An oppressive hell in which everyone was spied on as told in the film ‘The Lives of Others’ or a soft ‘Kommode Diktatur’ as Günter Grass defined it? 34 years after German reunification, it is as if the faint memory of East Germany, which had already been an enigma for Western public opinion during its lifetime, had remained buried under the rubble of the Wall. Now in a book by Claudio Guidi, a journalist and historian from Abruzzo specializing in the French and Prussian eighteenth century, the story of a society deprived of freedom of the press and speech, but also advanced in terms of social achievements.
“The true story of the DDR”, 600 pages full of curiosities, anecdotes and unpublished quotes, will be available on Amazon from Monday 11 November. It describes a totalitarian society with major economic problems in which, however, equal rights and wages between men and women were guaranteed, free and compulsory education up to the age of 18 had already been guaranteed since 1949, and free nursery schools for every child. The school system, Guidi underlines, was of a very high level to the point that in 1983 it was copied by Finland which has since excelled with its students in European tests.
In his book destined to provoke discussion, like any self-respecting essay, Guidi shows us the other side of a regime that has always been perceived as the most oppressive among those behind the Soviet curtain. In the GDR, he says, abortion was free and free, holidays were paid for by the union and divorce within two months without expenses, or lawyer, or alimony, and of the farmers’ eight-hour day with two-week holidays. With the addition of a pension for Jews persecuted by the Nazis equal to a full salary. Among the rights guaranteed by the Constitution since 7 October 1949 is equality between legitimate and illegitimate children, for which in Italy we will have to wait until 2012.
Conscientious objection was also recognized by East Berlin as early as 1964, with objectors serving as Bausoldaten, construction soldiers, who wore a shovel on their uniform insignia as a sign of recognition. The working day was also 8 hours for the farmers of the collectivised lands, who enjoyed two weeks of holidays at the seaside or in the mountains with their families, paid by the union like all other workers. In the volume there is no shortage of references to the many shadows of that country, pleasant details, such as that ofomnipresent Stasi who timed the duration of sexual intercourse in the hotel room of the ice skater Katarina Witt, one of which took place “from 8.00 pm to 8.07 pm”.
In addition to a detailed ‘social’ overview of life under the communist regime, which offers ideas for understanding the phenomenon of ‘Ostalgie’, the ‘nostalgia for the East’ that sometimes emerges in the eastern Lander, Guidi offers some background on the birth and end of the GDR. In particular, he argues that it was Konrad Adenauer who wanted the division of Germany despite the fact that Stalin, as late as 1952, had said he was open to reunification in a liberal-democratic system as long as demilitarization and neutrality were guaranteed.
On the reunification of 1990, the West takes control of all the economic and cultural structures of the defunct East Germany, with the dismantling of the industrial (over 8 thousand factories closed) and cultural fabric. Incredibly, even the type of language used by public officials from the West, who came to take control of all the administrations of the East, underlines the aspect of what Grass always defined as a ‘Kolonisierung’, a colonization. In addition to the salary, an additional allowance was in fact granted, immediately renamed Buschzulage, the savannah allowance, like that granted by the Kaiser to the soldiers and officials who went to colonize the African colonies of Togo,