vailian

I'm interested in the Ossie's feelings about the DDR - we watched the film 'Goodbye Lenin' last year and then talked about it with a friend of ours who is an Ossie and said how funny, interesting, etc it was and she was really upset and said how she couldn't laugh about something that was so close to her upbringing....it took a lot of diplomatic manouvering to get us on to a decent track again. It's a whole other world for us westies.
 

heidi-- this is such a complex subject! The Ossie is constantly torn between cursing the DDR and regretting the loss of the stability and predictability that she had there. She lived a fairly privileged life, her father was a soloist at the Opera in Berlin and she was one of the top graduates of the Spezialschule for Music there, so they didn't suffer like many people did. But of course they longed for freedom... but once it came it made their lives much more complicated and difficult.
"Goodbye Lenin" is a nice film, but I especially like "Das Leben der Anderen". You should also try to see "Sommer vorm Balkon".
Strangely it happened that in the house we were staying in, a girl was also there who was the daughter of a prominent DDR politician, she admitted to being a convinced Communist right up to the end.
 

I have Ossie cousins who speak nostalgically of the past. I don't get it personally, but I guess I was lucky, my parents came to Canada. I have been able to rent Das Leben Der Anderen, hopefully it will come out soon on DVD. I do know from my late Mother some stories of family members spying on other family members. I have many cousins in Greifswald, but the family is fractured. Is anybody really surprised that the Russians are using oil and gas to dominate? I'm not, I always saw it coming, it's what the outcome will be that will be interesting. The Germans have lost their stomach for conflict...ciao