Ostalgie's Not What It Used to Be: The German Television GDR Craze of 2003

Abstract

Throughout these shows, a value system is constructed that runs counter to the apparent, stated aim of normalizing the everyday experience of eastern Germans. GDR consumer goods are brought into the mainstream, only to be reconfined to the periphery as "strange" and nonwestern. In so doing, the programs invite former GDR citizens to join a club of western German consumers and to laugh along with them at their bizarre, ridiculous past. Consequently, while Ostalgie might not be what it used to be, the power dynamic between east and west remains the same. In these shows the GDR is no longer presented as a "Stasi state." Instead, through Ostalgie, it becomes a world of curious consumer products. Nevertheless, even if the gasps of horror and disapproval of earlier representations are replaced now by curiosity and amusement, these recent television shows still furnish us with a representation of the east from which the Federal Republic can distance itself, thereby finding further validation as the better German state (which of course it is). But it is also a state that, for many indignant eastern Germans at least, still fails to engage honestly and in a differentiated manner with their preunification experience.