http://mcu.sagepub.com
Culture
Journal of Material
1999; 4; 79Journal of Material Culture
Milena Veenis
Consumption in East Germany: The Seduction and Betrayal of Things
http://mcu.sagepub.com/cgi/content/abstract/4/1/79
The online version of this article can be found at:
Published by:
http://www.sagepublications.com
can be found at:Journal of Material CultureAdditional services and information for
http://mcu.sagepub.com/cgi/alertsEmail Alerts:
http://mcu.sagepub.com/subscriptionsSubscriptions:
http://www.sagepub.com/journalsReprints.navReprints:
http://www.sagepub.com/journalsPermissions.navPermissions:
© 1999 SAGE Publications. All rights reserved. Not for commercial use or unauthorized distribution.
at UCL Library Services on August 7, 2007http://mcu.sagepub.comDownloaded from
CONSUMPTION IN EAST
GERMANY
The Seduction and Betrayal of Things
x MILENA VEENIS
University of Amsterdam
Abstract
In this article the author focuses upon the feelings and expectations that
pertained to Western material objects in East Germany, both before and after
the fall of the Berlin Wall. Before these things were actually there, most East
Germans seemed to have high hopes with regard to a life surrounded by
this material-consumptive abundance. But now that the East German
material world is completely Westernized, most people express severe
doubts and distinctly ambivalent feelings with regard to the material
changes that have occured in their country. By analysing the history of (the
ideology surrounding) material culture in East Germany, characterized by
an enormous gap between attractive promises on the one hand and a harsh
everyday reality on the other, Veenis asserts that the material world on the
other side of the Wall seemed to be the ultimate realization of all those
beautiful sounding socialist promises. Within a socialist ideology, material
development was the most important anchorpoint for far-reaching promises,
which – taken together – boiled down to the idea that in the wake of
(material) growth, amelioration and success, it would eventually be possible
to realize a completely harmonious state of being. And because of their
beautiful appearance, the sense of harmony and prosperity, the wonderful
fragrance, the shining colours and the deep gleam that exuded from them,
Western consumer-goods were attractive in an almost irresistible sensuousaesthetic
way. By emphasizing the sensuous characteristics of objects, Veenis
uses the East German situation to further extend Daniel Miller and Colin
Campbell’s ideas with regard to the present-day place and role of consumption
and the power of attraction of things in general.
Key Words x consumption x East Germany x material culture
79
Journal of Material Culture
Copyright © 1999 SAGE Publications (London, Thousand Oaks, CA and New Delhi)
Vol. 4(1): 79–112 [1359-1835(199903)4:1; 79–112;007375]
05 Veenis (to) d 19/1/99 1:54 pm Page 79
© 1999 SAGE Publications. All rights reserved. Not for commercial use or unauthorized distribution.
at UCL Library Services on August 7, 2007http://mcu.sagepub.comDownloaded from
In the attempt to cope with . . . alienation . . . men and women longed for a
new wholeness in their lives; . . . in times of rapid change a hunger for totality
came to the fore – the yearning for a fully furnished house. (Mosse, 1987: 11)
It did not last long, but for some weeks the inhabitants of East Germany
must have thought that they were in seventh heaven. That was in the
autumn of 1989 when the Berlin Wall came tumbling down. When
people talk about those days, there is something in their eyes which
reflects the hopes and tensions they must then have experienced. From
that moment on, not only the surrounding world, but also their own
private lives would become different: more free and democratic, but
especially more comfortable, wealthier and richer. That is what they
thought. That is what they hoped for. And in most stories people tell
about those days, it is clear that their expectations largely pertained to
the material and consumption changes which people hoped for and
which, as is well known, indeed came about.
Walking around in Rudolstadt, a village of about 30,000 inhabitants
in Thüringen where I stayed for 15 months in 1993 and 1994 to do fieldwork,1
one can only be amazed when looking at the changes that have
taken place since the fall of the Wall. The large municipal hall at the
main square has just been renovated and its appearance is grander than
it ever was before. The former state hotel next to it is also newly renovated.
At the time of the GDR, one of the Intershops of Rudolstadt was
situated here.2 Especially meant to entice Westerners to spend their hard
currency, this was the place where West German visitors tried to spend
the amount of money per day they were obliged to change into Ostmark.3
In the meantime the Intershops, of course, have disappeared. Their function
as Western consumer-paradise has become completely superfluous
now that everything is for sale in East Germany as well: from computer
hardware to fresh basil and from gold-decorated cocktail glasses to the
newest designs of Opel, Renault and Volkswagen. The dream has come
true: nowadays, East Germans can buy all those beautiful things which
in former days they could only dream about.
And they do; especially during market-days. From all over the city
women come to the main square to do their shopping and while they
buy their favourite Dutch cheese and exotic fruits, they cast covetous
eyes on the market-stalls where all kinds of clothes and shoddy things
are exposed. It is the kind of merchandise that is sold at markets all over
Europe: decorated pots and vases, balls with rotating plastic flowers, and
expensive-looking tea-sets decorated with pastoral scenes. Most of the
clothes that are for sale here can be categorized as cheap-but-expensivelooking.
For a small amount of money one can buy real patent leather
shoes here, or soft-fluffy jerseys with golden stitched flowers.
When there is no market, the square mainly functions as a car park.
J o u r n a l o f M AT E R I A L C U LT U R E 4 ( 1 )
80
05 Veenis (to) d 19/1/99 1:54 pm Page 80
© 1999 SAGE Publications. All rights reserved. Not for commercial use or unauthorized distribution.
at UCL Library Services on August 7, 2007http://mcu.sagepub.comDownloaded from
Many expensive-looking cars are parked here, especially in front of the
little pub ‘The Tuchmacherhaus’: Mercedes Benzs, BMWs and several
four-wheel drive vehicles with striking spoilers and coloured rims. ‘The
Tuchmacherhaus’ is well known for its clientele; this is the place where
most of the town’s Möchtegerns (‘would-be’s) meet: all those who like to
show that they have ‘reached something’, that they ‘are somebody’.
Expensively dressed, often in collar-and-tie, they enter, seemingly
glowing with self-confidence, the keys of their car tinkling in their hands.
They usually park their cars in front of the door and when they cross
the threshold of the pub, they press the little remote control button in
the key of the car: a little light flashes and all doors and windows are
closed at once. The bunch of keys is demonstratively put down on the
bar. And there they lie, next to each other: the shining stars of Mercedes
and the flashlights of Opel.
Most conversations in this place deal with social status and success.
