Daniel Shays
09-02-2006, 06:27 AM
A very decent book by John Ardagh, Anglo-Jewish Francophile turned German enthusiast in the mid eighties. It reads like one part diary one part in depth reporting as he obtained interviews with major politicians, artistic personalities, and other high profile people of "Germany": West Germany to him, the East is always abbreviated to GDR and although it is only given one chapter of its own, it is substantial and multi-faceted. Below I transcribe the first segment of highlights. Unfortunately for the "Oxford man" Ardagh (who met his German wife, Katinka while touring Germany for 10 months for this book), typos abound and I have preserved them.
Ardagh, John. Germany and the Germans. New York, N.Y.: Harper & Row, 1987. 319-326.
On East Berlin:
“Where the Unter den Linden avenue sweeps up to the wide Marx-Engels-Platz, heart of the modern city, several of the old majestic buildings including the State Opera House, the Pergamon Museum and the Protestant Cathedral have been meticulously restored to their original form. And beside them several massive new edifices stand as symbols of the GDR’s assertive ambitions as a modern state – notably the towering white rectangle of the Foreign Ministry, and the Palace of the Republic with its gleaming façade of bronze-coloured glass. This part of the city is grandiose to say the least – severe looking, but tidy. There are plenty of grey uniformed police around, ready to shout at any visitor who jay-walks, and maybe to fine him; and often there are soldiers too. The first time that I saw the steel-helmeted, goose-stepping changing-of-the-guard outside the Memorial to the Victims of Fascism and Militarism, it evoked memories that gave me a nasty frisson, How crassly tactless to present this sight to tourists in the Under (sic – gassedarbeiter) den Linden. The goose-step is still widely used in the GDR’s Army, and it serves to symbolize the fact that militarism in this half of Germany did not die with Hitler in the bunker.
At the nearby Alexanderplatz the scene is more gentle. This vast modern piazza, enclosed by new department stores and skyscraper hotels, is now the main shopping and entertainment centre of East Berlin and something of a showpiece too, pleasant and lively in its way, with music playing, a fountain splashing, and a curious ‘international clock’ used as a meeting-place like Eros at Piccadilly Circus. The crowds seem to be relaxed and good-humoured, and are quite well dressed too in a classless sort of way.
…
Eastwards from here stretches the long and pompous Karl-Marx-Allee: its giant blocks of workers’ flats where (sic- Gassedarbeiter) built in the 1950s in a Stalinist-brutalist style and the street was then the Stalin-Allee. At least the sheer size of these buildings balances the great width of the street, giving it a Champs-Élysées -like scale. It is not exactly ablaze with Parisian glitter: yet, as in other parts of the city, the buildings are often festooned with red bunting, flags and banners, and slogans in the genre of ‘Socialism Cares for the Happiness of the People’ and ‘Actively we Support the Peace Policy of the Beloved Soviet Union’.
Everyone drives at a vigilant 100kph maximum, for the police are quick to impose a fine if you faster; and if you are found to have been drinking alcohol, even a small amount, the penalties are stiff. In the GDR, even more than in West Germany, rules are there to be obeyed.
On Leipzig:
In the old squares and side-streets around the Thomaskirche, where J.S. Bach was organist, we found cosy little privately-run cafés and tearooms whispering the last enchantments of some pre-war Central European Gemütlichkeit and frequented by gentle-looking student couples and civilized elderly music-lovers.
…
Then from Leipzig we drove to Weimar, where Goethe’s residence and garden-house and park where he walked have all been devotedly preserved, as have the houses associated with Schiller, Liszt, and Bach. The town gets its fill of tourists but it has not been commercially tarted up in the process as would happen in the West: it remains much as it probably was before the war, a quiet, slightly seedy little place with half-timbered houses, and its melancholy air goes well with its many poetic memories. The surrounding villages of the Thuringian and Saxon countryside also retains the fell of pre-war days: far fewer of their houses have been pulled down or modernised than in the Federal Republic.
On Prussianism:
Westerners with long memories who visit the GDR will often make the observation that in many respects it has preserved the old pre-war flavour of Germany much more than the West has done. The tempo of life is slower and modernism has made a less obvious impact; the little shops and the styles of graphic design are more antiquated, the cars are smaller and less ubiquitous, and many streets are still cobbled. How far these are advantages is open to question. And there are Other things that have changed less too – old-style Prussian authoritarianism, for example, is more alive and well under Communism than it is in the Bundesrepublik.
On June 7th Fascist Revolt
Much has been argued and written since – mainly in the West – about this historic ‘June 7 Revolt’, the first of its kind in post-war Communist Europe. In the eyes of many cold warriors, its suppression was a typical example of Soviet brutality. Others more sympathetic to socialism will point out – not quite unfairly – that the Russian fire-power was in fact used sparingly, that the death toll was low in the circumstances, and that anyway the strike was already fizzling out of its own accord for it had no future. It could also be added, more controversially, that some of the strike instigators were rabid anti-Communists such as ex-Wehrmacht officers and former pro-Nazi teachers who had been drafted into manual labour after 1945.
On economy (part I)
One undoubted achievement of the GDR, dating from the 1960s, has been its economic progress. Capitalist West Germany of course is far wealthier: but the more valuable comparisons are to be made with the East. The GDR is economically and industrially much the strongest country in the Soviet Bloc, with living standards an estimated 50 percent higher than in Russia, and by as early as 1970 it had become the world’s tenth leading industrial power. This can be attributed above all to the innate German qualities of efficiency, thoroughness, technical flair and so on. And the achievement appears especially remarkable when set in the context of the enormous handicaps that the country had to face at the outset, the heaviest of them being Soviet reparations. In contrast to the very light amount of dismantling carried out by the Allies in the West, and soon outweighed by Marshall Aid
Ardagh, John. Germany and the Germans. New York, N.Y.: Harper & Row, 1987. 319-326.
