WHAT TURNED WITH THE WENDE and how much? And how much remained? The essays in this volume, speaking from the vantage point of an array of disciplines, represent highly varied attempts to answer that question. This chapter is an economic and political historian's response, an argument that the Wende highlighted and completed a profound transformation in Germany's international role during the second half of the twentieth century, with results that are likely to prove both lasting and beneficial.

A “German Problem” No More?

For much of the period between 1848, at the latest, and 1989, something called “the German Problem” constituted a consistently ominous and periodically destructive flashpoint of European politics. What the problem actually was, however, varied over time. In its earliest and final phases, the problem emerged from the country's division and the tensions aroused by desires to either overcome or maintain that condition. In the long middle interval between 1871 and 1945, the problem stemmed from the opposite situation, namely the concentrated power and ambition of a single state that called itself throughout the period, despite three distinct governing systems (monarchy, republic, and dictatorship), simply das Deutsche Reich, the German Empire. But whether born of division or unity, the chief consequence of the German Problem always seemed the same: war. That was the upshot in 1864, 1866, 1871, 1914, and 1939. It also was very nearly the result in 1875, 1906, 1911, 1936, 1938, 1958, and 1961. Some highly placed people, notably Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher of Great Britain, thought that war would be the consequence of the Wende, too.

Why were they wrong? Why do contemporary laypeople and scholars have no use for or comprehension of the phrase “the German Problem”? Why did 1989 mark the end of an epoch—though, of course, not “the end of history” that Francis Fukuyama (1992) rather foolishly proclaimed? To answer these questions, one has to begin with a sense of what conditions gave rise to the German Problem. Identifying them has been one of the central preoccupations of historical writing on Germany since the dawn of the twentieth century. As a result, there is no shortage of explanations of what made Germany so explosive and disruptive a country for almost 150 years. Oversimplifying somewhat, I boil these accounts down into four broad groups.

From a Divided to a Unified Germany

ON OCTOBER 30, 1990, PRECISELY AT MIDNIGHT, the flag of a reunited Germany was raised over the Reichstag in Berlin, accompanied by celebratory fireworks across the city. This act signaled the end of one state, the German Democratic Republic (GDR), and the continuation of another, the Federal Republic of Germany (FRG), albeit slightly enlarged: the five new federal states comprising the former GDR were united with the Federal Republic and adopted its legal, political, and economic structures. Hence, the GDR had officially ceased to exist.

There is no doubt that the events leading up to the collapse of the GDR and the subsequent process of unification were challenging: East and West Germany were socialized in quite different ways, and especially for the people in the East, life as they knew it changed completely: economically, politically, ideologically, socially, and culturally. Wolfgang Thierse, an East German citizen before unification and later the president of the German Bundestag, described it in the following way during a speech on the occasion of the twenty-fifth anniversary of the fall of the Wall: “When a strong, successful community and a failed, collapsed, rejected system come together, then the weights are clearly distributed: One is the norm which the others have to take over; one is the teacher, the other the apprentice; in the case of the one, everything can stay as is; in the case of the other, everything has to change; German unity is for some the confirmation of the status quo, for the others it causes a radical upheaval.” It is clear that the process of growing together was experienced differently by East and West Germans: While many East Germans initially felt heightened optimism for freedom and a less complicated life than the GDR offered, the process of unification was overshadowed by uncertainty, doubt, vulnerability, mourning, and a sense of loss that brought about a yearning (especially among the older GDR generation) for the small, familiar country in which they had grown up and a sense of nostalgia for the former GDR that became known as Ostalgie. But it was also difficult for West Germans: many felt that they were carrying a disproportionate share of the cost for integrating the two former states.

Heisig and the Fall of the Wall

WHEN THE BERLIN WALL FELL unexpectedly on November 9, 1989, the East German artist Bernhard Heisig already had many of his most important works hanging in a museum in the West. Just a few weeks earlier, on September 30, a major exhibition containing 120 of his paintings and more than 300 prints and drawings had opened at the Martin- Gropius-Bau in West Berlin. Bernhard Heisig, Retrospective was the largest and most comprehensive exhibition of an East German artist ever held in West Germany. It was also the first major exhibition of a postwar German artist—East or West—put together by a collaborative effort of East and West German curators; it would travel to cities in both countries over the course of the next year. At the age of sixty-four, Heisig had made it as a “German” artist—highly praised for his work in both East and West—at a time when a unified Germany still seemed decades away.