The visitors tell each other with whom they have drunk Moët et
Chandon last week, what they consider to be the best way to consume
Rémy Martin, what expensive hotels they have visited during their last
business-trips and – oh! when one of the visitors happens to be searching
for a new home, one of the estate agents happens to have something
very interesting for sale.
Among the regular visitors of this place there are some Wessis,4 but
although the local visitors do not mind drinking with them, their popularity
is unstable. Wessis are like the Deutsche Mark and all beautiful
things that are now for sale everywhere: God and Devil at the same time;
condemned because of the cursed attractiveness that stems from them.
It is a power of attraction which nobody can resist. But alas, so much has
changed with their arrival, that even the visitors of the Tuchmacherhaus
miss the old days. They explain that although then there was almost
nothing for sale and although the few Western things that people possessed
were really cherished as precious little treasures,5 in a way those
days were better. No one possessed more than anyone else and material
possessions simply could not assume as much importance as they do
today. And therefore, the relations between people in those days were
much warmer, more intense and somehow more ‘real’, but today, as the
saying goes, ‘hast du was, bist du was’ (‘if you have something, you are
somebody’). Material possessions and status, that is all that counts. The
more someone possesses, the more worth people attach to him. And while
they complain about these developments, the inebriated visitors of the
Tuchmacherhaus order another round: long live the warm atmosphere of
fraternization that comes with drinking together. It reminds them faintly
of the old days, when people still had time for each other.
They may be a bit extreme, the visitors of the little pub at the marketplace.
But in a somewhat enlarged form, they nevertheless represent
Veenis: C O N S U M P T I O N I N E A S T G E R M A N Y
81
05 Veenis (to) d 19/1/99 1:54 pm Page 81
© 1999 SAGE Publications. All rights reserved. Not for commercial use or unauthorized distribution.
at UCL Library Services on August 7, 2007http://mcu.sagepub.comDownloaded from
some of the themes that are highly topical in East Germany nowadays.
Because no matter whether they have ‘lost’ or ‘won’ by the collapse of
the communist regime in their country, no matter if the Wende has
brought them success or the contrary, most East Germans whom I met
seemed to agree about one point: all those beautiful things which are
now for sale everywhere may have been extremely meaningful before
they were available, but their arrival has brought about a series of
developments which everybody equally condemns. No matter whom
one asks, when the question relates to consumption or the material
changes in their country, people usually come up with the same kind of
story.
Nowadays, people’s personal value and identity is almost reduced to
the (amount of) possessions they are able to display and everybody is
constantly striving for more. It is no exaggeration to conclude that
material objects are driving people apart. Since the Wende, the socioeconomic
differentiation between people has strongly increased and this
is particularly visible when one looks at the kind of things people can
afford. But apart from the fact that material possessions represent the
growing socio-economic differences in East Germany, material abundance
also results in strong feelings of mutual rivalry among people who
are in a comparable socio-economic position. Women who used to help
each other to acquire scarce goods now make each other green with
envy, competing about who for instance has the most beautiful and
expensive baby clothes. People try as hard as possible to impress each
other, and in this process material objects play a role both treacherous
and alienating.
They are the beautiful masks behind which people have learned to
hide their true feelings and humanity. One has to be tough these days in
order to be successful; ruthless and selfish. Stand up for yourself! Sell
yourself! Those are the main lessons which young children have to learn
now that social life is largely organized according to the slogan ‘hast du
was, bist du was’. And in the arena of competition, which East German
society nowadays is, material possessions play an important and vital
role: by dressing well, driving an expensive car and constantly showing
off what they possess, people seduce others (and, if they are not careful,
also themselves) into believing in their excellence. And this is the only
thing that counts in today’s social rat race.
East German society has changed fundamentally since the fall of the
Wall and the ubiquity of these changes has resulted in deep feelings of
insecurity and estrangement. These feelings are not only expressed
through, and strengthened by, the material-consumptive changes that
have taken place in this country, but they are also actively stimulated by
the material-consumptive transformation of society as such. And it is
clear that the material-consumptive changes are more than just a symbol
J o u r n a l o f M AT E R I A L C U LT U R E 4 ( 1 )
82
05 Veenis (to) d 19/1/99 1:54 pm Page 82
© 1999 SAGE Publications. All rights reserved. Not for commercial use or unauthorized distribution.
at UCL Library Services on August 7, 2007http://mcu.sagepub.comDownloaded from
of the all-embracing socio-economic, cultural and ideological metamorphosis
of East Germany, which has resulted in such deep feelings of frustration,
estrangement and nostalgia. ‘The Material’ is one of the main
spindles within the large-scale (political, ideological, socio-economic and
cultural) transformations, in which East Germans have recently found
themselves; it is both a symbol of people’s feelings of confusion and
estrangement, and actively contributes to them.
And although nobody approves of this development, almost everybody
participates and this has strong emotionally and socially estranging
consequences for almost all concerned. For no matter how hard
people try to relativize, mock and ridicule it, everyday East German practice
clearly shows that people associate outward appearances and
material possessions on the one hand, with individual worth and personality
on the other. But what in fact is a personality or ‘own identity’
worth, which one can buy and exchange for about 3000 DM?6
Yet, this is exactly what the inhabitants of East Germany are collectively
doing: their whole existence has to be furnished anew and everything
that reminds them of the old days is thrown away. Every time when
the refuse lorry comes by, the pavements are overflowing with bedrooms
and kitchens; waiting for the dustmen to pick them up in order to grind
them until there is nothing left but a bit of dust. A whole way of life is
thrown away and at the same time the anger, anxiety and doubts about
this can be found everywhere in East Germany. The material-consuming
affluence in which the country is immersed is both a source of strong
desire and extreme disappointment.
‘It’s all a fraud’, the old man snapped at me, when I was interviewing
him at the Christmas market in Rudolstadt. And he added: ‘it is
already the third time that they have betrayed us!’ I had asked him about
the recent material changes in his country, and in the midst of the
material abundance and the sweet flavours of burnt sugar and fritters,
his answer sounded disenchantingly bitter. All those beautiful things by
which we were surrounded turned out to be nothing but a ‘fraud’. And
yet, after our conversation had come to an end, the disapproving words
which he had just uttered almost seemed forgotten, as the man went on
doing what most of his fellow townsmen did at the Rudolstädter market:
he walked away, looking for another beautiful Christmas present for one
of his beloved ones.
