This article explores representations of unification in Margarethe von Trotta’s Das
Versprechen (1995), Wolfgang Becker’s Good Bye Lenin! (2003), Yüksel Yavuz’s
Aprilkinder (1998), and Fatih Akin’s Im Juli (2000). It investigates the ways these
films reveal a shift of perspective on the meaning of East-West unity in post-wall
Germany. It first analyzes von Trotta’s and Becker’s approaches to unification by
probing the images of division and similarity that they create or question. It next
addresses Yavuz’s darker view of impulses towards unification. It then considers how
Akin’s film moves ideas of unity into a European context and then dismantles them.
A new concept of identity that
would allow us to live together
without having to sacrifice difference
and personality on the
altar of identity would need to
have gaps through which what
is different and foreign could
come and go. Identity would
then not manifest itself as hegemony.
1
Reflections in German film on unification and its consequences have
until recently largely ignored the heterogeneity of German society and
focused on the concerns of mainstream Germans from the German
Democratic Republic (GDR) and West Germany. This focus overlooks
cultural differences in both formerly separate societies as well as
the presence of different ethnic and cultural groups within Germany
today that belong in neither of the former ‘halves.’ The Berlin Wall
played a central role in maintaining the notion of the two halves, for it
both divided and united. It divided geographically and politically, but
it also offered a unifying ideal to the citizens on each side by
emphasizing a collective identity based on being different from and
better than those on the other side, especially with regard to the
legacies of the Holocaust. Both East and West German concepts of
collective identity depended on characterizing the other group as the
heirs of the Nazi era. Dominic Boyer, for instance, contends that the
division allowed Germans on either side of the Wall to regard those on
208 Susan C. Anderson
the other side as possessing authoritarian proclivities, as representing a
national-cultural past against which to measure their ideal of serving
as representatives of a future, more democratic German identity.2
Andreas Huyssen characterizes the notion of East/West difference as
also marking different those on the same side of the Wall who
appeared to be aligned with those on the other side. For example,
West German conservatives regarded the left as identifying with GDR
socialist ideals, and East German officials accused dissidents of being
inimical to socialism.3 Any difficulties that an eastern or western
German had in developing a sense of belonging were ascribed to ‘that
other German: the other German as thief of one’s own potential
identity.’4 In Huyssen’s words:
National identity was always fractured in this way, and it remains to be explored
to what extent the success of denationalization in both Germanys was fueled by
such subterranean conflicts that destroyed older forms of national identity as much
as they added another chapter to the history of German self-hatreds.5
Huyssen calls for the democratic left to take the lead in fashioning a
new national discourse. This discourse would build on the productive
moves towards a national identity ‘that the democratization of
Germany, indissolubly coupled with the recognition of a murderous
history, has already given the new Germany.’6 Boyer, on the other
hand, points to the difficulties in creating such a discourse by arguing
that western Germans regard themselves as the only ones capable of
managing the future of Germany.7
Unification has confounded the function of East/West difference
by creating one official set of Germans as heir to the crimes of the
Nazi past. As a result, former East and West Germans seek to resurrect
the differences they projected onto each other or to transfer those
differences to others living in Germany, such as immigrants, as an
avoidance measure. Boyer traces the phenomenon of ‘Ostalgie,’ or
nostalgia for an idealized GDR past, to this longing for difference,
especially among West Germans. ‘Ostalgie’ serves the desires of
western Germans to claim a future ‘free from the burden of history’
because nostalgia for certain aspects of the GDR makes it appear as if
eastern Germans are still mired in an authoritarian past.8 Joseph F.
