Conflicted Memories: Germans Struggle to Adequately Commemorate the East German Dictatorship
By Jenny Wüstenberg

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There are a range of other locations which contribute to the memory of the GDR, but none of them is centrally located and many tourists and even Berliners do not venture to visit them. Very important to the victims of the regime is the Memorial in Berlin-Hohenschönhausen, which used to be a notorious prison in which political opponents were held and tormented (Photo 5). Another place of authentic historic events is the Museum Normannenstrasse, which housed the headquarters of the ministry of the secret police (the Stasi) and was occupied during the revolution. In the old West part of Berlin is the Museum Refugee Camp Marienfelde, which was the point of entry for Eastern refugees and recounts their stories (Photo 6). A more artistic approach to memory is evident in the "East Side Gallery," where artists decorated a long strip of Wall in 1989-1990 (Photos 7 and 8).

Photo 5: Former prison in Hohenschönhausen	Photo 6: Exhibit inside the Refugee Camp Museum
Photo 7: East Side Gallery in Berlin	Photo 8: Iconic image at East Side Gallery

Another attempt to secure the memory of a divided city was the local government's initiative to lay a double-row of cobblestones where the Wall once stood (Photo 9). Though admired by tourists, Easterners point out that this demarcation line shows where the Wall began from the Western perspective. For GDR citizens, the Wall was not merely a line, but a broad and elaborate system of fences, towers, tanks, and mines. They argue that, as in many other political domains, the West seems to want to prescribe the dominant memory. Indeed, polls have shown that most West Germans regard the history of the GDR as a regional affair of the Eastern states, rather than a matter of concern for the whole Federal Republic.

Photo 9: Double-row of cobble stones commemorating the Berlin Wall 1961-1989

Photo 10: Museum at Checkpoint Charlie

With politicians and the public long oblivious to the need to remember the GDR, private initiatives took the matter into their own hands. The second-most visited museum in Berlin today is the privately-run Museum at Checkpoint Charlie (Photo 10). In 2004, its director erected a memorial of over a thousand crosses commemorating those who died trying to escape East Germany. The action proved extremely controversial (in part because the number of dead continues to be disputed) and in summer 2005, the Berlin government bulldozed the crosses. The initiators regard this as a blatant demonstration of disrespect to the victims.

Some have worked for places of memory for personal reasons, such as Jürgen Litfin, who converted an old watch tower into a memorial to his brother who was the first to be shot at the Wall in 1961 (Photo 11). Others recognize the commercial potential of GDR memory -- a new museum which caters to nostalgia about East German life opened this summer in Berlin.

Photo 11: Memorial to Günter Litfin at Kieler Eck

The many private efforts, and the disappointment of tourists seeking to visit memory sites of the Wall, recently propelled both the local and the federal government into action. Both have commissioned groups of experts to draw up concepts of how the GDR and the Wall can be commemorated in all its complexity. The reports, which have been presented this year, call for the integration of many private initiatives, as well as existing state-run memorials, into a decentralized network of memory. But Germans continue to be dissatisfied: victim groups argue that the plan does not give their experience a central enough place in the national landscape; representatives of Holocaust memorials are worried that the memory of Nazism is slowly being undermined; former GDR secret service agents publicly proclaim that the regime is being unfairly demonized; while some would rather ignore the history of the Wall and the GDR altogether.

It seems safe to predict that the discussion over how to commemorate the East German dictatorship will not be settled for some time to come. Until it is, a consensus on German memory, not to mention a 'normal' national identity, is not in the cards.

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Jenny Wüstenberg was a DAAD/AICGS Fellow in the summer of 2006 and is is a doctoral candidate in the Department of Government and Politics at the University of Maryland, College Park.

This essay appeared in the August 31, 2006 AICGS Advisor.

 All photos taken by Jenny Wüstenberg.