The material changes in East Germany have brought about a strange
combination of feelings and experiences. Desire and disappointment go
hand in hand, and although most people ardently long for ever more
things, they nevertheless experience the equation of personal worth with
material possessions as an extremely estranging development. It is a
combination of feelings, which on the one hand strongly reminds one of
Campbell’s famous dictum that ‘all real consumption is a disillusioning
Veenis: C O N S U M P T I O N I N E A S T G E R M A N Y
83
05 Veenis (to) d 19/1/99 1:54 pm Page 83
© 1999 SAGE Publications. All rights reserved. Not for commercial use or unauthorized distribution.
at UCL Library Services on August 7, 2007http://mcu.sagepub.comDownloaded from
experience’ (Campbell, 1987: 89). According to him, this disappointment
is related to the fact that consumption is really the expression of a romantic
longing: ‘individuals day-dream about possible pleasurable experiences
and scenarios . . . which are improved versions of the reality they know
. . . improved . . . to the point of near-perfection’ (Campbell, 1997: 39).
In an attempt to realize their day-dreams, people attach them to particular
goods and this helps us to understand, so Campbell’s argument
goes, why the acquisition of material objects is disappointing: there is
always a gap ‘between the real and the imagined’ which ‘can never actually
be closed’ (1997: 38). And although this gap subsequently is the
source of a new material-consuming desire, consumption itself is always
a slightly disillusioning experience (Campbell, 1987: 86).
On the other hand, one could take the East German disappointment
about things to be an expression of what Daniel Miller calls ‘the alienatory
consequences of mass consumer culture’ (Miller, 1987: 209).
According to Miller, alienation is a necessary phase in the developmental
process in which people use objects in their striving for ‘self-production’
(1987: 210). In short, Miller’s argument is that people identify with
certain objects,7 but since they thereby objectify themselves, they experience
a feeling of alienation. This alienatory feeling is negated through
consumption. And since, at least according to Miller’s thesis, the object
‘adds’ something to the subject, the individual is one step further in his
own subjective development. According to Miller material objects –
although temporarily alienating – play an active and eventually positive,
identity-constitutive role in the process of human self-development.
Identification, alienation, continuous longing and strong disillusionment:
with regard to the material developments in East Germany, these
feelings and experiences are all very easy to grasp. But although it seems
obvious to interpret the present-day situation in East Germany as an
exemplary illustration of the complex relation between humans and
objects, as described by Miller and/or Campbell, the man I met at the
Christmas market in Rudolstadt made it clear to me that, if I really wanted
to understand what is going on in East Germany these days, I would first
have to find out what kind of expectations pertained to the material world
which had sparkled so brightly on the other side of the Wall.
‘Fraud’, the man called it, when he explained to me how he felt:
‘deceived, for the third time’. And with these words, he made clear that
there was an extreme discrepancy between the expectations with regard
to Western affluence and its reality. By associating the present-day
‘fraud’ and ‘betrayal’ of things with the ‘fraud’ and ‘betrayal’ of former
times (the catastrophes of both national-socialism and socialism), he also
seemed to suggest that East German expectations with regard to Western
consumer-goods had been nourished by older expectations, by older
promises and older pledges. His words made clear that the highly
J o u r n a l o f M AT E R I A L C U LT U R E 4 ( 1 )
84
05 Veenis (to) d 19/1/99 1:54 pm Page 84
© 1999 SAGE Publications. All rights reserved. Not for commercial use or unauthorized distribution.
at UCL Library Services on August 7, 2007http://mcu.sagepub.comDownloaded from
ambivalent feelings towards material objects could only be understood
by taking into account the turbulent East German history.
It is a history that, as even the most superficial analysis will reveal,
is characterized by a succession of major ideals, which time and again
led to nothing but failure. After the national-socialist ideology and
promises had dominated all of (East) German life for more than a decade,
they were replaced by an equally dominant and all-embracing ideological
promise, which was also meant to control every aspect of people’s
private lives.
And the longer I lived in the highly tense atmosphere of this country,
the stronger became my impression that the high expectations which so
many East Germans had about Western material goods, both pertained
to a promise which was central to (East German) socialist ideology, and
also (be it in a less explicit and pointed way) underlay the ambivalent
and contradictory ways – as described by Campbell and Miller – in
which people relate to material objects more generally. It is a ‘promise’,
in which the striving for more, for better, for (personal) growth and
development is held out as a means to reach some Thing – that is: a more
definite, more permanent, more stable, more solid state of being. It is
the promise that, by striving forward, we will eventually reach what
under socialist rule was called the ‘true appropriation of human nature’
(Pracht, 1978: 22) or the ‘happiness of a fully realized life’ (Pracht, 1978:
85), and what cultural anthropologists might call the development of our
‘Identities’, or ‘the subjective consciousness of Belonging’ (Touraine,
1995: 139).
When we relate the East German case – especially before, but in a
more ambivalent way also after the demise of the Berlin Wall – to the
theoretical discussions about the relation between people and objects, I
think it shows us that the contradictory role of material objects does not
stem from the potential to ‘develop identities’ (Miller, 1987) with the help
of objects, or to ‘realize dreams, with all the disappointing consequences
this involves’ (Campbell, 1987); but rather from ‘the dream to Realize, or
to Have an Identity’. It is a distinctly modernist dream, pushed to its outer
limits by socialist ideology and rule: the dream that, if only we try hard
enough, if only we keep on striving for better, for more, or for whatever
future goal we define worth striving for, some Thing will await us there;
something more solid, more stable and more quiet than the turmoil of
our never-ending searching and striving. It is a dream that promises to
solve what Georges Bataille has called the ‘fundamental problem’ (1991:
131) underlying the modern bourgeois world, both in its Calvinist and
capitalist form, and in its anti-(bourgeois-)form of socialism. Phrased as a
question: ‘How can man find himself – or regain himself – seeing that the
action to which the search commits him in one way or another is precisely
what estranges him from himself?’ (1991)
Veenis: C O N S U M P T I O N I N E A S T G E R M A N Y
85
05 Veenis (to) d 19/1/99 1:54 pm Page 85
© 1999 SAGE Publications. All rights reserved. Not for commercial use or unauthorized distribution.
at UCL Library Services on August 7, 2007http://mcu.sagepub.comDownloaded from
What Bataille describes here is the internal contradictory striving for
the development of a Self, which, by means of the developmental
process as such, is by implication never as solid and complete as the term
‘Self’ (and the feelings and expectations that surround it) seems to imply.
And I think that the feelings of disappointment and bitterness, which are
so widespread in East Germany these days, largely pertain to these contradictory
strivings and desires: the desire to develop oneself and to
become (someone) on the one hand, and the desire to be (someone) and
to have an identity on the other.