On East Berlin:
“Where the Unter den Linden avenue sweeps up to the wide Marx-Engels-Platz, heart of the modern city, several of the old majestic buildings including the State Opera House, the Pergamon Museum and the Protestant Cathedral have been meticulously restored to their original form. And beside them several massive new edifices stand as symbols of the GDR’s assertive ambitions as a modern state – notably the towering white rectangle of the Foreign Ministry, and the Palace of the Republic with its gleaming façade of bronze-coloured glass. This part of the city is grandiose to say the least – severe looking, but tidy. There are plenty of grey uniformed police around, ready to shout at any visitor who jay-walks, and maybe to fine him; and often there are soldiers too. The first time that I saw the steel-helmeted, goose-stepping changing-of-the-guard outside the Memorial to the Victims of Fascism and Militarism, it evoked memories that gave me a nasty frisson, How crassly tactless to present this sight to tourists in the Under (sic – gassedarbeiter) den Linden. The goose-step is still widely used in the GDR’s Army, and it serves to symbolize the fact that militarism in this half of Germany did not die with Hitler in the bunker.
At the nearby Alexanderplatz the scene is more gentle. This vast modern piazza, enclosed by new department stores and skyscraper hotels, is now the main shopping and entertainment centre of East Berlin and something of a showpiece too, pleasant and lively in its way, with music playing, a fountain splashing, and a curious ‘international clock’ used as a meeting-place like Eros at Piccadilly Circus. The crowds seem to be relaxed and good-humoured, and are quite well dressed too in a classless sort of way.
…
Eastwards from here stretches the long and pompous Karl-Marx-Allee: its giant blocks of workers’ flats where (sic- Gassedarbeiter) built in the 1950s in a Stalinist-brutalist style and the street was then the Stalin-Allee. At least the sheer size of these buildings balances the great width of the street, giving it a Champs-Élysées -like scale. It is not exactly ablaze with Parisian glitter: yet, as in other parts of the city, the buildings are often festooned with red bunting, flags and banners, and slogans in the genre of ‘Socialism Cares for the Happiness of the People’ and ‘Actively we Support the Peace Policy of the Beloved Soviet Union’.
Everyone drives at a vigilant 100kph maximum, for the police are quick to impose a fine if you faster; and if you are found to have been drinking alcohol, even a small amount, the penalties are stiff. In the GDR, even more than in West Germany, rules are there to be obeyed.
On Leipzig:
In the old squares and side-streets around the Thomaskirche, where J.S. Bach was organist, we found cosy little privately-run cafés and tearooms whispering the last enchantments of some pre-war Central European Gemütlichkeit and frequented by gentle-looking student couples and civilized elderly music-lovers.
…
Then from Leipzig we drove to Weimar, where Goethe’s residence and garden-house and park where he walked have all been devotedly preserved, as have the houses associated with Schiller, Liszt, and Bach. The town gets its fill of tourists but it has not been commercially tarted up in the process as would happen in the West: it remains much as it probably was before the war, a quiet, slightly seedy little place with half-timbered houses, and its melancholy air goes well with its many poetic memories. The surrounding villages of the Thuringian and Saxon countryside also retains the fell of pre-war days: far fewer of their houses have been pulled down or modernised than in the Federal Republic.
On Prussianism:
Westerners with long memories who visit the GDR will often make the observation that in many respects it has preserved the old pre-war flavour of Germany much more than the West has done. The tempo of life is slower and modernism has made a less obvious impact; the little shops and the styles of graphic design are more antiquated, the cars are smaller and less ubiquitous, and many streets are still cobbled. How far these are advantages is open to question. And there are Other things that have changed less too – old-style Prussian authoritarianism, for example, is more alive and well under Communism than it is in the Bundesrepublik.
On June 7th Fascist Revolt
Much has been argued and written since – mainly in the West – about this historic ‘June 7 Revolt’, the first of its kind in post-war Communist Europe. In the eyes of many cold warriors, its suppression was a typical example of Soviet brutality. Others more sympathetic to socialism will point out – not quite unfairly – that the Russian fire-power was in fact used sparingly, that the death toll was low in the circumstances, and that anyway the strike was already fizzling out of its own accord for it had no future. It could also be added, more controversially, that some of the strike instigators were rabid anti-Communists such as ex-Wehrmacht officers and former pro-Nazi teachers who had been drafted into manual labour after 1945.
On economy (part I)
One undoubted achievement of the GDR, dating from the 1960s, has been its economic progress. Capitalist West Germany of course is far wealthier: but the more valuable comparisons are to be made with the East. The GDR is economically and industrially much the strongest country in the Soviet Bloc, with living standards an estimated 50 percent higher than in Russia, and by as early as 1970 it had become the world’s tenth leading industrial power. This can be attributed above all to the innate German qualities of efficiency, thoroughness, technical flair and so on. And the achievement appears especially remarkable when set in the context of the enormous handicaps that the country had to face at the outset, the heaviest of them being Soviet reparations. In contrast to the very light amount of dismantling carried out by the Allies in the West, and soon outweighed by Marshall Aid