and 1994, but its scope is much wider than a historical record of that time. It provides an analysis of how people react when the prevailing social and cultural order can no longer provide stability or meaning to their lives, and the apparent normality of how life is supposed to be lived is exposed as artificial.

Focusing on people’s reactions then, while glossing over the (public) recollections of the former socialist era circulating over the past two decades, my representation might seem to confirm the typical image of inhabitants of socialist countries as Western Europe’ straggling ‘other? Such an interpretation would disregard the real and more general theme of this work. Apart from the specific topics it addresses (consumption, its role in German history, the relationship between East and West Germany before and after 1989, and in the GDR between the people and the state), this book explores how people respond to being confronted with the make-believe of their society’s main ideological underpinnings. It shows how they try to restore confidence in the symbolic order as a meaningful, discursive framework that will support social structure and allow for mutual recognition.

Writing this book would not have been possible without the generous support of a number of people and institutions. First of all, I am grateful to the Amsterdam School for Social Science Research who funded the research on which this work is based, and to the Netherlands Organization for Scientific Research (NWO) for funding the finalization of the manuscript.

My time in Rudolstadt was one of the most inspiring experiences of my life. It was overwhelming to be so closely involved with people whose lives had been thrown into such turmoil by their history. I am very grateful to many people there, especially Stefan Breternitz, Hartmut Franz, Petra Rottschalk, Katrin Stapf, Heiner and Iris Tschoepke, Mr and Mrs Weißensee, and the late Jo Winter, for their sincerity and friendship.

Beyond Rudolstadt, I would like to thank my colleagues in the international EUWOL (European Ways of Life in the American Century) network, for the hearty and pleasurable atmosphere in which we worked together. I am particularly indebted to Ruth Oldenziel and Johan Schot for their personal support and advice during difficult times. My very sincere thanks also go to those who gener-

Preface ously gave me their valuable comments on sections of this book, or whose involvement supported my project in other ways. In alphabetical order they are: Mireille Berman, Anne Gevers, Rob van Ginkel, Suzanne Kuik, Birgit Meyer, Mattijs van de Port, Irene Stengs, Alex Strating, Bonno Thoden van Velzen, and Jojada Verrips as well as my parents and my sister Clara. Val Kidd deserves a special mention for her invaluable and speedy editing and translating during our particularly enjoyable and productive collaboration.

My deepest and heartfelt thanks, however, go to Leonard van Es, with whom I was fortunate to share many happy years. His love and support have had a profound and lasting influence on me and my life. I dedicate this book to his beloved memory, and to our children, Maurits and Rifka.

Contents

Introduction 11 Western Prosperity as Consolation 11 Consumption, Identity, and Fantasy 16 Life in Dictatorial Societies 21

1 Fieldwork 31 Reactions to My Presence 32 Material Culture and Tell-Tale One-Liners 37 Generalization, Differentiation 43

2 Germany 1945: A Country in Ruins 47 Material and Social Trauma 47 In Search of a Hold 56

Chapter 1 Fieldwork

Before presenting my analysis on the role of fantasy in the recent history of East Germany (GDR), I want to explain the relation between this book’s argument and conclusion on the one hand, and the kind of material presented and used in it on the other. The reason to do so is that the book’s main line of argument primarily derives from forms of knowledge that are essentially non-linguistic. Given the central role of fieldwork in anthropology, this is certainly not a revolutionary remark. But exactly because fieldwork, described as “deep hanging out” in order to generate “informed intuition,” occupies such a central place in our academic identity, I find it striking how little attention is paid in mainstream anthropological texts and case studies to the question of where and how we find the sources that inform our intuition.

Both times that I did extensive fieldwork, I was struck by how little information interviews and conversations produced. This was especially clear in the former GDR. Already after a few weeks it struck me that the stories I listened to all sounded rather alike. Whomever I spoke to, whatever I asked, no matter how hard I tried to steer the conversation in another direction, change the topic, or did my best to tempt people to give a more personal account, it was to no avail. I listened, endlessly and to the point of irritation, to what I soon began to call the standard story: about the fact that nothing was available in this country, and what happened when there were finally children’s clothes for sale, how everyone enlisted each other's help to get hold of the highly desirable jumpers; and how since 1989, now that everything was there, things had not improved, because nowadays everyone just thought about themselves; a real division had arisen between the people who had a lot and those who could not afford anything, and it had never been like that in the past, for in the GDR there had been more equality and community spirit than now, and so on and so forth.