And I think that East German frustration is not just caused by the
fact that a whole way of life (including the most personal notions and
feelings) has recently turned out to be relative, variable and liable to
external influences. What makes this development especially painful is
the experience (that the inhabitants of this country are for the first time
confronted with) of what one could call the ‘post-modern condition’. The
relativity of the notion ‘personal identity’ may be child’s play for (postmodern)
anthropologists,8 it is quite a different experience for credulous
East Germans. All the more so because they must have expected the contrary,
when they looked at the other side of the Wall. The beautiful
material world they saw there, with its harmonious aesthetic compositions
and its tangible, soft and sensuous characteristics, somehow
seemed to be the concrete realization and the ultimate fulfilment of all
the beautiful-sounding but never-realized (socialist) promises about the
Golden Future, in which we would all have a fully developed Self, while
living in complete harmony with each other. And as the socialist message
time and again made clear, this socialist Heaven on Earth would eventually
come true, one day, if only we tried hard enough to live up to the
beautiful socialist rules and ideals.
As I will show next, socialist Utopia promised to bring about a fully
harmonious situation, in which complete self-fulfilment would go hand
in hand with mutual solidarity. And since this promise was from the
outset attached to, and associated with, concrete material growth,
amelioration and progress, it is no wonder that the inhabitants of East
Germany somehow ‘thought’ that the shining brightness on the other
side of the Wall was nothing more and nothing less than the ultimate
realization of the beautiful sounding socialist promises about ‘Progress
. . . and the further development of humanity’ (Dornheim, 1966: 120),
and the ‘happiness of a fully realized life’ (Pracht, 1978: 85).
INDUSTRIAL FANTASIES
‘Nothing more will grow here. An entire nation stopped existing . . .
Hitler killed German identity at its roots by stealing and soiling all
national myths . . . murdering their language’ (Kaes, 1989: 65). This is a
J o u r n a l o f M AT E R I A L C U LT U R E 4 ( 1 )
86
05 Veenis (to) d 19/1/99 1:54 pm Page 86
© 1999 SAGE Publications. All rights reserved. Not for commercial use or unauthorized distribution.
at UCL Library Services on August 7, 2007http://mcu.sagepub.comDownloaded from
description of the situation in Germany after the Second World War.
Apart from the terrifying material and physical damage which the war
caused, many commentators of the post-war period agree that Germany
had above all lost itself. All orientation, everything that used to bring
about a sense of self-confidence or hold had disappeared: stained and
destroyed as it was by national-socialism. Dagerman described it well:
‘Germany is frozen to the dregs’ (1947: 111), and another chronicler
chooses an equally destructive element as metaphor for the postwar
German situation: ‘everything and even more was burned, carbonized,
and the forest, the beautiful German forest, was silent’ (Geissler, 1961:
159). The silent forest as a symbol of the destroyed German self-confidence
and self-esteem. Silence. Fire. Ice. They are all metaphoric
attempts to make clear that this nation has lost everything, but in the
last instance, particularly itself. In a cynical way Geissler describes how
many Germans try to find a new hold, in order not to fall into what he
calls The Immense Nothing (1961: 8). Deeply disappointed, Geissler
shows where his countrymen find this new hold: in the need for material
progress. In the necessity to rebuild the country, to clear the debris, to
make the houses livable again and, in addition to this, through obtaining
ever better, newer and more consumer goods.
‘Consumers. We are a nation of consumers. Ties and conformism,
shirts and non-conformism, we have consumers for everything. The only
thing that counts, is that everything – shirts or conformism – is for sale.’
Thus a disappointed Heinrich Böll wrote in 1960 (cited in Buruma 1994:
63).9 A lot has been said, written and discussed about the ‘German identity’
which since the war increasingly came to be defined and experienced
in consumptive terms.10 The discussions and writings about this
topic mainly concern the western part of the country. It is probably less
well known that in East Germany ‘the material’ also became the main
hold and means of orientation, albeit in a completely different way than
in West Germany.11
From the outset, the material reconstruction of the GDR was one of
the main anchorages of the socialist Utopia that was meant to give a new
form, direction and meaning to East German lives. The new life that was
established here was praised for bringing ‘the gift of a new people . . .
the spiritual flourishing of millions of working people’ (Herting, 1968:
902). It was a ‘blessing’ that it was finally possible to start ‘building up
a humanistic culture’ in this country; that the ‘progressive forces’ in this
country were finally able to develop ‘the soul of a liberated people’, full
of ‘respect and self respect’ (Uhlitzsch, 1966: 67); and that it was finally
possible to realize the ‘true appropriation of human essence by and for
the people’ (Pracht, 1978: 22). What was at stake here was the ‘full and
conscious return of human being to itself, as a social, that is human,
essence’ (1978: 22) and the socialist aim was to realize in this country a
Veenis: C O N S U M P T I O N I N E A S T G E R M A N Y
87
05 Veenis (to) d 19/1/99 1:54 pm Page 87
© 1999 SAGE Publications. All rights reserved. Not for commercial use or unauthorized distribution.
at UCL Library Services on August 7, 2007http://mcu.sagepub.comDownloaded from
‘cradle of peace, humanity, security and safety’ (Volkswacht, 12/9/89), a
‘true community of human beings’ (Meuschel, 1992: 192), in which it
would be possible to ‘freely develop the individual at the service of the
community of the people’ (1992: 78).
This is the bright and shining promise, as it was depicted in children’s
books, newspapers, journals and on (political) flyers and placards.
Look at the illustrations of completely modernized cities, immense engineering
works, large metal tubes on sunny construction-sites, where
workers are jovially eating their meals during lunchtime! Look at the
smile on the ruddy face of the working-class woman, who wipes the
sweat off her forehead, and look at the contented labourer, who pushes
the plough deep into the furrow, while encouraging his horse to still
better performances. They all exemplify the same promise: the future is
going to be better, we shall achieve our goals! And they also show where
happiness was to be expected: in the combination of mutual solidarity
and fellowship on the one hand and a technological, industrial improvement
of the material circumstances on the other. This is what those slanting,
upward-moving lines in economic charts are all about, when they
culminate in round twinkling balls at the end of the horizon, or disappear
into the universe, into space. Always further they go, approaching a goal
that is imperceptible. They look like reproductions of biblical fantasies,
placed in an earthly, industrialized context.