Within weeks of the Berlin Wall's collapse, however, Heisig's reception changed drastically. Rather than praising his work for its commitment to the Expressionist tradition and history, the West German press now attacked him for his biography and, in particular, for his connection to the German Democratic Republic (GDR), where he had been both a successful artist and a powerful cultural figure. These often vehement attacks in the press, which lasted for more than a decade, have become known as the German-German Bilderstreit, or “image battle,” and were aimed at East Germany's most successful artists. At stake was what role, if any, East German art and artists should be allowed to play in the new Germany.

In these debates the term Staatskünstler, or “State Artist,” was frequently used as shorthand to dismiss these highly praised artists. In this chapter I will focus on this term with regard to Heisig in order to better understand the tendentious nature of East German art's reception after the Wende and, in particular, the Bilderstreit of the long 1990s. What does the term Staatskünstler actually mean, both literally and by implication? Who used the term? And why? Ultimately, I will argue that Staatskünstler, when used with East German artists, perpetuates negative stereotypes that undermine a deeper understanding of the artists and the work they created.

A Unique Heritage

THE THEATRICAL AND ORCHESTRAL landscape in Germany is unique. There are 131 professional, permanently staffed, publicly financed orchestras: 83 theater orchestras for operas, operettas, and musicals playing in state and municipal theaters; 29 concert orchestras performing in concert halls; 7 publicly funded chamber orchestras; as well as 12 radio or radio symphony orchestras (Mertens 2014). This listing does not include the many professional chamber orchestras and ensembles in Germany, which play on a project-to-project basis, often employing freelance musicians. Germany has—relative to its population and compared to other countries worldwide—the highest density and diversity of symphony and chamber orchestras. Every year, around 35 million people attend more than 120,000 performances of plays and operas, as well as 9,000 concerts. The uniqueness of Germany's theatrical and orchestral landscape was officially recognized in December 2014 by UNESCO as an “intangible cultural heritage of humanity” (“Germany's ‘Orchestral Landscape’” 2014). Yet this cultural treasure is in danger.

Shortly after the Wende, Germany had 168 publicly financed concert, opera, chamber, and radio orchestras (“Germany's ‘Orchestral Landscape’” 2014). Since then, following a period of economic readjustment primarily in the former Eastern parts, 37 ensembles have been dissolved or have merged with other orchestras. This trend is still continuing. For example, in 2016–17 the Stuttgart Radio Symphony Orchestra merged with the Freiburg Symphony Orchestra, with the new orchestra residing in Stuttgart. Some eighty positions were lost through the merger (Mertens 2014b).

Music, as performed by orchestras and opera companies, is different from art and literature. A painting just needs a wall to hang on. For a book, even less is required: just a bit of space on a shelf. But classical music is expensive; it requires a large number of musicians and technical personnel to perform it. Costs are rising, while audiences are dwindling, especially in the east German states. The Cologne musicologist Arnold Jacobshagen (2000, 13–24) published a study on the “structural change in the orchestral landscape,” and I will update that study, following his methodological assumptions. Unlike Jacobshagen, however, I will focus exclusively on East Germany—by now, of course, a geographical and no longer a political designation.

Did the GDR Ever Exist?

TWENTY-FIVE YEARS AFTER THE FALL of the Wall, German watchers might be tempted to pose two totally opposing questions about the GDR. The first question is: Did the German Democratic Republic ever really exist? Of course, it did exist, but it seems to have faded such that its historical presence appears pale and unreal—as if a dream that had once been vivid disappeared upon awakening. The second question is the opposite: Doesn't the German Democratic Republic really still exist? Of course, it doesn't, but it seems to have left sufficient habits, traces, and memories that haven't quite faded. This essay is an effort to grasp the ungraspable; that is, to reflect on why and how this forty-year experience retains such a ghostly quality.

Memories are strong; cinematic reconstructions are vigorous. The successor to the GDR's once-ruling party is and has been part of several state-level governing coalitions, and it deeply influences the German “Left.” Most significant, a residual awareness of being a separate half of the country persists, whether in terms of income differentials, habits, regional cityscapes—a bit as if one had traveled into the Italian South or the American South fifty years after unification had brought those regions into their respective national governments. Thus, on the one hand, we recall a state that seems to have been ghostly even when it was real; on the other hand, we confront a spectral presence that still persists. This essay is prompted by that apparent paradox—it is an effort to puzzle through the semisovereign country that never really fully existed and the mental state that never totally disappeared. The history of East Germany encompasses other paradoxes as well. The GDR would never have endured had it not been for Soviet troops who arrived in 1945, who then put down workers’ protests in 1953 and finally allowed the hermetic sealing of the border in 1961. Nonetheless, although it was guaranteed ultimately by an implicit recourse to force, it still generated real loyalties. It governed, on the one hand, through surveillance, but surveillance that was accepted and even shared by a significant fraction of the country's educated classes. And even while surveillance was elevated into a governing principle, it was simultaneously mobilized for civic efforts, peace campaigns, and competitive sports. The GDR hovered between repression and enthusiasm.

