Christoph (40) moved from Eisenhüttenstadt to Berlin in his early twenties. He talks about the vanished places of his childhood and the collapse of social infrastructure, growing up during the so-called “baseball bat years”, and self-organized youth work.
“I was born in Eisenhüttenstadt in 1986. Those where the baby boom years towards the end of the GDR. I graduated high school in 2005 and did my civil service in 2006. There were no apprenticeship positions in Eisenhüttenstadt. I applied everywhere, including the steelworks, and got nothing. I didn’t actually want to move away at the time, but I ended up going to Berlin.
I went to school in Fürstenberg, where my parents still live. Before that, we lived in the seventh residential complex. Eventually, all of that was torn down. It was a complete residential complex consisting only of large-panel-system buildings. My parents moved in when I was born. When I was old enough for kindergarten, the kindergarten in the inner courtyard was completed. When I was old enough for school, an after-school care center was integrated into the kindergarten. And by the time I was 18, they tore it all down. You walked through the places of your childhood and watched as everything was first cleared out, then the windows were gone, then eventually the facades were gone and you could practically look into the room that used to be your bedroom – until everything was demolished. No one other than us ever lived in our family’s apartment. In hindsight, it was practically an ‘instant-disposable’ apartment.
The proportion of children per stairwell was extremely high back then. In our stairwell, two apartments had two children, and two had three. When you went to play in the inner courtyard, you were surrounded by hundreds of children. The courtyards were also very large and had several playgrounds. Growing up in the late eighties and early nineties was like a children’s festival. Today’s parenting is very focused on the bond between child and parent. It wasn’t like that back then. There was a heavy focus on detachment and independence. This was done with good intentions. The goal was to raise people to be independent citizens who didn’t grow up in dependency. It was a different philosophy. Having a mother who stayed at home was relatively unusual. My parents had to be at work by six. I remember that we walked to kindergarten by ourselves quite early. But that sounds more exaggerated than it was, because it was only 20 meters from our front door to the kindergarten. Parents taking their children to kindergarten wasn’t necessary because there were kindergartens in every courtyard of every prefab settlement.
As a child, it was normality for me to live in a form of collapse – that the city was getting smaller, that everyone was moving away, going to the West, or becoming unemployed. Our high school reunions always take place on the meadow where our school used to be.
My generation grew up in the ‘baseball bat years’. For us, the fascists were the enemy. And those who haven’t romanticized the past are still very aware that these people have now found a party that is actually being voted for.
I was also shaped by German rap and hip-hop, skating, and breakdancing. We had a youth club in an old kindergarten. Using grants from the European Social Fund, we set up a recording studio there, made music with the youth, filmed music videos, and basically did youth work. I grew increasingly desperate dealing with the authoritarian, bureaucratic structures. They would say: ‘No, you can’t do it that way. Who are you to ask for an exception?’ Of course, that eventually makes you stop or simply move away. We were young, committed people doing youth work – privately, not professionally. We did things for a hobby that five years prior people had been paid to do. And democracy isn’t just about going to vote. Democracy is a habitus, a way of life; it is exactly this: giving young people the opportunity to participate. When democracy falls away, fascism eventually creeps into every gap that democracy leaves behind. Before, there was an authoritarian state. But that authoritarian state managed to let people participate in some way. If you were in the SED (the communist party), if you were in the Thälmann Pioneers, if you were in the FDJ (GDR communist youth), there were a thousand ways to get involved. All of that vanished after the Wende. There should have been a democratic answer to that, but there wasn’t. If ten Nazis were standing in front of the youth club, the police wouldn’t come. They said: ‘No, the youth have to settle that among themselves.’
And as for what happened in the youth club: we had the late resettlers (Spätaussiedler) with us – Russians – who were ready for violence, well-trained, and experienced in fighting. Since the Russians were also targeted by the Nazis’ racism, they were practically a protective force for us in the youth club. If the Nazis showed up at our door, the Russians would say: ‘Yes, definitely, we’re coming down right now.’
Coming of age during that time was extremely characterized by insecurity. There were certain courtyards you just didn’t walk through. If you were in a club or a pub, you always had to have a feel for the room. I still have that today. But back then, it was like this: you always had to be listening. Is something escalating somewhere? Are all your people still here? Was someone dragged out, was someone pulled into the bathroom? One half of your brain was always in a state of high alert. The probability that something would happen was always there. And things happened often enough. You had no chance against the Nazis. There were too many of them, they were too big, and they were much older. There were no places without Nazis. No matter which club or pub, there were always Nazis, and you always had to know enough of them personally just to be left in peace. You didn’t always have ten violent Russians nearby, and there was no Antifa (anti-fascists).
My parents were essentially classic loosers of the Wende. The things my parents did before the Wende were no longer recognized afterward. Before the Wende, no one was unemployed in the GDR. Basic needs – food, drink, housing, electricity – were always guaranteed. It wasn’t even a question that they might not be provided. The time after the Wende was heavily marked by insecurity, unemployment, and this devaluation because you were ‘just an Ossi’ (derogative term for an East German). My father was a construction machinery mechanic. This vocation doesn’t exist in that form today, but it was a very highly respected profession because you operated the most modern machinery of the time. Before the Wende, he could work abroad, in Iraq and Greece. Because of that, we had Western money. This means we actually had everything one could possibly buy in GDR times. We had a weekend house, a Praktica SLR camera, a record player, a colour TV, cabinets, books, all sorts of things. And we even had a 100-square-meter prefab apartment.
In the West, being a construction machinery operator was a two-week training course for civil engineers. This means it was a highly respected profession that was brutally devalued by the Wende. Through his competence, my father eventually found his footing again because he was an extreme expert on those old machines. But after the Wende, he fell into a deep hole.
My mother studied cultural sciences at the time and then worked at the theatre. She was in the SED and organized cultural events for the workers of the EKO steelworks. And that job simply ceased to exist. Her degree was not recognized, which meant she had to undergo an entirely new vocational training after the Wende. The entire cultural sector also disappeared after the Wende. There were no more galleries; there was no money for the theatre. In GDR times, there was an extreme amount of money for culture. And that entire cultural scene either collapsed or was cut under Schröder, at the latest. The understanding of art had simply always been different. It was always about the idea that the working-class should also be educated artistically.
Even though my mother had a degree, I would describe myself as someone who climbed the educational ladder. That might be a bit of a misnomer, but I am the first in my family to get a PhD, the first to move to a metropolis, and the first who had to navigate this entire university system. In the GDR, only high academics or party cadres had a higher standard of living than my family. I believe I have now reached the standard of living we had during the GDR era. My parents never reached that standard of living again.”