Nothing but good things about the past, except for material provision. Capitalism was responsible for the total corruption of morality, social ties and economic security. The story was both simple and one-dimensional. Although I wondered frustratingly what I was doing wrong, it was remarkable that at the same time ideas emerged, almost intuitively, on the reasons for this specific representation as well as on western prosperity’s impact on the former East German existence. These ideas partly stem from conversations and the more or less concrete material I collected, but they mainly derive from much vaguer sources. Again, this may not be a ground-breaking observation, and there are plenty of specialized journals and volumes in which the methodological and phenomenological pitfalls of anthropological knowledge production are dealt with.? But apart from these specific sites, in general anthropological texts and case studies, languages inadequacy in conveying relevant anthropological information is hardly problematized or reflected upon, and neither is the question of which non-verbal sources the anthropologists’ understanding is based on.

This is even more remarkable given that so many of the experiences we as anthropologists try to grasp and understand are noticeably difficult to put into words. Certainly when they are painful, embarrassing, shocking, or traumatic, or when they threaten to confront people with what in the previous chapter was referred to as “the distressing gaps and cracks in a society’s symbolic order,’ it is no wonder that they are not easily expressed verbally.

This chapter seeks to elucidate that although such issues and experiences are not (easily and explicitly) talked about, this does not mean that they are impenetrable, or that it is impossible to gain an inkling of their importance, their place and meaning in other people’s lives. As stated before, fieldwork derives its merit from the anthropologist somehow learning to read between the lines, to understand the unsaid in relation to the said, and to gain a feel for the pains and pitfalls of certain topics.” Pinpointing how and where exactly this feeling comes about is not easy. But below, I will describe four more or less distinguishable sources that played a crucial role during my fieldwork in Rudolstadt. They are: my reflections on people's (often defensive and negative) reactions to my questioning presence, the conspicuous silence pertaining to specific topics, my personal experiences with the material culture I investigated, and the remarkable fact that sometimes a seemingly trivial utterance kept on haunting me - begging me, as it were, to crack its hidden significance.

Reactions to My Presence Astonishingly little has been written about the resistance and negative reactions that anthropologists encounter during their research.* We hardly ever read about unwilling respondents, about the anger and sometimes downright aggression that anthropologists’ questioning presence arouses, or about the insights gained from all this. Yet during both my field research experiences, people’s defensive and negative reactions to my questions have had a significant impact on how I became acquainted with the particular society. My attempts to talk to the people of Rudolstadt about their longing for western goods, the changes in consumption that had taken place, or the ensuing deep disappointment often met with opposition, for example when I distributed questionnaires on consumption.

When they heard about the topic of the questionnaire, a surprisingly large number of people reacted disgruntled, and many refused to fill in the forms. One woman, a hairdresser to whom I had handed the questionnaire in her salon and who had initially been quite enthusiastic and obliging, gave me a friendly smile when I came to collect the papers a week later. “Oh here comes that woman with the nice name,” she laughed, while cutting an older lady’s hair. And she continued, still grinning broadly:

We were just talking about you. You have a lovely name, but what stupid questions you ask! I was just telling her - and she pointed to the client in the hairdresser’s chair: ‘If that’s what you call a Doktorarbeid!? [dissertation], it was only about what I had and what I bought. I wasn't going to fill in those papers, so I threw them out. I chucked them in the fire.

This final statement, of having thrown the papers in the fire, was repeated twice. Another woman initially took the papers from me when I came to her front door, but after a quick read, her face filled with anger, and she tore up the questionnaire in front of me, looking triumphantly as if to say: “Well, what are you going to do now?”

