The wall in my backyard: east German women in transition

• Published in: Resources for feminist research 1995, Vol.24 (3/4), p.65-66
• Main Authors: Ruppert, Krisin, Dodds, Dinah, Allen-Thompson, Pam
• Format: Review
• Language: English
• Subjects: Attitudes; Children; German language; Interviews; Language culture relationship; National identity; Person; Social conditions & trends; Women
• ISSN: 0707-8412

Imagine waking up one day and finding that you no longer live in the country you have called home for the past 40 years. You cannot follow through with the plans you have made for your life because the economic situation of the country has changed. The services you relied on have been discontinued and the whole structure you were used to has collapsed. You are not prepared for life in this new country, but you don't have the choice to go back to the old one because it no longer exists. This describes in simple terms the situation that East Germans faced in 1990 when East Germany (the socialist German Democratic Republic) and West Germany (the capitalist Federal Republic of Germany) politically unified, on the terms of the Federal Republic of Germany. Not only did East Germans lose their national identity (if there is such a thing), but 40 years of history and everyday life were invalidated by West German politicians who interpreted the failure of East Germany's economy as evidence for unused lives and misspent time. Conveniently they ignored the fact that East Germany offered job security and a comfortable standard of living for its citizens without the crazy-making rat-race of capitalist countries. It will certainly take a long time before all these changes and their implications will be reappraised from different perspectives. Much more interesting than to wait for "official" interpretations by historians and the like is the oral history approach that Dinah Dodds and Pam Allen-Thompson chose. Dodds is a professor of German and Allen-Thompson is a professor of Women's Studies. They wanted to find out how women in particular were affected by the Wende (turn) and what they made of their lives before and after unification. The Wall in My Backyard: East German Women in Transition is a compilation of interviews they conducted with 18 women. The first set of interviews took place shortly after unification in the early months of 1991; the women who were available were interviewed again at a later date (July 1992) to see how their lives and attitudes had changed. The focal points of the interviews are issues important to women, like child care, women's work being a single mother. The interviews themselves were edited to read as first person accounts; the voice and questions of the interviewer have been erased.