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Pre/Post Reunification of Germany | ||
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| Via Diva Diglot Senior Member Russian Federation last.fm/user/viadivaRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 4044 days ago 1109 posts - 1427 votes  Speaks: Russian*, English Studies: German, Italian, French, Swedish, Esperanto, Czech, Greek | Message 17 of 39 06 September 2014 at 2:09pm | IP Logged | |||||
It sounds like they're not people with some rights at all. I can speak for the situation in Russia, which might have been even worse that that of DDR. I agree that to demand "bring back the USSR" is somewhat wrong, but there were things that now are worse. Lots of plants in my industrial city stopped their work because Moscow bought them and then just stopped developing them or solving the problems. Our villages are not that effective now, people leave them for cities and get in the vicious circle - overcrowding cities and emptying villages. This is not that dramatic as I write, but it will be soon. Plus there weren't such a big flow of guest workers, now Moscow is full of them and the government doesn't care about the unemployment among the people with actual Russian citizenship. Do I need to mention that the immigration often is either illegal or people were just let through without thorough check-up? Low IQ or "bad" education don't mean that people should suffer. Like I have mentioned, DW has examples, when Germans from East say about the prices rising dramatically, losing the land to work on and so on. Yes, they were used to work collectively and now they have to compete against each other. Not everyone can stand it. I could continue, but if you stand up for democracy, you have at least to be aware that there are people that don't like every single change after "dictatorship". If late USSR and DDR are dictatorships, how to call the Third Reich and Stalin time in USSR? 2 persons have voted this message useful | ||||||
| Josquin Heptaglot Senior Member Germany Joined 4654 days ago 2266 posts - 3992 votes Speaks: German*, English, French, Latin, Italian, Russian, Swedish Studies: Japanese, Irish, Portuguese, Persian | Message 18 of 39 06 September 2014 at 2:44pm | IP Logged | |||||
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@Cavesa: Yes, of course there was envy in East Germany, but I think because important goods often were missing, people had to cooperate more and help each other. I think that's the main argument of the "Ostalgie" proponents. Today, people don't depend that much on each other any more, so they are perceived as more selfish.
And yes, of course party officials had a totally different life style than the rest of the population. This reduced the whole idea of socialism to absurdity. It's fascinating to see documentaries about Erich Honecker's houses. He had everything the majority of his subjects could only dream of. So, envy would often concentrate on party officials and "the West". I agree that "Ostalgie" and its counterpart neo-Nazism are more widespread among uneducated and poor people, because they need to find a culprit for their unfavourable living conditions. That also used to be a stereotype of East Germans among West Germans: They were supposed to only complain without being proactive. Of course, that's only a stereotype, but I guess this kind of attitude was favoured by everyday life in a socialist regime. People in charge decided and ordinary people had to swallow it. Your job, your flat, your pension - all was taken care of as long as you acted along the policies of the Socialist Party. So, in fact, people were prevented from being proactive and taking charge of their own lives, which was an important reason for many people to escape the DDR. I might add that I haven't experienced living in the DDR myself, but both my mother and my father escaped from there with their parents in 1953 and I have many relatives who stayed there, so I know of the living conditions from first-hand accounts. @ViaDiva: You bring up interesting points and of course people who are lost in today's society should be taken care of. As I said, some people can't cope with the modern world. They didn't learn how to be proactive and how to compete, so they have a hard time in a capitalistic economy. But you won't solve this problem by complaining about change. That's like complaining about the weather. There are more points in your post that I'd like to address, but unfortunately that would result in a political discussion, which is not allowed here. Edited by Josquin on 06 September 2014 at 3:00pm 2 persons have voted this message useful | ||||||
