Eastern Berlin Revisited
KELMAN, STEVEN
A TRAVELER'S NOTEBOOK-2 Eastern Berlin Revisited BY STEVEN KELMAN Berlin The plethora of recent articles in the American press on the looming economic catastrophe in what used to be East...
...I have always worked...
...The old fruit and vegetable places display kiwis from New Zealand, avocados from Israel, and above all what throughout Eastern Europe have somehow become a symbol of Western consumer abundance, bananas...
...Western managers feel more foreign in the East than in Lagos," an article warned...
...In the bookstore downtown on Alexanderplatz paperback novels, some good and some bad, have replaced the collections of the writings of deposed Communist boss Erich Honecker...
...She assumes that when the switchover is made, the number of designers at her company will be dramatically reduced, she will not be able to master a computer, and she will lose her job...
...The supermarkets and department stores have mostly been taken over by western German chains, and they offer a selection of merchandise previously unimaginable...
...A recent weekend edition featured a Sunday supplement on the new breed of German managers in the East...
...And a visitor returning here after an absence of 20 years finds that the gloominess is widely shared in the former capital of the Communist zone...
...I want to work, to make a contribution...
...Der Morgen ("The Morning"), originally the tiny-circulation daily of the National Liberal-Democratic Party, one of the satellite parties that participated in the Communist government, has reemerged as a nonaffiliated newspaper and advertises itself as "the East Berlin paper with the most local news...
...A second article on interacting with West German managers gave this practical advice: "Don't let yourself be scared by unknown expressions and Americanisms...
...But I don't think there will be anything for me to do...
...But as of July 1 those on the KuzarbeitNull, and many others as well, will simply belaid off...
...Although it is likely to survive, it will have to modernize...
...If the East-apocalypsism of the American press prepares one for such despair, however, it fails to give a sense of the improved fabric of everyday life despite the threatening economic crisis...
...East-apocalypsism, in short, may make no more sense now than East-euphoria did a year ago...
...at the height of the Depression...
...Both the style and the content of the Sunday supplement in Der Morgen teil a story that is in danger of being ignored...
...I spoke with a woman in her mid-50s who for 30 years has been a designer at a company that manufactures printing equipment...
...Millions of Germans in the East are currently working a reduced number of hours...
...But the papers have changed...
...For example, the American word 'manpower' that West Germans use so much means simply 'people.'" It further advises easterners to engage their western business counterparts in conversations about art and culture as a way of breaking the ice...
...Today the small establishments usually have a notice in the window reading "Owner:" followed by the new proprietor's name...
...But initially he was refused entry into the meeting because he was mistaken for the chauffeur...
...She worries that it will be impossible at her age to find new employment...
...Another fairly large section, dealing with the bad old days, includes a volume consisting of secret police reports on the country's political mood during 1989, uncovered in the wake of the November '89 liberation...
...All fruit and vegetable stores, for example, typically offered the same desultory selection of onions, cabbages, and maybe some pitiful apples and carrots...
...To judge from the subways and streetcars, the people here are still reading old East Berlin papers like the Berlin Zeitung, rather than the West German press...
...A telephone system that hardly works, huge expenses for pollution control plus liability for past ecological damage, uncertainty concerning rights to property expropriated after World War II, the collapse of the Soviet market that was a major purchaser of East German production—all these factors have made it difficult to transfer existing state-owned facilities to the private sector...
...Just as is the case outside Germany, there are some here who fear the political consequences of economic chaos...
...The German government will simply not tolerate a situation where every 50-yearold in the East is permanently unemployed, even if it has to employ them itself in public works projects...
...One hears talk of a possible 50 per cent unemployment rate, almost double the rate in the U.S...
...He had gotten dressed for the occasion (or, as he putit, "what was regarded in East Germany as being dressed up...
...In some sense, the worse the problems are, the better conditions will eventually be...
...Indeed, it seemed a bit incongruous to be listening to the anxieties of the printing equipment designer in the living room of a twentysomething relative (who also is likely to lose her job and is trying to land a training spot as a travel agent) filled with new furniture and a CD player...
...The front page of the section showed a full-color picture of a young, stylishly dressed, modishly coif fed man sitting atop a pile of rubble next to a rundown apartment building undergoing renovation—talking on a portable cellular telephone...
...a discussion with the former head of East German intelligence, who tells of his disillusionment with the regime's inflexibility while Mikhail S. Gorbachev was loosening thereinsinMoscow...
...Much of Der Morgen's supplement was taken up with tips to East Germans about how to interact with West German business partners...
...Your suit creates confidence, especially in negotiations with banks...
...His books include Behind the Berlin Wall, published by Houghton Mifflin in 1972...
...Lots of them are on what is referred to as Kuzarbeit-Null, or shortened shifts-zero—a euphemism for people who go to their jobs and do nothing because the place is not functioning...
...But they contributed to an overall dreariness: Shelves were half-empty, variety was limited, and the same items were for sale no matter where you went...
...Another new manager was quoted as saying he was upset that so much of his life had been wasted because he had grown up in East Germany...
...A TRAVELER'S NOTEBOOK-2 Eastern Berlin Revisited BY STEVEN KELMAN Berlin The plethora of recent articles in the American press on the looming economic catastrophe in what used to be East Germany suggests that East-euphoria has already given way to East-apocalypsism...
...At a conference I attended, a speaker alluded gingerly to the danger of his fellow East Germans being attracted by a new "guru...
...Changes in East Berlin's cultural life are readily apparent, too...
...A year later, wearing a gray suit, striped shirt, matching tie, and tinted glasses, he told the reporter interviewing him he realized that "if you want to make money, you need to be dressed accordingly...
...Perhaps too few reporters coming to eastern Germany are aware of what life was like before the collapse of the Communist regime...
...One 33-year-old East German quoted in the supplement told of arriving for a meeting at the Swiss Embassy with representatives of a Swiss firm that wished to do business with him...
...Up to now Bonn has been footing the bill...
...The woman designs by hand, while the firm's competitors in the West have taken advantage of computer-aided design tools for a decade or more...
...Steven Kelman, a longtime contributor to The New Leader, is a professor of public policy at Harvard University's Kennedy School of Government...
...He seemed to consciously use the exotic Indian word rather than the German word for "leader," which is of course Führer...
...East Berlin under Communism actually had a rather large number of small shops and restaurants, plus supermarkets and department stores...
...The basic problem is that eastern Germany is proving to be far less attractive to investors than had generally been expected...
...Their bold new signs, freshly washed windows and filled shelves have begun to brighten up the city's neighborhoods...
...Whatever, a good deal that is positive has happened since the East-West monetary union last July...
...It went on to quote a West German psychologist who said western and eastern managers have very different mentalities: "The East German manager emphasizes order and wants direction from above, the West German manager emphasizes the will to succeed...
...The most obvious change in the face of the city is its stores...
...Particularly over the last year, they have learned to go beyond press-release journalism...
...and even a long interview book with Honecker, who compares the end of Communism in Eastern Europe with the temporary setback Marx experienced after the fall of the Paris Commune in 1871...
...Yes, eastern Germany is going through tough times, and things are likely to get worse before they get better...
...A very large section is devoted to travel—Michelin guides to Paris, city maps of Vienna and books describing other places East Germans once could only dream about...
...At the same time, the new managers portrayed by Der Morgen are an example of easterners rising to the challenge of a different way of life, as are the journalists who write about them in a punchy, breezy style...
Vol. 74 • May 1991 • No. 6