Ihese were extreme reactions. More often people were simply defensive or in denial when I asked about the extraordinary meaning formerly attached to western goods. Once, when sitting in the cafe in the market square with the barkeeper, watching the shoppers leisurely picking out what they wanted from the fully laden vegetable, fruit and clothing stalls at the market, I asked out loud what the market scenery must have looked six years ago. The woman snapped at me: “Well, things have not changed that much you know!” Knowing that six years ago there had always been a lack of fresh fruit and vegetables and that the supply of affordable clothing could never meet the demand, her reaction was remarkable. Another time, I was walking down the street with Karl, a youth worker who lived in Rudolstadt, on our way to a restaurant. It was winter, and it got dark early. Despite the twilight, the mountains of rubbish that piled up everywhere on the pavements were still clearly visible. They contained entire kitchens and all the other things you could think of, from sofas to office chairs, televisions, fridges, and cots. I had seen this scene before. Every time, on the special days that large items of rubbish were to be collected, the pavements were piled high with a huge assortment of things, which I now knew to consist of old East German household goods (see figure 4.1 and 4.2, chapter 4). I got the impression that, with the arrival of the western consumer world, the residents of Rudolstadt collectively seized the opportunity to substitute as many of their possessions from former times as quickly as possible for new things. When I drew Karl’s attention to the mountains of rubbish, saying that it seemed as if people were simply throwing away everything that reminded them of the GDR, he denied this vehemently and immediately changed the subject.

In the restaurant, I tried again to talk about the piles of rubbish. But again, Karl's response was a denial: it perhaps seemed as if people had thrown away their old stuff because they had bought new things, but there were other reasons why the piles on the sidewalks were so high. He explained that in the days of the GDR, everybody kept all their belongings - because you never knew when you might still need them. Besides, the average rent had increased so much since the Wende that every square meter of people's living or storage space had become expensive, and lofts were simply cleared out more thoroughly than in the past. What is more, in the old days, people used to have to pay for rubbish to be collected - or not, and anyway he was not the slightest bit interested in this subject! Old or new things? What did it matter! Since the Wende, much more significant socio-economic changes had occurred in the GDR and he would rather discuss those, instead of talking about objects. When I reminded him that in the autumn of 1989 his compatriots had apparently attached great importance to consumer goods, he denied it. According to him, the Wende was welcomed by most people in the GDR simply for idealistic reasons. It had nothing to do with prosperity or anything like that.

Apparently my questions about the expectations and changes in consumption touched a sensitive nerve. People seemed to be ashamed because they had attached so much value to things that in retrospect were apparently not worth it. In this book, I present material to illustrate and make plausible the reason why this subject was so sensitive: it touched upon a fantasy that had been shattered, confronting East Germans with its traumatic breeding grounds.

This interpretation is to a large extent based on experiences as described above, and on my reflections on them. Reflection on the subjective nature of field research has been an important development in the history of anthropology. I find it remarkable, however, that the emotional reactions which the anthropologist’s presence evokes have been discussed so little as a source of anthropological knowledge and insight. In their writing, anthropologists hardly devote attention to the extent to which they were informed by the emotional interaction between themselves and their interlocutors. Even in the theoretical literature on anthropological knowledge production, most attention is paid to the potential pitfalls and problems during verbal contact, resulting in texts in which much theoretical significance is ascribed to the literal conversations between the anthropologist and his informants, in order to provide insight into the intersubjective nature of anthropological knowledge.’

Noticeably absent in the school of anthropology which inspired this is attention to the intra-emotional aspects of contact. However, the anthropological knowledge process gains momentum thanks to the words people speak to each other, but also emotionally. The anthropologist’s questioning presence evokes emotions in the people s/he attempts to engage with, and they affect the way people approach him/her - especially when s/he represents the former colonizing or western hegemonic powers. During my research in a German village in Argentina, I noticed that my questioning presence caused many people to react defensively and suspiciously: why had I chosen to do research precisely in that village? Why not in Argentina's one and only Dutch village?

In that situation the reactions were defensive and somewhat suspicious, but I can imagine numerous anthropologists must have noticed that the people they tried to talk with were trying to flatter them or demonstrating in other ways how they looked up to the world they came from, or the contrary: how they struggled with, hated and despised that world. The fact that this is barely mentioned in the anthropological literature is probably partly due to feelings of guilt, but I think it is also caused by another reason: the subject of emotions has long been taboo in anthropology.’ It is a blind spot, according to Charles Lindholm mainly because of

[The] vain disciplinary hope to be recognized as objective scientists of culture. To achieve this aim...the study of emotional life was left to clinical psychologists, who formulated pencil and paper tests that turned the analysis of personal emotional states into a matter of statistics.

