Domestic Disputes: Examining Discourses of Home and Property in the Former East Germany by Necia Chronister

Abstract

Reviewed by: Domestic Disputes: Examining Discourses of Home and Property in the Former East Germany by Necia Chronister Nicole G. Burgoyne Domestic Disputes: Examining Discourses of Home and Property in the Former East Germany. By Necia Chronister. Berlin: De Gruyter, 2021. Pp. x + 223. Cloth $99.99. ISBN 978-3-11-067335-7. In a new monograph entitled Domestic Disputes, Necia Chronister offers a diverse but deep study of property relations in the former East Germany of the 1990s and early 2000s. Her primary sources range from made-for-television and theatrical films to a short story and novels. The overarching theoretical constellations of the monograph are issues of Heimat and materiality; however, her exploration of the legal basis of property conflicts in the early years of reunification, as well as her precision in defining terms such as "neoliberalism" (3), "deterritorialization" (103), and "crises of masculinity" (150) in the context of her primary sources are equally helpful. The intricacies of legal disputes regarding property in East Germany, which Chronister details in her first chapter, introduced competing claims of those expropriated by the Nazis and those whom post-Socialist privatization of East German property put at a disadvantage. The history of Nazi appropriations of property mentioned above does not impact every story discussed in this monograph, yet its centrality to the texts [End Page 197] in chapter 6 of Chronister's work demonstrates that it is not a topic that has faded by the 1990s. Chronister also introduces newspaper narratives depicting the sheer number of competing claims on individual homes in the former East, in addition to the complications of establishing property ownership, such as poor records from the period of Soviet occupation and the GDR, as well as historical idiosyncrasies like changing street names. In this context, she emphasizes the informative aim of the made-for-television films she introduces in chapters 2 and 3. Chronister examines two of six made-for-television films produced by the East German DEFA studio, commissioned by a West German television channel in a gesture towards promoting reunification. In addition to portraying both sides of property disputes between Westerners and Easterners, Chronister writes that the films, which debuted in 1991 and 1992, "imparted key policy information to the German viewing audience of the time" (39). One trope that unites films made by DEFA and those made by others such as Uta Stöckl's The Same Old Song is the narrative argument that working to maintain a property lends its inhabitants credibility. Chronister analyzes this topos with the theory of intra-activity (13). In her analysis of two further films in chapter 3, Chronister makes the most direct argument in the monograph concerning neoliberalism: "Whereas The Brocken concludes with the spread of the market into every facet of life on the island of Rügen while simultaneously positing that personal relationships and a peaceful home life can thrive there, Buck's road comedy [No More Mr. Nice Guy] imagines a rather utopian space at its conclusion that lies outside of capitalism's reach" (97). Chronister emphasizes the uncertainty regarding the scope of neoliberalism that is visible in theoretical discussion of the term and the primary source material she has surveyed. A decisive strength of Chronister's monograph is the persuasive quality of her focus on property relations and the space of a home in all eleven of the fictional stories under consideration. As elaborated above, the films specifically addressed competing claims between Easterners and Westerners on properties with homes. In most of the prose texts covered, similar situations of taking possession of property and the dynamics of home life make contemporary gender roles of central importance. For example, in a chapter contrasting Judith Hermann's short story "Summer House, Later" (1999) with her novel Where Love Begins (2014), Chronister offers important nuance to topoi of the intervening time: "The dissolving binaries of place as thematized in 'Summerhouse, Later' have thus resulted in an unsettling sense of dislocation in Where Love Begins, and the sexual and gender fluidity at stake in 'Summerhouse, Later' has given way in Where Love Begins to heteronormative gender relations and reproductive sex" (101). Chronister utilizes the normativity of the later...