Divided in Yearning? Nostalgia after German Unification

Celebrations of German Unification in 1990 were quickly followed by a hangover as its economic, political, and social costs became increasingly clear. The Berlin Wall may have collapsed peacefully, but the “wall in people’s heads”, as a phrase popular at the time had it, would be much harder to overcome, it seemed. Another term quickly gaining common usage now was “Ostalgie”, denoting a nostalgia for the former GDR. “Ostalgie” worked both as a reproach—accusing East Germans of lacking the willingness to go with the times—and a demonstration of obstinacy—East Germans defending their identity and past in the face of such reproaches. Soon, there was talk about a corresponding “Westalgie”, implying that really West Germans were the ones who didn’t want to change their ways. Whether such charges were justified or not, nostalgia became the focal point for debates about difference and similarity, unity and division, the country’s identity, and the role of its past (or rather its two separate pasts) for the present. While the 1990s saw countless studies of “Ostalgie”, academic interest in the subject has since died down—all the more reason to reevaluate it three decades on, especially as past debates are still haunting the relationship of East and West Germany today. In my talk, I want to do just that by asking how “nostalgia” was used at the time and what such uses tell us about the term, the people using it as well as the debate, the history of the 1990s and the history of nostalgia more generally.