There is, however, a rich tradition in psychology (albeit clinical) to reflect on the informative nature of mutually emotional contact between people. Initially developed by Freud, the recognition of transference and countertransference’s importance as informing processes is presently shared by all branches of clinical psychology. By explicitly paying attention not only to how the people being investigated react to his/her questioning presence, but also to the feelings they evoke in him/her, the anthropologist has an important source of information at his/her disposal.’ The suspicion I encountered among German emigrants in Argentina and how I experienced constantly having to justify my research were extraordinarily relevant sources of information there. During my stay in the former GDR, another response pattern gradually became discernable when I realized that people's reactions during conversations regularly made me feel as if I had to almost belittle myself: pretend not to know things, and emphasize that I too was insecure. Apart from numerous little incidents that gradually formed a pattern, I also noticed this when once I went to a disco with a couple of friends and was attracting more attention than I found comfortable. For my own sake as well as for my companions, I adapted my dancing accordingly. All in all, the way I compelled myself to behave was reminiscent of the analysis given a long time ago by anthropologist George Foster, who described the central, unarticulated role of envy in some societies."! He made it clear how people unwittingly model their behavior and conceal anything that could cause the slightest provocation, for fear of arousing envy in others. Foster quotes extensively from the work of anthropologist Gerardo Reichel- Dolmatoff. Those quotes read as a concise guide to what to do and how to act for visitors to the former GDR:

Ihe best... measurement an individual can take...consists in not appearing enviable in the first place and in pretending to be poor, ill, and already in trouble. One should, therefore, never boast of one’s health and property, never make an ostentatious display of one’s belongings or qualities, never let it be known that one possesses some advantage over others.”

In retrospect, I now realize that I also adapted my behavior in the above-described way, but for a long time during my stay in Rudolstadt, I was hardly aware of it. And in as much as I was aware, I would not have easily dared to use my adjustment and examples of it as information. Fortunately, I received verbal confirmation of what I had merely experienced up until then. The episode occurred when I was out one evening with Stefan, a friend from Rudolstadt, and Mattijs, a Dutch friend who was visiting me. When we, the two Dutch people, expressed our enthusiasm about the town and East German society, Stefan laughed, saying that we would never get used to life here. We were “too big” for Rudolstadt. I did not ask him what exactly he meant by that. I was too busy taking the edge off his remark - “too big? what nonsense!” - but if I had asked, it is doubtful that his explanation would have made the remark any clearer. Despite its generality, it said it all.

I was fortunate that Stefan’s remark put into words what I had only felt and for that reason found more difficult to use as information. The distinctly subjective insight and information his remark brought about - as a verbalization of innumerable other impressions - was highly relevant for it made manifest what otherwise remained unsaid (paraphrasing): In the implicit comparison with others who come across as self-confident, we tend to feel small and insignificant. The inkling that this comparison and the feelings of inferiority it aroused had somehow played a role was highly relevant. It colored the general representation of the ex-GDR as a warm and harmonious society in a new way. How exactly the overall positive representation related to the vague insights described above, and what role material culture and consumption played in this, will become clear throughout this book.

Partly due to the important role linguistic anthropologists have played in the last decennia’s critical reflections on anthropological knowledge production, much attention is paid to linguistic interaction and sources, suggesting (implicitly) that the emotional interaction between interviewer and interviewee is barely relevant. This book is informed in crucial ways by my experiences with and reflections on the emotional interaction between myself and my interlocutors, whereas the spoken word proved to be especially informative on account of the conspicuous gaps and silences.

As mentioned before, the general one-dimensional representations on life before and after 1989 had struck me. Albeit hindered by material shortages, life before then had generally been warm, harmonious and social, whereas the new era had brought glitter and outer shine, but this had come at an extremely high price - especially concerning mutual contact between people. Although this representation had triggered my curiosity and suspicion, I hardly received a concrete clue to show that this was a selection. I could of course have taken refuge in the opposing representation and simply confronted their story with the stereotypical western depicture of the GDR as a dictatorial society ruled by mutual distrust. This storyline has indeed informed the argument put forward in this book, but as I hope to make clear in the following chapters, this is not solely the result of my western perspective, but to an important extent due to the general and tell-tale silence pertaining to the dark sides of life in the GDR.