And although it is not always clear what exactly these pictures
promise, maybe that is precisely what they try to convey: a deliberate
vagueness. Maybe the most important message is the idea, the suggestion
that stems from them; the suggestion of growth, of progress, of
development into eternity. It is the suggestion of technological-material
progress as a means of realizing, not only material-economic prosperity
as such, but also ‘the true appropriation of human essence by and for
the people’. And it is this relationship (between material change and
improvement and more far-reaching (mental) growth and amelioration)
that was the main backbone of East German socialist historical–
materialist thinking and ideology. In East Germany, the material resurrection
of the country was unambiguously related to the striving for a
‘Utopian future’ (Borneman, 1992: 120).
A BATTLE AGAINST KITSCH
The interesting thing about the history of socialist ideology in the GDR
is that the socialist promise of a golden future was not just attached to
the material basis of society (the means and modes of production) as
such, but also to concrete material objects. Within the GDR, the design
of the material world was dictated by an outspokenly ideological conviction
that it was possible to give life a progressive sense, content and
meaning, by rearranging its material structure. As for instance the
J o u r n a l o f M AT E R I A L C U LT U R E 4 ( 1 )
88
05 Veenis (to) d 19/1/99 1:54 pm Page 88
© 1999 SAGE Publications. All rights reserved. Not for commercial use or unauthorized distribution.
at UCL Library Services on August 7, 2007http://mcu.sagepub.comDownloaded from
popular women’s magazine Kultur im Heim (Culture at Home) makes
clear: it is important to pay social and public attention to the design and
organization of even the most private material affairs, because:
If our living-room is nothing other than the passive representation of subjective
characteristics, images and tastes, we wouldn’t have to pay public
attention to it; it would be a matter of mere private concern. But its
important constitutive meaning for the development of human nature (‘des
menschlichen Wesens’), for the richer expression of socialist reality-coherences,
and its fundamental function within social psychology, make the
composition of the living-room a public issue concerning the ‘res publica’.
(KiH, 1977(4): 34)
Time and again, the editors of the journal made it clear that the inhabitants
of socialist East Germany ought to have a different relationship
towards their material surroundings; their taste concerning things ought
to be different from the inhabitants of bourgeois societies. ‘Everything
that was made within the GDR, was in fact made against the West’, an
East German designer told me. Every time she designed an object, she
had to explain what an object with the same function looked like in the
West, why that was reprehensible and in what (enlightening) way her
own design was superior. The so-called romantic frills and supposedly
ancient motives which were so popular in the West were ‘not wanted
in the GDR’ she told me. And in the same vein, another designer
explained:
When we designed a glass, we always proceeded from the question of what
a glass should be able to do and what its function was, namely: stand
straight, be stable and contain liquid. Furthermore, people had to be able to
drink from it. And on the basis of these requirements we conceptualized a
form. Whereas in the West, they seemed to do it the other way around.
Practical, functional and rational: it fully corresponds to the picture of
communism as it is sketched by the sociologist Bauman: ‘communism
was thoroughly modern in its passionate conviction that good society can
only be a society carefully designed, rationally managed and thoroughly
industrialized’ (1991: 266).
Daily life in the socialist GDR was organized according to ‘fundamentally
secular and scientific’ (Borneman, 1992: 162) principles,12 and
these particularly concerned the material organization of society. Very
generally speaking, one could say that East German material culture was
as functional, practical and rational as possible. And even at the end of
the 1980s, women’s magazines, material culture and design journals
bulged with incitements towards ‘Sachlichkeit’ (succinctness), ‘Zweckmäßigkeit’
(purposiveness), ‘Notwendigkeit’ (necessity), ‘Minimalgestaltung’
(minimal-composition) and ‘das Wesentliche’ (the essential), to
which designers, producers and consumers had to restrict themselves.13
Veenis: C O N S U M P T I O N I N E A S T G E R M A N Y
89
05 Veenis (to) d 19/1/99 1:54 pm Page 89
© 1999 SAGE Publications. All rights reserved. Not for commercial use or unauthorized distribution.
at UCL Library Services on August 7, 2007http://mcu.sagepub.comDownloaded from
Although it is impossible (within the limited scope of this article) to
do justice to the many changes and more subtle differentiations that characterize
the history of design and material culture in the GDR, it is important
to know that the principles listed here were not uncontested. On the
contrary: from the very beginning up until the ultimate breakdown of the
GDR, there was a battle going on between East German designers, producers,
politicians and consumers about the question of what (somewhat
ironically speaking) ‘a socialist coffee-cup’ (Hirdina, 1988: 155) should
look like. And although this battle was eventually won by the protagonists
of a functionalist perspective on material culture and design, this does
not mean that the East German material world looked as immaculately
functionalist as one would expect. Many East German producers and politicians
had a taste different from the functionalist and modernist style
that was so characteristic in East German designer-discourse, and they
frequently succeeded in adding adornments, reintroducing flowered decorations
or different elements of (what was called) kitsch, to the modernist
plans, ideas and products presented by designers.
But in spite of these ‘disturbing’ influences, one can nevertheless
conclude that the East German material world was extremely monotonous
and distinctly functionalist. Everything that was made in the
GDR bore the same functionalist family-resemblances: rectangularity,
straightness and rationality. The main reason for this was that functionalist
principles to a large extent coincided with economic requirements.
It is no coincidence that the East German designer Heinz Hirdina concludes
his standard work on East German design with the observation:
‘despised by self-conceited people, and renounced as outmoded by those
who want to show how fashionable they are, functionalism always
manages to survive in factories and construction sites’ (1988: 255).
Functionalist principles about the (social-educational) importance of
zeitgemäß, honest and ‘true’ present-day, industrial and mass-produced
forms and products, turned out to be outspokenly practical as well – that
is, economic and cheap – because a straight, rectangular table is of
course much easier, cheaper and faster to produce than a table with
rounded edges or curved adornments. And both for ideological and economical
reasons, East German material culture discourse and practice
turned out to be one vast struggle against material ‘styles of the past’
(KiH, 1973[5]) and ‘ornamental desires’ (KiH, 1980[3]: 41). It was a
struggle against material objects whose power of attraction was condemned
as distinctly superficial and banal.
