9 - The Ongoing Significance of East Germany and the Wende Narrative in Public Discourse

Summary

Images of Unification

IMPORTANT EVENTS EVOKE Important images, images that can shape the public's imagination for a long time and that can in turn influence the way political theory thinks about these events. The fall of the Wall and the events leading to it, as well as the events emanating from it, are no exception to this rule. They are truly historical events that are deeply ingrained in the consciousness of everyone who personally experienced that moment, and even in the consciousnesses of many who were not yet born. The pictorial evidence is there to document these events: The pictures of the mass demonstrations all over East Germany, the actual fall of the Wall and the people hacking away at its sturdy concrete are ubiquitous. They are on par with pictures of the John F. Kennedy assassination, the first man on the moon, the last helicopter out of Saigon, or, of course, 9/11.

Alongside these images, which have captured the imagination of the entire world, there are many images that were equally important to the immediate participants yet not equally well preserved in collective memory. The photos of Chancellor Kohl and General Secretary Gorbachev during their pivotal negotiations might be one example of this second order of images, with Kohl's roomy cardigan providing proof of the friendly and remarkably informal atmosphere of these high-level and highstakes negotiations. And then there is “Zonen-Gaby (17),” who graced the cover of Germany's leading satirical magazine, Titanic, at the time of unification. “Gaby,” with a “typical” East German hairdo and outfit, happily showed a peeled cucumber, with the headline reading “Zonen- Gaby (17) in Bliss (FRG): My First Banana.” The image quickly became an icon, and even today, twenty-five years later, it is still by far the bestknown satirical pictorial comment on unification from inside Germany.

There is just one problem with the icon: “Zonen-Gaby” was actually Dagmar from Worms in West Germany. The fact that she was thirty years old instead of seventeen is a minor issue; more importantly, the quintessential East German look was achieved by outfitting a West German woman with appropriate clothing. This has some symbolic meaning for the entire process of unification, as even making fun of East Germans worked perfectly well for a West German magazine without any involvement of a real East German at all.