Tatjana Mischke is a bookseller in Friedrichshain. She sells Dirk Oschmann’s bestseller – to a specific group of readers.
The bookseller Tatjana Mischke in her shop in Berlin-FriedrichshainMarkus Wächter/Berliner Zeitung
The book “The East: A West German Invention” by Dirk Oschmann, a literature professor from Leipzig, became a bestseller immediately after its publication. And opens up a new debate about East German identity. does it even exist? What makes her special? Do people hide that they come from the East? Are you proud of it? The Berliner Zeitung lets people with East German biographies have their say. Would you also like to report on your experience? We look forward to letters to leserbriefe@berliner-zeitung.de
Sometimes customers stand in my bookstore and can’t decide for a long time. Or they tell me right away that they want to give away a book but don’t know what to take. I then ask: Is the person you want to give presents socialized in the East or in the West? Some then say that it doesn’t matter at all, but if I recommend a book related to the East, they don’t want it. Or at some point they say: please don’t do so much GDR stuff. I don’t ask the question maliciously, but curiously. She saves me a little work.
I was already working here in the Franz Mehring bookstore on Frankfurter Allee before reunification, back then as a student assistant, and stayed afterwards. The years after the fall of the Wall were good years. The GDR was a reading country, as a bookseller you sat at the source and came across coveted books. Now all readers could satisfy their pent-up demand, finally read the entire world literature. The interest was huge. That lasted about five years, then it calmed down, most of it was probably caught up.
At the moment, people come every day and ask about Dirk Oschmann’s book. A year ago I read his article on the subject of the East in the FAZ, which I remembered very well. I didn’t know there was another book coming. I would have thought you didn’t need another book about the East, but obviously you do. People ask very offensively about the book, especially older people, and definitely all GDR socialized – I know my customers and I can still recognize where someone comes from. I believe that our sensitivities still do not interest the West. What they would call it.
Tatjana Mischke worked in a bookstore even before reunification and describes the GDR as a “reading country”.Markus Wächter/Berliner Zeitung
Did you also have pharmacies in the GDR?
West Germans always have this Saxon with a fishing hat in mind when they think of East Germans. As a Berliner, of course, that annoys me. When I say that I’m from Berlin, people always ask me to this day. From where exactly in Berlin? Which part of town? I understand if some people prefer not to identify themselves as East Germans. One is constantly reduced to clichés. And then this questioning always begins, how we lived. I’ve even been asked if we had pharmacies in the GDR. pharmacies! In recent years, however, the questioning has decreased somewhat, maybe something will change after all.
In any case, I always said where I came from if someone wanted to know. It’s my socialization, it’s neither good nor bad, it just is. I can’t really imagine life anywhere other than in East Berlin. Only an exchange of colleagues with a bookstore really deep in the west, I would have liked to experience that. A young colleague has started with us who comes from Bavaria, from a very small village, it’s a completely different world, but not because it’s in the West, I would say.
East Germans cannot form networks
Of course, I can also understand the anger that drives Dirk Oschmann. East Germans do not occupy management positions at universities and are underrepresented everywhere else. This is constantly discussed, but it does not change. East Germans have worked until they drop for the past thirty years. If they had work. When did our people go on vacation? But we still lack the networks. I think there was an attempt by younger people to change that, to form their own network, but East Germans still can’t really do that. Maybe that will change with the next generation.
We also sell antiquarian books in the bookstore, from the GDR and from even earlier times. Many are especially happy about the children’s literature from the GDR. There were really nice books for children. But GDR literature is also in demand. Most recently Maxie Wander and Brigitte Reimann. I recommend it very often to young women. Wander and Reimann set an example, very self-determined, they took what they wanted. It is precisely these female authors who fit back into the times.
Tatjana Mischke, born in East Berlin, is the owner of the Franz Mehring bookstore and antiquarian bookshop at Frankfurter Allee 65.
Recorded by Wiebke Hollersen