ABSTRACT
Suburbs of apartment blocks are arrayed along East Berlin's subway line U5. U5 ends at Hönow, the outermost edge of Berlin and the site of one of the last housing estates built under state socialism. I rode the subway to Hönow in the summer of 1994, four years after German unification, to interview Mr. and Mrs. Acker about the effect of the postsocialist transformation on their work-family balance. It was hot and the streets were still and quiet. The apartment buildings lined the street like tan boxes with tiny, bare balconies stacked in neat, symmetrical piles. I interviewed the Ackers in their small livingroom crammed with a couch, low table, and large “Schrankwand,” an all-in-one unit of bookshelves, knick-knack display cases, and cupboards common in East German apartments.
