The Wall in My Backyard: East German Women in Transition

Abstract

With the fall of the Berlin Wall in November 1989 and German unification less than a year later, East Germany entered a period of radical change. In this collection of interviews, eighteen East German women describe the excitement, chaos, and frustration of this transitional period. The interviewees discuss candidly the problems they have faced as women in the German Democratic Republic (GDR) and in the new Germany. Although the East German government proclaimed equal rights for men and women and promoted women in the dual role of worker and mother, the interviewees often take issue with those policies. The perspectives contained here are as diverse as the women who voice them. Ranging in age from twenty to sixty-nine, the women work at a variety of occupations, including filmmaker, mental health therapist, water safety instructor, university professor, housekeeper, writer, and representative to Parliament. In telling their stories, they present a wide range of experience that offers the reader a multidimensional view of life in the former GDR. The interviews challenge conventional notions about what East German women gained under socialism as well as what they lost after unification. The book shows that many women are successfully negotiating the obstacles of the transition, taking responsibility for their lives in ways that were not possible in the GDR.