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Begin forwarded message: > From: H-Net Staff via H-REVIEW <h-rev...@lists.h-net.org> > Date: August 23, 2020 at 6:55:08 AM EDT > To: h-rev...@lists.h-net.org > Cc: H-Net Staff <revh...@mail.h-net.org> > Subject: H-Net Review [H-Socialisms]: Spreen on Bach, 'What Remains: > Everyday Encounters with the Socialist Past in Germany' > Reply-To: h-rev...@lists.h-net.org > > Jonathan P. G. Bach. What Remains: Everyday Encounters with the > Socialist Past in Germany. New York Columbia University Press, > 2017. 272 pp. $30.00 (cloth), ISBN 978-0-231-18270-6. > > Reviewed by David Spreen (Harvard University) > Published on H-Socialisms (August, 2020) > Commissioned by Gary Roth > > Memory, Appropriation, and the Material Remains of "Real Existing" > Socialism > > After more than a decade of back-and-forth as well as an asbestos > scandal, Germany's federal government decided to replace East > Germany's Palace of the Republic with a reconstruction of the Berlin > Palace that had stood in its place until the 1950s. To some, this was > an erasure of history. After all, the Palace of the Republic had > housed the East German Parliament. To others, it was a return to > European normalcy. In the time before Germany's two twentieth-century > dictatorships, the Berlin Palace had served as the main residence of > the ruling family of the German Empire. The conflicts over the future > of this building are a striking example of complicated questions > about memory and the material remains of East German socialism that > are at the heart of Jonathan Bach's _What Remains: Everyday > Encounters with the Socialist Past in Germany_. > > What happens to the material culture(s) of everyday life in a state > that disappeared as rapidly as the German Democratic Republic did in > 1990? And who gets to decide what significance these objects--be it > consumer goods or the built environment--have for the process of > "working through the past" (p. 6)? Bach's study of postsocialist > encounters emphasizes material culture as a site of struggle over > meaning. Across Bach's four case studies, East and West Germans, > young and old, amateur collectors and professional historians engaged > in competing acts of appropriation that imbued material objects with > significance. Bach argues that at every stage the debates over these > objects also reflected intense contestation over the meaning of > dictatorship, the Nazi and socialist pasts, the status of Germany in > Europe, and ultimately, the meaning of Germany as a democracy. In > other words, what is at stake in the ways material remains are being > appropriated for memory is nothing less than "what we consider > contemporary German identity" (p. 6). > > About a decade after unification, East German consumer goods made a > comeback in the East and took on a new desirability in the West. But > what for critics of _Ostalgie_--a neologism combining the German word > for East with the German word for nostalgia--read simply as > trivializing dictatorship, Bach shows to be a complex phenomenon with > different modes of nostalgia in East and West. Chapter 1 mobilizes > Marilyn Ivy's distinction between modernist nostalgia and nostalgia > of style. Bach suggests that Ostalgie in East Germany was a longing > not for the socialist state or life in a dictatorship, but for > socialist (and modernist) longing itself. Because socialist states > had deferred "true communism" to the future, life in socialism was > characterized by constant longing. The (unfulfilled) promises of > socialism spelled frustration. But they also allowed for a sense that > a better future lay ahead. Bach argues that East German longing was > also always connected to aspirations to the material wealth of the > West such that unification at the same time promised and failed to > bring redemption. It is the subsequent foreclosure of longing for the > not-yet that allowed for consumer objects from the former East to > become reminders of a time when a better future seemed possible. In > Bach's argument, Ostalgie worked quite differently in the West, where > the fascination with East German design was disconnected both from > the past and East German identity. Hence, East German design can be > "reassembled and redeployed" (p. 31). To be sure, these two different > modes of appropriating the socialist past traverse the East/West > divide to some extent. Especially the latter mode of appropriating > styles disconnected from the past did not remain limited to the West. > What both modes of Ostalgie have in common was that they each relied > on the renewed commodification of East German goods in the > postunification republic. (Renewed) commodification first allowed > objects to remain in circulation and become objects of different > modes of appropriation. Whether East German material culture > functioned as an aesthetic blank slate, a romantic longing for > longing itself, or whether it signaled apologia for dictatorship and > invited comparisons to the glorification of Nazism, Bach shows that > its meaning was never straightforward. > > Chapter 2 stays with consumer objects but shifts the focus to a > different kind of conflict. The chapter follows amateur collectors in > the former East who turned their collections into museums of the > everyday. In a memory landscape that--up to the turn of the > millennium--seemed dominated by historians' interest in > totalitarianism and dictatorship, the amateur museums were a kind of > antipolitics that sought to resist the political appropriation of the > everyday. To some professional historians, this amounted to a > trivialization of the regime. They sought to redirect scholarly > attention to the everyday, but not as "the opposite of dictatorial > rule but its complement" (p. 47). As was the case for chapter 1, > Bach's goal is not to decide the conflict between amateur collectors > and historians. Rather, by first representing the objects of the > everyday, the amateur museums took the crucial first step to invite > appropriation that made the conflicts over their significance for > memory possible in the first place. > > The second half of the book shifts the focus from East German > consumer goods to the built environment. The third chapter focuses on > the former East German Palace of the Republic. Debates about the > future of the building divided East Germans, many of whom sought to > preserve the building; conservatives, many of whom sought to rebuild > the imperial Berlin Palace; and younger generations, who engaged in > forms of creative appropriation of the space. Bach argues in this > chapter that what was at stake ultimately in these conflicts over the > building was a