All those Western objects ‘adorned with horrible brass-ware, all
those wildly dangling lamps . . . those undulating lines and swarming
meanders on table – and book-covers’ (KiH, 1982[3]: 31); and all those
new, industrially-made objects that were made to look old: they were all
equally ‘unnatural, meaningless, overloaded, unpractical and profuse’
J o u r n a l o f M AT E R I A L C U LT U R E 4 ( 1 )
90
05 Veenis (to) d 19/1/99 1:54 pm Page 90
© 1999 SAGE Publications. All rights reserved. Not for commercial use or unauthorized distribution.
at UCL Library Services on August 7, 2007http://mcu.sagepub.comDownloaded from
(KiH, 1969[1]: 49); they were all criticized for being ‘mushy, untruthful,
unreal, counterfeit, bad plagiarism, functionless and falsified’ (KiH,
1966[4]: 22). According to East German designers, editors, salesmen and
producers, those objects aimed to ‘deceive the consumer’ (KiH, 1977[2]:
3) and the desire to possess them is expressive of a sad form of ‘primitive
thinking’, a ‘deformation of the aesthetic consciousness’, from
which socialist people needed to be ‘freed’ (KiH, 1968[6]: 4) as soon as
possible. The hollow and vacuous power of attraction of these objects
had to be unmasked and people had to learn that these things just didn’t
fit in with actual society and way of life.
When you prefer a candle-holder or salt-sprinkler that seems to be directly
derived from grandmother’s days, then please be consistent and . . . unscrew
the safety fuses, hold two pine-chips of about 40 centimeters long between
your teeth, and use this precursory ‘pocket-lantern’ while running your
household. (KiH, 1965[3]: 27)
The message that East German journals and magazines time and again
tried to impress upon their readers runs something like: ‘Former days
and former things were different! And we just don’t want to go back to
them; would you? Don’t you know that all those so-called “romanticlooking”
old things are in fact nothing but the silent testimonies of the
life of the poor and exploited?’ And in order to inform people about the
‘true nature’ of the things that they thought were beautiful, journals and
magazines dedicated numerous articles to the historical background of
these objects. Because only when they learned to think carefully about
what they saw would East Germans be able to correct their ‘immature’
(KiH, 1968[5]) taste-preferences:
empirical perception alone is not enough to penetrate reality to such an
extent, that the essential truth of the entire historical movement and
development . . . are the result. One needs a higher level of thinking, which
is unattainable without a scientifically founded world-view. (Schmidt, 1966:
1436)
‘You don’t know what you see!’, East Germans were told. Because if they
knew what they saw, their taste would be different; then it would be in
line with present-day modes and means of (industrial) production, with
modern times and modernist taste-preferences.
These convictions formed the basis for a material culture that looked
distinctly rectilinear, rather severe and puritan. East German couches,
easy-chairs, side-tables and dining-areas were all equally straight and no
matter where one looks (in design-journals, popular women’s magazines,
journals for furniture producers or catalogues of East German material
culture and design), the pictures all look alike: they show a material world
that first and foremost looked extremely simple, uniform and straight.
Veenis: C O N S U M P T I O N I N E A S T G E R M A N Y
91
05 Veenis (to) d 19/1/99 1:54 pm Page 91
© 1999 SAGE Publications. All rights reserved. Not for commercial use or unauthorized distribution.
at UCL Library Services on August 7, 2007http://mcu.sagepub.comDownloaded from
Whereas the whole of East German life was fitted in a materialistic
ideology, the importance of material objects was at the same time neutralized,
in the ongoing efforts to educate people’s taste in a more
rational, practical and economic direction.
But no matter how forcefully material goods were framed in beautiful
educational intentions, their quality left much to be desired. Since
timber was scarce,14 it was imitated in many different ways and most
furniture was made from a mixture of saw-dust and glue, which was
then covered with plastic foil with a motif of wood on it. And constrained
by the increasing scarcity of materials, the East German production
motto became ‘produce more from less’, that is to say (East
German joke): ‘do you know how to make more pasta out of less flour?
Increase the holes in the macaroni’! Hard couches, bending staples and
the need to use ten matches to light a candle: that was the material
reality of the GDR. But it all took place within the frame of highly justified
ideals. Even as late as 1987, the journal Kultur im Heim urges its
readers that ‘Crammed decorations or the use of ornamental elements
out of the past estrange industrially produced objects . . . Good industrial
forms are instead associated with simplicity, straightness of form
and proportion’. It is like listening to a strict but patient mother, talking
to her children. And at the end of the article the author sighs, just like
a mother after a long day during which her children kept on eating out
of the sugar basin, despite her repeated warnings that this is bad for
their teeth: ‘To inform people’s individual taste and aesthetic perception
is a laborious teaching-process.’
The promotion of functionalist material culture was a civilizingprocess
against ‘the sentimental appeal of the “nice” little things of life’
(Bertsch and Hedler, 1990: 19), against the ‘fancy tea-pots, bread baskets
decorated with christmas-trees, napkin-rings depicting cyclamens’
(Bertsch and Hedler, 1990: 19), that kept on dominating West German
material supplies.15
This is fully in line with the socialist salvation fantasies, in which
material progress and striving forward was only useful within the
context of the ‘wonderful promises of modernity’ (Bauman, 1991: 266)
and in which every possible connection with the past was taboo: ‘it did
not trust history to find the way to the millennium. Neither was it prepared
to wait till history proved this mistrust wrong. Its war-cry was:
“Kingdom of Reason – now!”’ (Bauman, 1991: 266).
The past was closed off, salvation was only to be expected in
forward-striving movements and the future was the only goal. It must
have been an extremely confusing means of orientation for those living
in East Germany, given the way in which the socialist promise was realized.
Decay and rust, greyness and cracked walls arose where material
progress was preached. And although the official East German media
J o u r n a l o f M AT E R I A L C U LT U R E 4 ( 1 )
92
05 Veenis (to) d 19/1/99 1:54 pm Page 92
© 1999 SAGE Publications. All rights reserved. Not for commercial use or unauthorized distribution.
at UCL Library Services on August 7, 2007http://mcu.sagepub.comDownloaded from
kept on proclaiming the same success stories (things are going better,
they will ameliorate even further, we are about to reach our goals), for
most people it was evident that the contrary was true. It is not necessary
to describe them in detail: the shattered roads, the decomposed
inner towns, the dreary Plattenbau quarters and the paintless, grey and
shabby-looking consumer goods, that seem to come straight from the
1950s.
On the basis of that, one would expect East Germans to be only
cynical and distrustful vis-a-vis the materialist salvation-ideology that
was poured over them. And although they certainly did not believe in
the war-cries about their national material ‘expressions, that are honest,
life-embracing and truthful’ (KiH, 1977[4]: 34), it is at the same time clear
that daily life in the GDR turned out to be distinctly materialistic. And
although materialist ideology was not able to realize its promises at all,
‘the material’ turned out to be one of the most important guidelines and
themes in the everyday life of most East Germans.
This was partly due to the central regulation and continuous scarcity
of consumer-goods, which practically forced people to spend an enormous
amount of time, attention and energy on the acquisition of basic
material goods. But apart from that, in East Germany consumption was
a far more encompassing activity than it was in the western part of the
country. Here, consumption also entailed social and cultural aspects.
