The Life in the GDR

written in february 2008

Life in the GDR
Two decades ago, Heidemarie Goldhahn was at work, when a man ran into the office and shouted: „Hurry up, guys, they have bananas in the shops!“ Suddenly everyone left their desks and ran out to queue for hours to get a banana for each of their family members.
Today, rotten bananas lie in Mrs Goldhahn’s kitchen. She was not able to eat them all when they were fresh.
She, now 53, grew up in the GDR, a place you think back when you read George Orwell’s 1984. And then you wonder, how he managed to foresee the life in the GDR when he wrote the book in 1948.
Not only tropical fruits were very rare in that time.
“The things you could buy at home were ugly, not tasty at all and qualitative not good. If you wanted to have something good, you needed to have connections,” Mrs Goldhahn said.
Luckily she had relatives in West Germany who sent her parcels with coffee, tights and jeans.
However, the government had to make sure that no western ideas could enter the eastern part of the world.
When Mrs Goldhahn was six years old, her aunt sent her a book, but when she got it, she found that several paragraphs and pages were cut out.
Mrs Goldhahn explained: “Western media were forbidden – otherwise you could have established your own opinion and see that the country you live in is not as good as it seems to be.”
The government opened letters, people were bugged and kept under surveillance.
From the early childhood people were brought up in a collective. You had to attend events with your collective after school or work.
“We spent time with each other and everyone was nice to everyone. Today’s dog-eat-dog society didn’t exist,” Mrs Goldhahn said. “But we knew that there is a member of the secret police in every collective and no one knew who it was. You could not trust anyone, not even your best friend or your partner.”
The government of the GDR established prisons just for people who had another opinion. Not to agree with the government was a crime.
There was only one party, the SED. There were elections, but you could only vote this party.
“The only choice you had was to vote or not to vote. But if you did not vote, you were put on the blacklist” Mrs. Goldhahn said. Election helpers came to hospitals with the election boxes so that the 90-year olds and ill citizens could put their vote into it.
Mrs Goldhahn stated: “When I think about what was good in the GDR, there is not much I can think of.”
One point she mentioned was that no one had the fear for one’s existence. “Everyone had the right and the duty to work,” she said.
Even though everyone had a job, people did not earn much. Everyone got more or less the same amount of money.
Mrs Goldhahn recalled:” There was always someone who had more money than you, but that was only because he had connections.”
Those who refused to work, disappeared. “I don’t know what happened to them, but I guess they had to go to jail,” she said. When those disappeared, came back, they had to be “re-integrated” into the job, and the employers had the duty to employ them.
The crime rate, reported by the press, seemed to be another argument that the GDR was a nice place to live.
Mrs Goldhahn reported that it was not allowed to bring prams into the supermarket. “It was self-evident that you leave the pram and the child in front of the supermarket while you do your shopping. No one would have stolen your baby.”
The reason for that was that people could not pass the borders of the GDR and therefore it would have been just a question of time till the police have found a kidnapper.
But, after the wall came down, people noticed that crimes existed like in every other country. It was only the press that did not talk about it. People were supposed to think the best of the GDR.
When Mrs Goldhahn was asked if she ever thought about fleeing, she said: “I was born and brought up in this system. I never knew anything else. I did not feel like they treat me bad, I just believed what I was told.”
Today, she is still living in the eastern part of Germany, where she grew up. But everything has changed. After finding out what really happened, she despises the GDR and would never wish it back.