conflict over the nature of German modernity. The > decision to rebuild the Berlin Palace--while erasing the East German > past by reverting to the early twentieth century--recovered a time of > German "continuity with European traditions rather than divergence" > (p. 119). In the final chapter, Bach turns to the Berlin Wall. If the > preceding chapters were about the ways in which the material > "remains" of the disappeared socialist state invited struggles over > appropriation that were always also struggles over Germany's past, > chapter 4 suggests that the different attempts to appropriate the > Berlin Wall were also struggles over the future of the city. No > example shows this more clearly than the site of the East Side > Gallery, dividing the neighborhoods of Kreuzberg and Friedrichshain. > Shortly after unification, the memorialization of the Berlin Wall as > a symbol of death and state-socialist excess seemed to have been the > purview of liberal triumphalists and conservative anticommunists; the > East Side Gallery produced a curious inversion of this alignment. > When the site threatened to disappear (and was later moved) due to > the construction of luxury condos, left-wing activists marched for > its preservation. A remnant of the wall had turned into a symbol of > struggle against gentrification. > > So, is there a place for East Germany in German democratic memory? > The East German generation born before and reaching adulthood after > unification faced particular difficulties. Those difficulties are the > subject of the epilogue. After all, that generation at the same time > inherited the East German past and was called upon to reject it in > the name of democracy. Bach finds hope in a play that liberally mixed > Shakespeare, an East German play, production notes on the East German > play, and criticism of the postunification world. Material remains > continued to demand appropriation. In the play, the postsocialist > generation appeared to appropriate the persistent "official" > celebration of 1989 as "Germany's one successful democratic > revolution" (p. 182)--remember, Bach is concerned with memory, not > history--and own the Federal Republic's democratic energy. > > Bach's book is not a book of history. It is mostly concerned with > contemporary uses of the immediate past. As such, it risks being > overtaken by current events. His attention to the ways that material > remains of a bygone past invite and resist appropriation seems > timelier than ever, with current debates over the role of the built > environment for historical memory currently raging in Germany, > Britain, and the United States. Material remains require work to > imbue them with significance, and their value is not independent of > but produced by the competing struggles of appropriating the remnants > of a distant past. Bach's book reminds us that debates over the > erasure of the past are not new. But he also shows that the removal > of material remains is not analogous to the removal of history. In > the case of the Palace of the Republic's replacement with a > reconstructed Berlin Palace, Germans embraced choosing one past over > another. When in 2016, Black activists demanded the renaming of what > many considered racist street names in Berlin, their demands were met > with anxieties over the erasure of history.[1] But their demands were > not for an erasure of history but for greater "respect for the > history of people of African descent in Berlin."[2] These conflicts > reinforce Bach's attention to competing claims to the past and their > inscription and reinscription in material remains and lend > extraordinary significance to his project. > > The book's methodological success also makes its shortcomings all the > more frustrating. When it comes to the concrete examination of the > different cases, Bach's book often lacks attention to some key > specificities of the German context. Again, the reconstructed palace > can serve as an example. In recent years, there has been growing > attention to how the double memory of Nazism and state socialism--as > urgent as these are--has served to obscure Germany's colonial past > and made it harder for people of color to mount challenges to the way > race functioned in postwar Germany. These debates are not merely > academic. Rather, as the struggle over the memory landscape of German > colonialism in Berlin shows, they were and are grounded in the claims > of activists on the ground. To avoid missing these crucial aspects of > the conflicts over the palace, one does well to turn elsewhere, for > example to Fatima El-Tayeb's treatment of the debate in _Undeutsch: > Die Konstruktion des Anderen in der Postmigrantischen Gesellschaft_ > (2016). Nonetheless, the central virtue of Bach's book is that more > attention to the specificities of the German context do not run > counter to but potentially complement his conceptual apparatus. > > Notes > > [1]. Maritta Adam-Tkalec, "Umbenennung der Mohrenstraße: Kein > Respekt gegenüber der Geschichte Berlins," _Berliner Zeitung_, > August 26, 2016, > https://www.berliner-zeitung.de/mensch-metropole/umbenennung-der-mohrenstrasse-kein-respekt-gegenueber-der-geschichte-berlins-li.39529. > > > [2]. Die Initiatoren des 3. Festes zur Umbenennung der Berliner > M*straße, "Umbenennung der Mohrenstraße: Mehr Respekt vor der > Geschichte von Menschen Afrikanischer Herkunft in Berlin - Offener > Brief an die Redaktion der Berliner Zeitung," Africavenir, August 30, > 2016, > http://www.africavenir.org/fr/newsdetails/archive/2016/august/article/umbenennung-der-mohrenstrasse-mehr-respekt-vor-der-geschichte-von-menschen-afrikanischer-herkunft-i.html?tx_ttnews%5Bday%5D=31. > > > Citation: David Spreen. Review of Bach, Jonathan P. G., _What > Remains: Everyday Encounters with the Socialist Past in Germany_. > H-Socialisms, H-Net Reviews. August, 2020. > URL: https://www.h-net.org/reviews/showrev.php?id=52342 > > This work is licensed under a Creative Commons > Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 United States > License. > > -=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=- Groups.io Links: You receive all messages sent to this group. View/Reply Online (#740): https://groups.io/g/marxmail/message/740 Mute This Topic: https://groups.io/mt/76365019/21656 -=-=- POSTING RULES & NOTES<br />#1 YOU MUST clip all extraneous text when replying to a message.<br />#2 This mail-list, like most, is publicly & permanently archived.<br />#3 Subscribe and post under an alias if #2 is a concern. -=-=- Group Owner: marxmail+ow...@groups.io Unsubscribe: https://groups.io/g/marxmail/leave/8674936/1316126222/xyzzy [arch...@mail-archive.com] -=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-