Material Culture and Tell-Tale One-Liners

The experiences in my contact with Rudolstadt’s residents and the significant selections they appeared to make regarding their past and present life were not the only aspects that supported my intuition. As mentioned before, there were two other sources that proved to be highly illuminating: the material world, and the incidental remarks that somehow struck me, even though I often did not quite understand why. Since material culture played such a central role in my research, it goes without saying that I was more focused on and paid more attention to the material surroundings than I would have done otherwise. I gathered a lot of information on the topic - listening to people’ stories, going through relevant journals, collecting the advertisements in my mailbox, interviewing designers, shopkeepers, salespeople, etc. But in spite of all this, I remained an outsider, without a real clue as to the significance the western object world had had for so many people before 1989.

Again, it was my own experiences with material culture that eventually filled the gap, revealing in an almost physical way the effects the western material world could have had on East Germans before it was actually there. One example of such an experience was shortly before Christmas 1993 when in the course of one day, I happened to visit toilets in both the east and the west of the country.

In the morning I visited a former LPG [agricultural production cooperative] to interview some women who had temporary jobs there as part of an employment scheme. The women were growing cut flowers - chrysanthemums, roses and such like. Because their jobs were financed by the state and they were not dependent on the free market for their turnover, the atmosphere in the greenhouse was relatively peaceful and not too hectic, but themood ofthe women was decidedly despondent. When I got to chatting to them, they told me how their lives had changed after 1989. Their stories were almost identical to those I had heard countless times during my stay in Rudolstadt; they were stories about loss.

The Wende had not been kind to any of the women. They were nearly all dismissed immediately. Being out of work for a long time meant that they had to scrimp and save to make ends meet. They felt useless, finished, lonely and left to their own devices until they were able to come work here. The majority of them had worked on a conveyor belt or operated machinery in large production companies during the time of the GDR, and from an early age they had belonged to a collective. The day-to-day tasks, the colleagues, and the social environment that went with that had always been a fundamental part of their lives, around which the rest of their daily chores were organized. And now? Once the two-year work provision scheme was finished, that would be the end. There was no hope of other work. As women, most of them a bit older and mothers, they might as well forget it.

The greenhouse where the flowers were grown was old and dilapidated, and nearly everything round about it was proverbially grim and grey, not helped by the chilly December weather. Mud, tractor tracks, trampled grass, a shaggy dog, and a scrapped Trabant dominated the scene. At some point, one of the women led me inside the building for the interview. Here, too, everything looked old and worn: large formica tables, a broken sink, bare walls, a cold stone floor, a single light bulb hanging from the ceiling and small, sagging metal stools. After the interview I went to the toilet. It was in a hallway that was as dark, dismal and cold as the rest of the place. The tiles on the wall were faded and cracked, the hook to shut the door was hanging loose, and under the door was an open space so that you could see other people’ feet. The toilet seat was cold , the water I washed my hands in was cold, and the towel was cold and clammy.

Besides being cold and dilapidated, I recognized the remains of an idealistic project in the place's rigid and sparse furnishings. By now, I knew enough about the history of East Germany's material culture to see how the design of this washroom represented a number of core values that had characterized the optimism with which East German designers had tried to recreate war-shattered eastern Germany. The no-frills, unadorned material things in this washroom represented some of the country’s central socialist slogans (analyzed in more detail in chapter three), such as “lets produce more efficiently,’ “let's create a more honest world,’ and “we no longer need decorations that do not match our ideals.” Dilapidated and cracked, the washroom exemplified the ultimate downfall of a once well-intentioned attempt to build up a future of mutual equality. The fine-sounding ideas and slogans were faded and worn. Driving back from my visit to the LPG, I felt numb.

After that interview, I left to return to the Netherlands to pick up some things. By late afternoon, I was driving through dusky villages in West Germany, brightened with Christmas street lights. A warm glow radiated from the shops and houses. It was a typical West European scene, full of traditional coziness and commercialized would-be romanticism, a scene that I would normally not have found attractive at all. On this occasion, however, its warmth radiated towards me. The shops appeared cozy and warm, everything looked equally inviting, and even from the front seat of my car, I could imagine the smell of Christmas baking.