Children in West Berlin called me “Ossi-Schwein”

2023-10-06 12:25:34

On German Unity Day, I ask myself where we are 34 years after the fall of reunification. After all, unity came as quickly as it did unexpectedly. In the fall of 1989, GDR citizens still wanted reforms, in November they streamed to the West and were welcomed with champagne and cheers, and in October 1990 the “quick glue unit” arrived.

I was a child. For me, the West seemed like a birthday and Christmas together: When the Berlin Wall fell, strangers handed me Western chocolate and chewing gum. A flower seller gave me roses and his wife gave me a “Schwigchen Dick” record.

I still have the record to this day. A year later, my birthday and Christmas were forgotten. I could no longer see the chocolate and chewing gum, and I knew the record in my sleep. I was missing my GDR fairy tale plates, my favorite licorice and the “flimmer hour”. It was only when they were gone that I became fond of them. That’s how it was for many people.

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Because it was only with the fall of the GDR that we became “Ossis” – no matter how old, the GDR, the reunification and post-reunification periods shape our lives. A historical privilege, one might think. Who else has such a wealth of experience?

But back then, kids in West Berlin shouted “Ossi-Schwein” at me. After that I didn’t want to go to the West anymore. Today I meet East Germans of the same age and we share similar experiences. The post-reunification period in particular influenced us. There were new schools, new values ​​and parents who wanted to understand the new system. They were looking for work, orientation and social security. I looked for answers: Why, for example, was history in class suddenly so different than before the fall of communism? Wasn’t history just what happened? Of course she wasn’t. History legitimizes the social present. That means it is always a question of perspective.

I didn’t understand it at the time. I wanted my licorice and the “flicker hour” back – unit or not. Ultimately, she politically cobbled together what had grown in two social systems. She erased the GDR and rewrote history. At the same time, German unity inspired fantasies around the world. Democracy, progress and construction should come. They came. There was also structural poverty, mass unemployment and social decline – in the East. Little to nothing changed in the West.

Nice memories of the turning point

Nevertheless, the memories of the autumn change are beautiful: people who write history because nothing is set in stone. Strangers lying in each other’s arms, full of tears – today that’s only possible in football. This is also why the transition period is politically popular.

Many use it for their own purposes: the AfD is trying to attract votes with slogans like “Complete the turnaround,” the Left sees the future of tomorrow in the potential for reform back then, and the CDU is relying on the legacy of its successful Chancellor Helmut Kohl. In addition, individual would-be stars in the intellectual book heaven conjure up resistance against Corona, GEZ and the Father State as a fight in the spirit of 1989.

So much historical revision makes my stomach churn – almost like too much Western chocolate. Because the exploitation of the goals and work of back then to satisfy the ego of today is tragic, and I had enough of rewriting history even as a child.