Walls behind the Wall

A vignette recounting the author’s discoveries as an exchange student in the GDR reveals the limitations of the “Wall in the head” analogy. The same sorts of contrasts that many associate with the Berlin Wall, as a geopolitical threshold between spaces of freedom (“the West”) and spaces of confinement (“the East”), also existed “behind the Wall.” As the chapter goes on to suggest, however, everyday life in state socialism cannot be reduced to any single threshold between freedom and constraint. Instead, it consisted of a multitude of fractally nested “walls behind the Wall.” Building on this insight, the chapter argues that vernacular memories which highlight fractal complexity partake of repertoires of classification that had emerged in response to the dichotomous (non-fractal) classifications of the socialist state. After reunification, official memory of the GDR continued to echo the dichotomous classifications of the defunct regime, while reversing their moral valence, with erstwhile heroes recast as villains and vice versa. The result was a tripolar memory divide resembling that proposed by historian Martin Sabrow, namely among orthodox Dictatorship Memory and two heterodox forms of remembering. Thus, in addition to (non-fractal) Progress Memory, promulgated by some former regime supporters, official memory would also marginalize the variegated forms of (fractal) Accommodation Memory, espoused by the majority of former citizens, as dangerously “nostalgic.”