Most East Germans were part of social networks in which material
exchange, transactions and rumours played an important role. Colleagues
helped each other with the acquisition of scarce goods and everybody
was always looking out for anything that might be on sale
somewhere and for queues (a sign that something scarce, that is, valuable,
was for sale). ‘The material’ therefore included much more than
material things as such; it was a social network, a web of meanings,
clues, rumours, the right interpretation of meaningful signs and the
development of the right social skills.
And as such, part of the socialist message about mutual equality, solidarity
and concern, could find its daily confirmation and concrete form
in people’s continuous striving for material satisfaction. To stand in line
for someone else is also to show concern for each other. As Borneman
points out:
people used th(e) romantic emplotment provided by the state to integrate
their own experiences into a meaningful and coherent narrative . . . By
socialism they appeal to a working-together, a unity of purpose in a relatively
egalitarian group, and a strong sense of belonging to an empirical
community. (Borneman, 1992: 120)
Maybe even more so than in West Germany, in the GDR ‘the material’
could develop into one of the most meaningful symbols of The Good Life
Veenis: C O N S U M P T I O N I N E A S T G E R M A N Y
93
05 Veenis (to) d 19/1/99 1:54 pm Page 93
© 1999 SAGE Publications. All rights reserved. Not for commercial use or unauthorized distribution.
at UCL Library Services on August 7, 2007http://mcu.sagepub.comDownloaded from
and (future) Happiness Together. Objects become the symbols of the aim
of Forward Together!
And especially because all beautiful socialist promises about the
Good Life were not kept and because the central meaning of the material
sphere of life as one of the main sources of self-realization was frustrated
almost daily by the necessity to queue for everything and to be bawled
at when one dared to ask for unattainable goods like toasters or tights,
things could become targets of largely unspecified, but extremely high
hopes and expectations. When a well-known West German historian was
permitted to do research in the GDR in 1987, he was shocked when he
was confronted with the importance people attached to consumption:
The critique on supplies turned out to be a dominant theme in almost every
interview. . . . The criticisms about this [were] extremely stereotyped and
they usually concentrated on the supply of consumer goods . . . The critique
on supplies [seemed to be] an officially licensed valve and, at the same time,
an expression of a deep consensus with the system’s economistic standards
of value . . . The ‘economism’[;] this . . . very understandable reduction of
the fullness of life to the straightforward material, had become a lingua franca
in the GDR, into which all feelings were translated. (Niethammer et al., 1991:
39)
The material had become a condensation into which all feelings and strivings
were translated: things as a source of success and of failure, as goal
and means, as social cohesion and individual aspiration, as source of happiness
and of misfortune. But internally, it was first and foremost an
ongoing source of frustration16 because the gap between the beautiful
words in the official reports and material reality widened every month.
FLOWERED COUCHES AND OTHER FANTASIES
Looking back over the 40 years of the GDR, it is evident that this state
was one large corruption of its own promises. Wherever one looked, at
whatever aspect of life, nothing was what it was said to be and at a
certain moment people no longer knew what was real and what was not.
And the gap between the beautiful stories in the papers and everyday
reality became larger each year. This was especially true with regard to
the material conditions of life. Under supposedly progressive, materialist
conditions, people had to be satisfied with imitation, fraud and lower
quality. And although even things faintly associated with capitalism were
suspect (if not actually forbidden), one of the main reasons why internal
scarcities were ever increasing was that as many products as possible
were exported to the West in exchange for hard currency.
After the national-socialist failure, which had promised progress and
ended in a total breakdown, it was the second time that the people had
J o u r n a l o f M AT E R I A L C U LT U R E 4 ( 1 )
94
05 Veenis (to) d 19/1/99 1:54 pm Page 94
© 1999 SAGE Publications. All rights reserved. Not for commercial use or unauthorized distribution.
at UCL Library Services on August 7, 2007http://mcu.sagepub.comDownloaded from
to experience a promise of (material) progress ending in decay and crumbling
concrete. And where mutual solidarity was the device for progress,
the atmosphere was increasingly characterized by mistrust and fear. But
the promises did not stop. Like a machine-gun the progressive messages
were printed in journals and newspapers, loudly circulated at mass meetings,
at work, at school or in the universities. And of course: the neverending
proclamations about progress and the over-production of the
five-year plans were not really taken seriously; it was evident to everyone
that there was no ground to believe them. But no matter how much
reality deviated from the official discourse, one can imagine that the
main ingredients of the socialist salvation fantasies (relatively vague
ideals with regard to ‘development’ and ‘growth’ on the one hand and
‘fraternization’ and ‘being part of a larger whole’ on the other) remained
attractive and fed the ‘eternal promise of a better future’ (Maaz, 1991:
11). In line with this, one can imagine that the enormous gap between
word and reality brought about a confusion, comparable with what
Christa Wolf describes as ‘the severest damage’ of her Nazi upbringing:
‘the lifelong consequences of the belief, nursed during childhood, that
one day the world would be perfect’ (Wolf, 1990: 233).
And especially because the golden promises of socialism were to a
large extent connected to the striving for material progress, the paradise
of the prosperous West seemed to realize all the empty East German
proclamations:
That the East German neuroses were rooted in society was evident . . . But
life in the West, the life we so strongly longed for, would that also have its
shortcomings? . . . For many of us, everything that happened behind the
invincible Wall, was expanded to extremely magnified forms, it was the
perfect soil for paradisiacal fantasies and projections. (Maaz, 1991: 190)
The West was ‘a place of fantasies and projections’ (Simon, 1995: 60) and
for many inhabitants of the GDR it looked as if all postponed promises
about ‘Forward Together’, which were not realized in their own country
but nevertheless remained attractive, were realized on the other side of
the Wall. This clearly comes to the fore in the words of the East German
psychologist Annette Simon, when she describes the ecstatic feelings of
many East Germans when the Berlin Wall fell. Her words can be read
as a description of what it means to finally ‘be oneself’ again, ‘to find
oneself again’: ‘in an euphoric way, for one moment, they felt whole
again. The benign feeling when object- and personality-cleavage are
abolished: reality and desire were one’ (Simon, 1995: 15). And Christa
Wolf describes something comparable: ‘for a couple of weeks, they were
really whom they had hoped they could be’ (‘einige Wochen lang waren
sie wirklich die, die sie sein könnten’, 1994: 45). Reality at last seemed
to fit with the promise, the striving, the fantasy. Here, on the other side
Veenis: C O N S U M P T I O N I N E A S T G E R M A N Y
95
05 Veenis (to) d 19/1/99 1:54 pm Page 95
© 1999 SAGE Publications. All rights reserved. Not for commercial use or unauthorized distribution.
at UCL Library Services on August 7, 2007http://mcu.sagepub.comDownloaded from
of the Wall, all the possibilities for finally fulfilling the promises which
East Germans had only heard about until now, seemed to be present.
