Book “Neon/Grau” – Walling time: “What is often neglected is dialogical”

In your book “Neon/Grau” you approach the so -called turning time using the analysis of pop cultural productions. What does pop culture tell us about history, which may be hidden in other sources?

Anna Lux: Pop culture tells other stories. She focuses on characters that have not lived, but which reflect the spirit of a certain time. And in the best case, these figures then manage to access everyday life, worlds of experience and emotions. This is something that is difficult to grasp in historical sources – maybe because the right language is missing.

Jonas Brückner: I also have the impression that pop cultural works are often a bit earlier to take up certain topics or moods. In the course of the so -called reunification, you can see, for example, that the dissatisfaction of the time was discussed very early in punk. And because certain topics are compacted in a story, another form of accessibility is created.

The pop -cultural focus of the book has opened up the room to put perspectives that were previously underrepresented. What were that?

JB: Basically, our claim was already to illuminate all or at least as many perspectives as possible and set them in relation to each other. We have been working for quite a while to show the variety of perspectives, and you have to be careful not to expire a blindness or the reproduction of uniform success history. The late and newborns, who have only experienced the GDR as small children, seemed underrepresented. But also people affected by racism and the question of how the topic was negotiated in the East German majority society.

Al: A new look also seems to me to be the chapter on gender relations where you have worked, Jonas. The lighting of life in rural areas has also been neglected for a long time, as well as loss experiences. This is associated with not only topics such as unemployment, but also the loss of the confidante, of the normally understood within a very short time.

Was there a book or a song in the past that significantly shaped or changed her view of the 1989 upheaval?

JB: I spontaneously remember Ronald M. Schernikau. As a gay communist from the West, he has deployed himself and defended the GDR – a behavior that is unearthed at that time! He had a different look at the state and a rather essayist style. Musically, I spontaneously remember the song “Scheiß GDR” by the band Pissen from 2015, which tidies up with the revolutionary fairy tale in about a minute and a half. So with the fact that in 1989 everyone suddenly went onto the street and resisted. At the same time, the consumption promise of the West and the European border regime are scanned and, on me, very sympathetically snotty ways are being complained: somehow we don’t like all of this.

Al: I am a few years older than Jonas and have received access to the topic of the topic above all through the literature. The book “When we dreamed” by Clemens Meyer, which plays in Leipzig, should be mentioned here. It is primarily a story about boys and men and therefore not really mine, but when I read it, I thought: I knew exactly such guys at the time. And I witnessed her failure.

The idea for your book in the course of your collaboration in the research project “The controversial heritage of 1989” was created. To what extent is the heritage of 1989 because currently controversial?

Al: We wrote the application for the 2017 project-and thus against the background of a strong AfD, Pegida demos, “We are the people” calls and the capture of Monday demos. All of this was in a way based on a culture of remembrance that stylized the upheavals as a charismatic event, in which the people took to the streets and has practically freed itself from no time from anything. And this shortened perspective was then used as a blueprint for the present in the mid -2010s.

In the past five to ten years, the discourse on unity and the associated social faults have re -enacted. Was there or is there something that you missed or seemed to be underrepresented in the previous discourse and was formative for the work of the book?

JB: I think about style questions above all. We were entitled to avoid the very big, exhilarated evidence. I was also interested in shed light on the consequences of authoritarian state socialism without fidding with the usual anti -communist steam hammer or throwing theory with the theory with the right with the right. I recently read Max Czollek-and I found that very obvious-that you have to take GDR anti-fascism seriously if you want to understand your failure. I find it important to illuminate this because it is only possible to counter authoritarian tendencies in the left spectrum.

Al: What is often neglected for me in discourse is that is dialogical. I have the impression that speaking over 1989 and the end of the GDR often takes place in closed communication rooms – also, but not only in terms of intergenerationality. That is why I liked the podcast “Mensch, Mutta” by Katharina Thoms, to which we also refer to the book. Because he breaks through the often existing speechlessness between those who have experienced the upheaval phase as a child and their generation of parents.

In the unity discourse, angry intensification, polemics, friend-fermenting markings and identity policies are currently dominating. How do you explain this?

Al: I think the dominant narrative plays a major role, according to which the GDR was replaced by the great freedom movement of 1989. This perspective is not wrong, but shortened because it mostly hides loss experiences, disappointments and social descent. The counting and success count has evoked and provoked strong counter-stories over the years. They then culminated in the claim of an East German identity, which deals with embossing, about the question “Where do I come from?” And that is connected to cultural codes, for example the conscious and celebrated consumption of Little Red Riding Hood sparkling wine. At the same time, an East German resistance count has developed from the friction between freedom and counter-story. This claims that the east is superior because it is more authentic and crisis test. The AfD recorded this, fueled and politically radicalized. The self -authorization excesses have various reasons, but also that, as has been spoken about the GDR and 1989/90 for decades.

JB: I find it exciting, especially works by the Millenial generation, where the change phase is one aspect among many. The novel »World Days« by Paula Fürstenberg, which combines East German experience spaces with class experiences, which is sometimes related anyway, but is not always the same.

They are both Osto -socialized. What was the re -reunification time for you personally: more neon or more gray?

JB: I am born in 1989, so I lived in a colorful child world in the 1990s, even if the surrounding area was actually gray. During this time I was often with my sister in Magdeburg with our grandparents, where we played in any industrial ruins. A bit like the older ones who celebrated parties there at night.

Al: In my case, too, Neon clearly outweighed the dazzling, pulsating. Gray was the familiar, the acquaintance. I spent my childhood a lot in some demolition houses and broke. When there was suddenly giant parks with used cars and very own market logics, I wondered: Is that the West too? So neon, but ice cold?

The sociologist Steffen Mau, to whom you refer to some places in the book, takes the view that the East will remain different in the future. Do you share his assessment?

JB: Yes, the whole complex 1989/90 and its consequences will remain an issue. You can currently see, for example, using the example of the “East Fluencer” Olivia Schneider that this is still an issue for the younger generation.

Al: I also believe that the East definitely remains different, since it now has a specific story that – unlike often assumed – was not suddenly ended in 1989, but that it is basically further existed in a changed form to this day. But at the same time I find it important to emphasize that the east is highly different and complex and that of course there are now also varied entanglements with the West.

Anna Lux/Jonas Brückner: »Neon/gray. 1989 and East German experience spaces in pop «, Verlag, 336 p., Brosch., 26 €.