What Is “East German Literature,”and Who Are “East German Authors”?

THE TITLE CONTAINS A KEY TERM that may need clarification: “East German literature.” This was already a relatively problematic term prior to 1989, since it was so difficult to define. Did “East German literature,” for instance, include the literature of former GDR citizens who went to the west, such as Uwe Johnson, Günter Kunert, Sarah Kirsch, or Wolf Biermann? And even when it was written by citizens of the GDR who remained in the GDR, to what extent could one speak of “East German literature” as something separated from that larger sphere of literary activity known as “German literature?” These were not easy questions to answer even before 1989. Now, almost three decades later, they have become doubly complicated, since the GDR no longer exists as a state. A writer like Thomas Brussig (born in 1965), who has had a major impact on the literary picture of East Germany since reunification, does not even want to be called an East German writer. He would like to think of himself primarily as a German writer.

No doubt for Brussig part of the reluctance to be seen as an “East German” writer comes from resistance to the GDR literary establishment's attempt to create a canon of “DDR-Literatur,” as exemplified most prominently in the eleventh volume of the history of German literature put out by the Marxist think tank Institut für Gesellschaftswissenschaften beim ZK der SED (Institute for Social Sciences of the Central Committee of the SED) in 1976. In that volume Horst Haase designated GDR literature as “sozialistische Nationalliteratur der Deutschen Demokratischen Republik,” arguing that this literature was “fest gegründet auf das Leben und Wirken der werktätigen Menschen in der sozialistischen Deutschen Demokratischen Republik und auf die Existenz des internationalen Sozialismus/Kommunismus” and that it existed in energetic opposition to the purported imperialism of the Federal Republic of Germany and other capitalist states (Haase et al. 1976, 21, 28). Writers like Christa Wolf, whom Brussig sees as having supported the East German state in a conformist way, may have found entry into this volume as part of the East German canon, but Brussig would hardly like to see himself in such company.

King John's ‘loss of Normandy’ to the French king Philip Augustus in 1204 greatly enlarged the area over which the Capetian monarch exercised dominion. However, the political and economic gains which the conquest of the duchy brought to the French royal domain were tempered by the difficulty of ensuring that the authority of the French king was established and exercised effectively in Normandy without inciting rebellion. Although the Capetian monarchs paid close attention to the duchy after 1204, Normandy came to be regarded as ‘a supine dominion’: an important territory, but one whose importance was overshadowed by the royal domain centred on Paris. The duchy in the thirteenth century was no longer at the centre of Continental expansion, as it had been under Angevin rule. Instead, the Capetian monarchs ‘exercised power across the duchy from afar through baillis and a coterie of trusted magnates and royal knights’, who were responsible for maintaining and exercising royal authority in the name of the king.

Great care was taken to appoint suitable officials to these posts; an exemplum from the fourteenth century tells of how Louis IX, king of France between 1226 and 1270, recorded information about men in positions of administrative responsibility, listing their virtues and using this information to make appointments to local offices as they became vacant. Nonetheless, the conduct of these local officials frequently brought them into conflict with those living under their rule. A kingdom-wide enquête carried out under the orders of Louis IX in 1247–8 to investigate the conduct of local officials ‘uncovered widespread local corruption […] and intimidation of the populace’, and a significant number of people living under French rule took the opportunity to complain about the corruption of French royal officials.

The Norman returns to this enquête, the Querimoniae Normannorum (‘Complaints of the Normans’), are particularly valuable because they demonstrate how the changes which were imposed by Capetian local officials after 1204 secured the annexation of Normandy to the French royal domain. The duchy remained a distinct political unit in the thirteenth century, and retained many of its former traditions. Nonetheless, there were a number of important changes which affected the lives of those who lived in the duchy, and profound social, economic and cultural changes accompanied the collapse of Plantagenet rule and the establishment, exercise and consolidation of Capetian royal authority.

