So hot is “Ost,” in fact, that trendy Berliners have taken to throwing so-called East parties. Guests dressed in the blue shirts of the former Communist Youth Organization cavort in halls bedecked with GDR flags. They quaff Rotkppchen, or Little Red Riding Hood, a sparkling wine produced by one of the few East German companies to survive the transition to capitalism, and they dance to the tunes of a bygone era. If only the band were named Erich and the Jackbooters, after Herr Honecker, the last East German dictator.
The star in this season of silliness is a new movie, currently breaking German box-office records. “Goodbye Lenin!” directed by Wolfgang Becker, is the story of a son’s love for his mother, told against the backdrop of the toppling of the wall. The mother, a devout communist, suffers a heart attack upon seeing her son beaten by the police during an antigovernment protest rally in the autumn of 1989. She falls into a coma and remains unconscious as Germany reunites, whereupon she awakes. Fearing that the shock of the new political reality might prove fatal, the son opts instead to pretend that life remains as she knew it under the GDR, all within the confines of her home.
Since its release in February, more than 5 million Germans have seen “Goodbye Lenin!” There was even a special screening for the German Parliament. Audiences delight at the son’s ingenuity in re-creating a vanished world. In one scene he arranges for a group of children, dressed up in the uniforms of the Young Pioneers, to sing official communist songs at his mother’s birthday party. In another he stuffs Dutch pickles into old jars bearing official GDR labels and pours Coca-Cola into old East German Club-Cola bottles. When the mother notices a large advertisement for Coke outside her window and seems perplexed that there are more Opels in the streets than sputtering Trabants, the official people’s car of the East, her son offers an explanation worthy of the former Iraqi misinformation minister, Mohammed Saeed al-Sahaf. In the face of growing disenchantment with capitalism in the West, he tells her, East Germany has opened its borders to those seeking exile. His inspired fabrications are confirmed each evening by the television news program “Aktuelle Kamera,” compiled by the son with the help of a friend and historical photographs of Honecker and his party chiefs. In this film version of the turning point in German history, the wall does indeed fall–thanks to the collapse of the West.
Katrina Suss, who plays the movie’s heroine, thinks “Goodbye Lenin!” would not have been the success five years ago that it is today. Memories of the old regime were then too painful. But times have changed, and young east Germans, in particular, are less haunted by history. As for “Wessies,” they think commie kitsch is cool. Elke Matz sees evidence every day. She has opened a shop in a prefab east Berlin building that once housed an In-tershop–a communist-era hard-currency –store catering mainly to the moneyed class of communist officialdom known as the nomenklatura. Since “Goodbye Lenin!” hit theaters, tourists from across the country have flocked to her store to snap up clunky GDR toys, shabby housewares and as-sorted commie paraphernalia–such as the banner of East German and Polish flags joined by the slogan Klassenbruder–Waffenbruder, or “Brothers in Class, Brothers in Arms.” Due to popular demand, she’s planning to open shops in several other cities, backed by West German investors.
Meanwhile, Rainer Kar-sten has proudly opened a pair of stores in Berlin devoted entirely to GDR memorabilia. Fittingly, it’s located in the headquarters of the postcommunist Party of Democratic Socialism, smack in the heart of the capital. According to Karsten, customers seek more than souvenirs; they want to buy tried-and-true products made in East Germany, especially those manufactured by companies that survived the Iron Curtain. In the first years after the fall, east Germans wanted only to buy from the West, Kar-sten says. Now he’s got a new market-ing slogan: Kost der Ost, “Test the East.” There’s no doubt that Karsten’s clerks know their pitch. “Authentic,” one says with a smile to a prospective buy-er fingering an East German flag priced at ¤10. “It’s one of the last of its kind.”
Rico Heinzig, a Berlin tour operator, echoes the sentiment. His gig is taking tourists and locals alike for spins around town in a smoke-belching “Trabi,” as the old Trabants are fondly called. The cars aren’t much more powerful (or bigger) than a lawn mower. But his clients are only too happy to pay ¤20 for the thrill of a 90-minute ride at racing speeds of 30 kilometers per hour, knees pressed to chin within the confines of a pastel-colored plastic jalopy smelling of exhaust and burned rubber. Mail-order companies like OssiVersand, in Halle, are also thriving. Through the company’s catalog, customers can order authentic sausage from the Harz Mountains, popular in Honecker’s day, and handmade wooden GDR Christmas ornaments.
The company with the most ambitious Ostalgia plans, though, is Berlin’s Massine Productions, which is planning to open the GDR amusement park. To enter, visitors will be required to exchange their Western currency for vintage Ostmarks, cross the border at a guarded checkpoint and listen to a lecture on GDR history. Art historian Susanne Reich, who’s helping plan the park, says it won’t be a communist Disneyland but, rather, “a serious re-creation of everyday life in East Germany.” It may not be neces-sary to hire staff willing to dress up in GDR uniforms. Given the recent wave of Ostalgia, volunteers are likely to jump at the chance–if only to be entitled to yell at “Wessi” tourists.