| Bao Diglot Senior Member Germany tinyurl.com/pe4kqe5 Joined 5576 days ago 2256 posts - 4046 votes Speaks: German*, English Studies: French, Spanish, Japanese, Mandarin | Message 19 of 39 06 September 2014 at 3:55pm | IP Logged | |||||
Well, of course they'd look new, because they *are* new in comparision to the infrastructure of many other cities. I moved to Dresden from Freiburg i. Br., and I've been in many of the bigger cities in the south and west of Germany. While a lot of the infrastructure in Dresden, and many of the houses, look really nice and newly redone - if you venture a bit outside of the usual tourist zones and the 'young alternative life' quarter you can see houses that are being renovated (or empty shells) and the odd house that hasn't been made pretty. You can see how it used to be. While walking around the city I realized that while they have Ampelmännchen pedestrian crossing signs everywhere, they have several different systems of buttons to call the traffic light to switch, and those are connected to different systems of telling the pedestrian that the signal will change. All of them are newer systems, and it makes me think the traffic lights were fixed in different stages with the cheapest option available at that time. There are also many concrete lamp posts in which large flakes of concrete came off, the armour inside is rusty, and which are only held together by steel bands around the broken area. Such things surprised me a bit, because I compare cities mostly to Freiburg and Wuppertal, and even though in Wuppertal many streets in the inner city are dirty I don't remember street lights that looked like they would break apart the next minute. In the smaller cities around it's much more obvious, though. In Meißen, for example, there are many empty storefronts in the inner city. (Yes, most of the tourists only come as far as Dresden, or even Berlin, to buy Meißner Porzellan.) [What surprised me most was where Kassel got the money from to have all those nice buildings and the sparkly streets. (I mean, do they fly in international tourists for their bling shopping malls?)] As for how things were in the GDR ... most people I talk to say that some things were better, and other things were worse. That seems to be the publicly accepted version. Ostalgie also seems to be a lot about token memories, things that are a bit quirky when you look at them now, and not so much about daily life back then. I also heard somewhere that our public TV stations pay a lot of attention to avoid rerunning programs that remind people of the differences that existed and the propaganda that was spread on both sides. Edited by Bao on 06 September 2014 at 3:59pm 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| Serpent Octoglot Senior Member Russian Federation serpent-849.livejour Joined 6407 days ago 9753 posts - 15779 votes 4 sounds Speaks: Russian*, English, FinnishC1, Latin, German, Italian, Spanish, Portuguese Studies: Danish, Romanian, Polish, Belarusian, Ukrainian, Croatian, Slovenian, Catalan, Czech, Galician, Dutch, Swedish | Message 20 of 39 07 September 2014 at 1:50am | IP Logged | |||||
Not to mention that some call modern Russia that, which just devalues the concept and turns it into a buzzword. To save the connection with linguistics, let me quote Gunnemark's book. Turkish delegate: Greece claims wrongly that the country is democratic. Greek delegate: The word democracy is Greek so we know better whether we're a democracy or not. Edited by Serpent on 07 September 2014 at 1:53am 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| Cavesa Triglot Senior Member Czech Republic Joined 4819 days ago 3277 posts - 6779 votes Speaks: Czech*, FrenchC2, EnglishC1 Studies: Spanish, German, Italian | Message 21 of 39 07 September 2014 at 5:43am | IP Logged | |||||
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Well, I think people are nostalgic mostly becuse they were young. You know, the grass used to be a lot greener and sky bluer in those old days without arthritis and incontinence.
