Wolfgang Jöhling: A GDR Citizen in the ‘Promised Land’ of Poland

Abstract

After World War II both Poland and the German Democratic Republic became members of the so-called socialist camp, but there were considerable differences between the two states. In the 1970s, the GDR, compared with Poland, had a higher material standard of living, but its citizens were subjected to intense political invigilation and could not travel abroad, especially outside the Eastern bloc. In Poland of the 1970s, the political climate was on the whole more liberal and its citizens had the possibility of travel to the West. The text looks at the life story of Wolfgang Johling (born 1944), a graduate of Slavonic Studies at Leipzig University and an employee of the East German Ministry of Culture, who (under the circumstances) had a fairly good job which included travel to socialist countries and meeting interesting people from the sphere of the arts. He was also a gay person living in a ‘glass closet’ and having begun a steady, closeted relationship with a young Polish medical doctor, decided to move permanently to the other country, obtained Polish nationality and developed a second professional career there. The aim is to consider the multifarious aspects of a gay (queer) life in two socialist countries and put forward the question if the decade of the 1970s in Poland could—in a sense—be regarded as ‘the golden age for queers’ in the socialist camp.