Scenes of an Ending

Continuing with examples from the initial interview wave (1994), this chapter explores the impact of autobiographical (in)congruity with official memory on prospects for symbolic inclusion or marginalization. Specifically, it examines the scenes of an ending—the bridging narratives of life stories depicting the historic watershed of 1989–90, known as the Wende (“the turn”). Where the stories display a high degree of congruity with canonical accounts of the period, protagonists and narrators are depicted as welcoming the fall of the Berlin Wall and portrayed as fully integrated citizens of the Federal Republic after reunification. In contrast, stories whose protagonists had been regime supporters typically associate the GDR’s dissolution with a colossal inversion of values, inaugurating a period of disorientation and disillusionment. Finally, narratives whose protagonists inhabit a storyworld rife with fractal complexity and contradiction adopt non-binary (hybrid) standpoints and modes of action that set them apart from both regime loyalists and dissidents. Here, the “turn within the turn” toward reunification occasions particularly pronounced feelings of estrangement, as protagonists discover that they, too, are on the losing side of history. Rather than experiencing elation or disorientation, protagonists perceive reunification as a “takeover” by “the West.”