BER_F_01 Cohesion and Resentment in Times of Crisis: Memories of the Wende and Post-Wende in East-West Comparison

Objectives / Research Questions

Biographical stories about the time of the fall of the Berlin Wall and the post-reunification period are caught between experiences of self-empowerment and the successful struggle to shape society and experiences of loss of solidarity and helplessness in the face of often self-chosen powers as well as uninhibited nationalism and racism.

In conjunction with the transfer project BER_T_01, this research project builds on memories of upheaval. They are to be examined with regard to ideas of cohesion and the relationship between the experience of crisis and the emergence of resentment: Which narratives of creating or eroding cohesion determine the memory of the period of transition and post-reunification? What forms of in- and exclusion emerge in these narratives? The layout as an East-West comparison is intended to make visible similarities and differences between the respective perspectives.

A further focus of the project is the investigation of a case study. Based on the controversies surrounding the privatization and closure of the Bischofferode potash plant in 1993, the dynamics of the period of reunification and post-reunification will be reconstructed in an exemplary fashion, and the question of their long-term effects will be raised: What reference to the present does the remembering make when they talk today about the upheavals and (labour) struggles of the period of transition and post-reunification? How are the protagonists of that time located in today's Germany and in the globalized world?

Thematic reference to social cohesion

In the German Democratic Republic (GDR), the period of transition between the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989 and the Volkskammerelections in 1990 was for many associated with the euphoria of finally being able to shape society themselves – in the hope of a third way between capitalism and real socialism. The post-reunification period, on the other hand, was often perceived as a time of crisis and upheaval in which a loss of political and social orientation, unemployment, the feeling of being superfluous, and the rise of nationalism and racism were all present. This gave rise to different and sometimes contradictory ideas about cohesion. There was widespread agreement regarding a fundamental distrust in institutions, which was primarily due to the Stasi and the Treuhand. Using the interwoven categories of participation and belonging, identity, work, and inclusion and exclusion, the project analyses the contradiction between the democratic self-confidence of the period of transition and the democratic distance diagnosed in the East today.

The question of cohesion also arose anew in the western part of the new republic after 1990 – in view of the unexpected national unity that was not at all desired or welcomed by everyone and of the social, political, and cultural differences between the East and the West. The fact that racist and nationalist resentments are still presented today primarily as an East German phenomenon is a clear symptom of the semantics of inclusion and exclusion that continue to run along the former border. However, the fact that most West Germans hardly perceived the period of the Wende and the post-Wende as an individually drastic change also speaks to the persistence of ideas of cohesion that remain oriented on the old Federal Republic of Germany.

The project thus examines notions of cohesion along the categories of (de)solidarization, feelings and semantics of belonging, and institutional trust in economic, social, and cultural terms. It makes a contribution that is, above all, comparative-contextualized and empirical-analytical. It investigates the significance of memories during the time of the fall of the Berlin Wall and the post-reunification period as a factor in the creation or erosion of cohesion. The discursive frameworks of political culture, the affective dimension of cohesion, and relationships and practices at the micro-level (labour struggles) will be discussed.