I would never say anyone should agree with everything just because it is part of the new times, I don't agree with some things either. But the trouble lies in several main points, in my opinion: Young people are not being taught much about the era in schools (it always falls to the end of the year and noone has enough time in May/June) and it is somehow more fun to teach and learn about all those greeks, romans, knights, adventurers and heroes up to 1930 or so. And how should some teachers teach about times during which their own actions weren't soo innocent as well? No matter whether in era in the particular country was ended by velvet, fall of the wall or any other single most important symbol in the country. The people, both active communists and the silent and therefore supportive majority, weren't taken away and exchanged for new ones. The media suffer from inner division in the approach so there isn't much they do. On one hand, older people want to see the movies and tv series of their youth and perhaps laugh at the weird parts, on the other, people need to remember despite not wanting to and "nostalgic" movies aren't helping much. And young people either don't watch tv at all or they just aren't interested in the subject. There are as well strong feelings among some viewers that they are "being annoyed with endless complaints about the past" in order not to lose add consuments. That may be one of the points behind the German televisions' logic as well, in my opinion. By the way, I've seen mostly Czech documents so far, would you have ideas for German ones about the era for me, please? Or non documentaries would be even better. And the fact is that many troubles of today's society are not being solved, which strengthens the tensions. Yes, it is an indiviualistic world because it takes time to renourish the old system where families and friendship were the safety net and who knows whether it is even possible. But I fail to see the previous regime as based on sharing in community. A community that incarcerates the handicaped so that they can't be seen, a community where lots of interactions are based on spying on each other, deception and distrust, such a community is much worse than individualism. viadiva, I am not saying those people shouldn't have any rights or that they should agree with everything. I don't agree with everything as well but I don't think a regime systematically punishing the more clever/diligent/lucky ones just for the others to not have to fight their jealousy so much would be a solution. The trouble is that there are too many of those nostalgic voters and they have all the rights, including for exemple people who are so old and with various stages of dementia that they no longer live on their own and they no longer know what is happening behind the walls of their nursing institutions. Many of them still have all the rights including the voting one. I had a nice exemple but that would surely be a political note. However, while a healthy democracy gives respects rights of every individual, a system supporting too much the less beneficial approaches and values (and nostalgia for communism is mostly based on stupidity, jealousy and laziness) is necessarily going to end up badly. Damages to the countryside were horrible during the communist era as well so I wouldn't say the situation is so much worse now, it's probably mostly the combination of past troubles and the present ones, often consequences of the past, that makes people leave. The only difference is that if you don't want to live in a village, you can leave now much more freely. And people used to compete as well, just in other areas, usually dealing with troubles created by collectivism. What I hear from older people, what I can see in old comedies, is actually lots of competition. But it is not the productive kind of competition, leading to positive results for whole society, but usually a competition for survival and stealing a bit more from the wrong system than the neighbour. 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| Serpent Octoglot Senior Member Russian Federation serpent-849.livejour Joined 6407 days ago 9753 posts - 15779 votes 4 sounds Speaks: Russian*, English, FinnishC1, Latin, German, Italian, Spanish, Portuguese Studies: Danish, Romanian, Polish, Belarusian, Ukrainian, Croatian, Slovenian, Catalan, Czech, Galician, Dutch, Swedish | Message 22 of 39 07 September 2014 at 10:24am | IP Logged | |||||
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Really? Here the whole 9th year is dedicated to the 20th century, and then in the final year you go back to it.
Alas, we do have quite a few young people who grew up with the idea that our country can't be respected without being feared. 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| Josquin Heptaglot Senior Member Germany Joined 4654 days ago 2266 posts - 3992 votes Speaks: German*, English, French, Latin, Italian, Russian, Swedish Studies: Japanese, Irish, Portuguese, Persian | Message 23 of 39 07 September 2014 at 10:56am | IP Logged | |||||
I'd suggest the word "terror regime" for the latter two. Of course, the DDR was a dictatorship. It just didn't have a single person as dictator but the Socialist Party. Compare it to modern China, if you like. Edited by Josquin on 07 September 2014 at 10:57am 2 persons have voted this message useful | ||||||
| Serpent Octoglot Senior Member Russian Federation serpent-849.livejour Joined 6407 days ago 9753 posts - 15779 votes 4 sounds Speaks: Russian*, English, FinnishC1, Latin, German, Italian, Spanish, Portuguese Studies: Danish, Romanian, Polish, Belarusian, Ukrainian, Croatian, Slovenian, Catalan, Czech, Galician, Dutch, Swedish | Message 24 of 39 07 September 2014 at 12:32pm | IP Logged | |||||
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I think such a wide definition of dictatorship is as imprecise as saying racism instead of anti-semitism or nationalism. Seems like it's where modern English is heading though. Edited by Serpent on 07 September 2014 at 12:35pm 1 person has voted this message useful |
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