After the Wall (2002)
Jana Hensel

   I was born in France in 1995. 

   When you are born in France in 1995, you get taught in school very superficially about the history of Germany. 

   You learn a bit about what preceded the Great War, you learn in depth about the atrocities committed during the World Wars, you learn a lot about the Holocaust, and you learn about the partition of Germany : East/West, West were the good guys, and they won in the end. Done. Next chapter will be looking at the positive aspects of colonization (no joke).

   When we spent some -too little- time in Germany, I decided that I maybe wanted to learn a bit more about the place. After all, Germany didn’t pop-up out of the blue for WWI, and there must be more things to say about a Country, a people with their culture, customs, language, that got separated for nearly half a century.

   So I looked for something with a focus on reunification. Hey, you have to start somewhere.

   To my surprise, I learned that this history of Germany was also kind of unknown over there as well. Somewhat covered, put under the rug, not talked about.

   This book is about the history of German reunification. More precisely, about some kind of forgotten history of German reunification. 

   Jana Hensel was born in the GDR - East Germany- in 1976. She is what would give the original name to this book, a Zonenkinder : a child of the Zone, of the East. She lived a small part of her life, with her child’s eyes, under the regime that lost. She then lived the reunification, as a young teenager, and she lived most of her life in Germany since then.

   When she wrote this book in 2002, it was to tell her story, give her perspective, and the one of millions of people, on a subject she felt was ignored with a perspective she felt was negated.

   She wants to tell the human stories of the GDR. How people lived it, how people lived after it fell. Especially kids, and after the wall fell, teenager, young adults, that were new to the Western World yet expected to navigate through it and more, be thankful and recognizant.

   As she says, « places like St Nicholas Church as the site of the Monday Rallies or the Stasi Museum were not part of our childhood. They are symbols of its ending — of the demise of the GDR. ». « After the Wall, we soon forgot what everyday life in the GDR was like, with all its unheroic moments and ordinary days. We repressed our actual experiences and replaced them with a series of strange, larger-than-life anecdotes that didn’t really have anything to do with what our lives had been like. The fact that we began exchanging such stories amongst ourselves shows how much we had internalized the West German take on our history. We had forgotten how to tell our own life stories in our own way, instead adopting an alien tone and perspective. »

   What was told to East-Germans about their own history and experiences was, according to Hensel, shaped by the West-German perspective. They had to say what West-Germans wanted to hear about the GDR, even when it didn’t compute with their actual experiences.

   In the beginning of the book, Hensel explains she finds herself alien to the very physical places where she used to live as a kid. She didn’t recognize the streets that took over in the 1990’s, she missed the street names that got replaced with the one of the new Shopping centers. 

   This feeling of alienation to change you didn’t have an impact on, that I think is quite universal, must be quite drastic for this generation of people that lived through the changes of reunification. « All of the stations of my childhood had disappeared or been drastically made over. Our school cafeteria, a huge concrete block, had been torn down to make room for a parking lot. The landfill behind the apartment complex, where we’d ridden our bikes and constructed play houses, had been cleared to make way for a fitness center. Home was a place we only knew for a short time. »

   Acting as a glimpse into the GDR, this book also works as a fantastic data-base into life in the East, not about numbers and big concepts, but about the small things, that matter to normal people. 

   The relationship between athletes and stardom. The Young Pioneers’ camps & activities for the youth. The kind of gifts people would exchange. What kind of holidays people would take. The ice cream only flavor available. This kind of things.

   East-Germans had to adapt to the newly unified Germany, not without difficulties for many, yet they had to be thankful, to show willingness to be part of this new system. This created much tensions, especially amongst the older generations that lived most if not all their lives under the GDR. Hensel speaks to this regard about her parents, her friends parents, and the recurring scenes of nostalgia at family dinners.

   « ’’ We’ve been very lucky, really, ‘’ my parents would say. (…) Especially pleasing was the man-made lake at the old mine, which was beginning to fill with water. No sir, our parents would say with a smile, they had no reason to complain, but…There was always a ‘’ but ‘’. It was a bit of shame, Jenny’s father would say softly after a brief pause, that her mother, who had earned a steady income as a book illustrator, was now out of a job (…). Things were great today, he would continue — for young people. (…) And to be honest, if they had known what was coming, they might have stayed at home on Monday evenings in the Fall of 1989. They hadn’t marched through the streets for the way things were now. »

   This is not only understandable in the context, but also very cleverly put in contrast to the incomprehension, mixed with ignorance of their history, quasi-denying East-German testimonies, she would experience coming from West-Germans when in similar situations in their environment. 

« How great things looked in the East, Jonathan’s parents would say, as if to praise Jenny. The improvements were evident before you even left the Autobahn. The potholes were gone; so, too, were those unattractive sausage and beer kiosks on the sidewalks. They could still remember what it was like the last time they had come for a visit. Everything used to stink of coal, the fumes from the old East German cars had clogged the air, and you couldn’t find a decent Italian restaurant anywhere. Everything had turned out just fine, Jonathan’s father would sigh, adding that he didn’t mind paying extra taxes as long as you could see the improvements. »

   This inability of Germany’s two sides to understand and speak to each other can be felt throughout the whole book. 

   But this is not a book about how everything was great in the GDR either, far from it. Jana Hensel is not hiding her criticism of the old regime. 

   She is aware of its problems, and is actually showing them in their full light, with concrete day-to-day life examples that feel real, and therefore are quite effective. She speaks about how East-German parents would go on « veritable expeditions to satisfy their tiniest materials wants », how they would knit themselves sweaters to look like what they saw in smuggled Western catalogues...

   Yet she always writes in a very nuanced way. She recognizes that lack of goods wasn’t great in the GDR, but simultaneously sees that their modern access to consumerism created a deplorable cultural shift with their parents that grew-up and lived in a World where this wasn’t a possibility. 

   And these nuances are there the whole book. It’s a pleasure to read someone writing with nuances.

   A great read.