Jozwiak and Elisabeth Mermann, by contrast, assert that both East and
West German interest in ‘Ostalgie’ is ‘an expression of the destabilizing
juncture between the old and the new, between a stable and
Unification and Difference in German Post-Wall Cinema 209
recognizable past in a well-defined nation state and a presently
evolving culture that is in search of foundational myths.’9 Yet both
they and Boyer limit themselves to addressing the concerns of mainstream
citizens of eastern and western Germany. Huyssen broadens
the investigation of the effect of unification on notions of difference
by claiming that unification displaces what he characterizes as
German self-hatred onto foreigners, ‘the new thieves of German
identity.’10 He advocates a concept of nation that would ‘emphasize
negotiated heterogeneity rather than an always fictional ethnic or
cultural homogeneity.’11
Annette Seidel Arpacı proposes recognition of ‘parallel memory’
as one means of fostering heterogeneous concepts of nation. ‘Parallel
memory’ is a mediated form of memory that would allow migrants in
Germany to be receptive of the cultural trauma linked to Nazi
Germany and of their ‘own ethnicized and precarious place.’12 Hindering
such efforts to rethink national identity is a residue of the notion
that some kind of cohesive collective identity exists or could exist. In
keeping with this notion, the Wall represented a lost homogenous
identity that could one day be regained. This identity would arise from
a synthesis of the undifferentiated concepts of East and West, propagated
in official discourse. In the ironic words of the narrator in
Margarethe von Trotta’s film Das Versprechen, as long as the Wall
stood, it allowed Germans to believe in the illusion that all that
divided the German people was the Wall. Thus when the Wall fell this
illusion contributed to the national unification process. Andreas
Glaeser explains furthermore that the notion of the essential unity of
the German people supported the ‘organizational form in which unification
proceeded’ and helped political unification occur with such
speed.13 The immediate euphoria after the fall of the Wall led East
Germans to accept ‘everything Western as a norm to which everything
Eastern as deviant from this norm had to aspire.’14
Immigrants in the West were prone to accept the view of West
German identity constructs as superior to those of former GDR
citizens. As the research of Nevim Çil reveals, many of the younger
generation of Turkish heritage in the Federal Republic of Germany
regarded themselves as part of the ‘Mehrheitsgesellschaft’ into which
the new Germans from the East would have to assimilate.15 This
illusion of multicultural identity, which mainstream western Germans
did not share, soon contributed to a loss of orientation following the
210 Susan C. Anderson
‘Wende.’ In contrast to the sentiments of younger Turks in Germany,
Zafer Şenocak claims that the Wall strengthened the feeling among
mainstream Germans that their culture was at the center of the world
and that it differed from the cultures of all the so-called foreigners
living there. This cultural center expanded to include Germans from
the former German Democratic Republic, although, as noted above,
Germans from the West still claim dominance in this cultural center.
Nevertheless, as Özlem Topcu, notes, unification redefined the distinction
between ‘wir’ and the Other, pushing, for example, Turkish
immigrants further to the margins as part of an undifferentiated group
of Others.16 Unification made the younger generation into ‘Turks’ for
the first time, excluding them from the popular slogan ‘Wir sind das
Volk.’17 Yet the fall of the Wall has also opened possibilities that call
this center into question. In Şenocak’s words, ‘Auf die Ränder kommt
es angeblich an, auf die Verschränkungen an den Rändern, mit Knotenpunkten,
die unseren guten alten Zentren den Rang ablaufen.’18
Precisely these margins highlight the complexity of issues surrounding
German unification, a complexity that is emerging more and more in
German cinema.
This chapter will explore representations of unification in four
films made in Germany since 1990: Margarethe von Trotta’s Das
Versprechen (1995), Wolfgang Becker’s Good Bye Lenin! (2003),
Yüksel Yavuz’s Aprilkinder (1998), and Fatih Akin’s Im Juli (2000).
It will compare the first two, which question unification but still
operate within a framework of ideal, albeit inaccessible, wholeness,
with the latter two, which attempt to redefine the discourse of unity.
Directors such as von Trotta and Becker have evoked the GDR as the
embodiment of broken promises, deceptive memories, and nostalgic
longing, in the form of love stories set in Berlin. The division between
East and West Germans plays a central role in these films. They work
in the tradition of Peter Schneider’s stories of Wall jumpers and of his
claim that a ‘Mauer im Kopf’ is hindering unification.19 For instance,
Das Versprechen presents divided Germany as a pair of separated
lovers, whose incompleteness is exacerbated by their idealistic attachments
to the promise of socialism or capitalism. Unification in this
film does not promise to overcome political and social differences.
Good Bye Lenin! suggests that nostalgia for the GDR is an attempt to
maintain a sense of identity while confronting the absorbing power of
political unification. Yet the difference the film celebrates shares
Unification and Difference in German Post-Wall Cinema 211
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