When in 1898 the Czech litterateur and critic František Václav Krejčí, in his essay on the aesthetics of symbolism, wrote of music as the complete opposite of exact science, and apostrophized music as an ideal art able to penetrate more deeply into the irrational and intuitive aspects of consciousness than painting or lyrical poetry, he was expressing an aesthetic opinion typical of his time. At the turn of the century music occupied a position as an “other world” in a scientific, technical, and positivist era. And this feeling at the end of the century, in its critical focus resulting to a certain extent (though in diverse ways and indirectly) from the atmosphere of Wagner and Nietzsche which it perceived as the opposite of the ending epoch, was part of the breeding ground of European modernism. But what was the particular situation of musical modernism in the Czech lands, in their center of musical happenings—Prague—around the year 1900?

The awareness that came with the 1890s of a special and different category of values, connected with a search for new spiritual certainties, emerged in musical culture earlier than the concept of Czech musical modernism itself, which appeared in this association only years later when it had already entered into everyday vocabulary in literature and the visual arts. Actually the designation “modern” and the category of modernity had played a fundamental role in the Czech musical world in the preceding period, in the Czech Wagnerian disputes, which went hand in hand with disputes over the future of Czech national opera and national music in general and whose core lay in the 1870s. Modernity emerges here as a key evaluative concept, as a philosophical-aesthetic category, defined by the aesthetician Otakar Hostinský as a synonym for newness and progressiveness. Hostinský, building on the work of the “New German School” and its theorist and spokesman, the music historian Franz Brendel, conceived the history of music as a progressive evolutionary line proceeding in its developmental steps in an inevitable process toward ever-more-perfect stages (which had to be conquered also by the words of theorists), whereby music drama and the symphonic poem were proclaimed as contemporary musical progress. Hostinský's conception called for a national art aimed unswervingly at the pinnacle of European progress, and he saw a modern composer capable of following this path in Bedřich Smetana (1824-84).

THE SUBLIME WAS CRUCIAL in giving balloon madness some cultural respectability. What was it and why did it matter? An idea with a long history, it had been refreshed in the mid eighteenth century and applied to a range of situations in which a viewing or feeling subject encountered something from which a powerful aesthetic charge resulted. This chapter explores how the sublime shaped thinking about balloons, how it paired and competed with ideas of the beautiful in the making of new aerial aesthetics, and how this reworking fits in to modern ideas about the aerial gaze.

As Michael R. Lynn notes by the title of his book, balloons themselves were described as ‘The Sublime Invention’, and ‘sublime’ is a regular fixture in accounts of aerial voyages. One example shows the frequency and typical variations of its use. When Richard Crosbie ascended from Dublin on 19 January 1785 to make the first successful ascent in Ireland, the sublime accompanied him: ‘Mr Crosbie himself assures us that his voyage throughout was perfectly smooth, tranquil and sublime’. What spectators felt was also sublime, with a theological colouring:

Boundlessness associated with the sublime meant its effects outlasted the event which gave rise to it. So sublime was Crosbie's achievement, according to this writer, that the grateful nation which held him in the highest esteem now would continue to look up to him in the future.

Village communities in many parts of Europe throughout the early modern period contained a significant number of servants. Historians have underlined the importance of rural service within the context of the late-marrying demographic system that was in place in much of north-western Europe, stressing the fact that most worked in service between their departure from home and economic independence at marriage. In the case of eighteenth- and nineteenth-century France, most of the work on rural servants can be found in regional monographs in demographic and rural history published during the 1970s and 1980s. While there are several books on urban servants in the eighteenth century, there is only a single chapter in one book dating from 1982 that attempts to synthesize work on rural service in France, and little has been published since that deals specifically with rural servants or service. Indeed French rural servants are conspicuously absent from the multivolume publications of the Servant Project. Despite this lack of a significant body of recent work on the subject, it is nevertheless clear that rural service was an important source of labour in the French countryside throughout the Ancien Regime and during the nineteenth century, and played a significant role in the transition from childhood to adulthood, as elsewhere in Europe.

This chapter analyses several demographic and social characteristics of rural service during the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries in the French region that would become the department of the Cote d'Or during the French Revolution. Because relatively few (but perhaps more than historians think, as we will see below) remained in service for longer than about a decade, the traditional tools of demographic history (parish registers, family reconstruction) are of limited use. The absence of servants from parish registers explains why most of the work on the demography of servants has been based on censuses. This chapter is no different and is largely based on two nominal censuses that were prepared about seventy-five years apart, that of 1796 and that of 1872. Both censuses group households together and provide the name, age and occupation of those listed (all inhabitants in the census of 1872, those twelve and over in the census of 1796).