And for many people, the material prosperity was the concrete starting
point for these self-realization fantasies.17
In the days and weeks after the opening [of the Berlin Wall] East Germans
gorged themselves on the symbolic goods of West German nationness. . . .
They flocked to the shopping centers and stores in a consumptive orgy . . .
and they sought those items that most define the West German self.
(Borneman, 1992: 321)
The fact that Western objects especially were an important means to get
acquainted with the Western world, is, of course firstly to do with the
fact that, both in the GDR as in the FRG, the material was a knot linking
several wishes and ideals with regard to progress and self-realization.
But since the striving for material possessions in East Germany had
always taken place within a social framework (‘if you find something for
me, I will organize something for you’), most East Germans could not
imagine that the new situation would give rise to strong social differentiation.
The mutual competition over objects (who possesses the most;
how can I use my material appearance in such a way that my presentation
is as impressive as possible in order to achieve something and to
score optimum on society’s battlefield) and all the other problems which
had been relatively unknown in the GDR, now stand out clearly since
the Wende with regard to material possessions. They were largely
covered up by a common sharing of scarcity, a common complaint about
a government failing to supply enough goods, and a seemingly common
striving for more. And the few Western things that people owned were
so rare and so special, that they had never had the chance to be regarded
as normal articles of use. A Western biscuit-tin or pen was first and foremost
Western and could never, therefore, become a normal tin or pen.
Of course, many East Germans received Westpakete from their West
German families, but the East German author Thomas Rosenlöcher
makes clear that for East Germans the content of such a parcel was much
more than the sum of the objects which it contained: ‘An inner lightning,
which even proceeds from the pudding powder’ (1992: 9). And many
inhabitants of Rudolstadt told me that even the empty soft drink and
beer cans from insignificant West German brands were exhibited as precious
little hoards in a cabinet in the living-room. Western objects, and
a life with these things especially, was so unattainable that people were
unable to imagine how it would be. And maybe they did not even want
to, as the East German psychiatrist Maaz suggests.
According to Maaz, the ‘lost Paradise’ of Western prosperity offered
some ‘hold’ to people; the hold with the help of which they could keep
on believing in the ultimate realization, the materialization of all
J o u r n a l o f M AT E R I A L C U LT U R E 4 ( 1 )
96
05 Veenis (to) d 19/1/99 1:54 pm Page 96
© 1999 SAGE Publications. All rights reserved. Not for commercial use or unauthorized distribution.
at UCL Library Services on August 7, 2007http://mcu.sagepub.comDownloaded from
promises. ‘Contrary to Ulbrichts “pseudo-Germany” with pseudo products,
the Real, the True, the Authentic was established in the West’
(Diesener and Gries, 1992: 61). And Rosenlöcher describes the difference
between his West German uncle and ‘us’, by means of the different ways
in which they (were able to) deal(t) with Western objects, with the Real
Thing: ‘The difference between him and us [was] that when he gave us
bananas, he meant bananas, whereas we gratefully accepted the lanternslides
of another life’ (Rosenlöcher, 1992: 10). This quotation makes clear
that for the inhabitants of the GDR Western things were never ‘just
things’; they were The Real Thing. ‘We didn’t know what life in the West
was really like, we only saw the pictures and we thought that that was
reality’, a young woman said disappointedly.
That the pictures were beautiful is obvious. But the question is what
the inhabitants of East Germany saw when they looked at those pictures.
And how did they interpret what they saw? Or: what is The Real Thing,
seen through East German eyes? Let me try to look through East German
eyes and describe to you a living-room, as it is pictured on one of the 65
handbills which I received every month in my mailbox in Rudolstadt.
Look how it entices and flaunts (see Figure 1).
That couch, so soft and inviting as it stands there, with its rich motif
full of flowers. Looking at it, one only wants to sink into it and be comforted
by its softness. It is probably an expensive couch and yet it is not
severe at all. On the contrary: with its soft material, its rounded back
and pastel coloured flowers, the couch looks very soft, cozy and secure.
And the same combination of prosperity and comfort is visible in the
paintings with which the walls are decorated: two ducks, stylish and
comfortable, diving together, a horse in a grassy pasture and two dogs,
greeting each other under an extremely dull sky; whatever the weather,
they shelter and comfort each other. The domesticity reflected in the
plants and flowers on the mahogany side-tables is timeless, and the same
goes for the crackling fire in the fireplace. The chinaware dogs, dreaming
and staring into the flames, complete the picture.
Although there is no gold or silver to be seen, the whole picture
shines; it glistens both with prosperity, with ‘having achieved something
in life’ and with a cozy and safe form of domesticity. Centuries old
motifs, no modern influence whatsoever, and at the same time it is clear
that the people who live here have reached something, they have really
come forward in life. The whole picture represents a successful striving
forward, while at the same time preserving existing traditions and roots.
It is the realization of everything that one would want to achieve in life.
With its wealth and richness it not only symbolizes progress in its purest
form, but – different from the harsh situation in the GDR – it is also
clear that the progress that is pictured here is Real. And what is more:
this form of progress does not give rise to feelings of disruption or
Veenis: C O N S U M P T I O N I N E A S T G E R M A N Y
97
05 Veenis (to) d 19/1/99 1:54 pm Page 97
© 1999 SAGE Publications. All rights reserved. Not for commercial use or unauthorized distribution.
at UCL Library Services on August 7, 2007http://mcu.sagepub.comDownloaded from
estrangement. On the contrary: here, progress leads precisely to safety,
security and warmth. The picture ‘illuminate[s] the contradictory forces
and needs that inspire and torment us: our desire to be rooted in a stable
and coherent personal and social past, and our insatiable desire for
growth’ (Berman, 1983: 35). This picture makes clear that progress does
not demand a rupture with the past, as was proclaimed in East Germany.
Here, progressive aspirations have found an ultimate destination of
safety and warmth. And in this sense, the living-room in the handbill is
more than a real and permanent home; it is the Lost Paradise which
Maaz referred to.
MATERIAL OBJECTS AS HEILE WELT18
To a certain extent, the appearance and aesthetic features of objects
differ by country and, in a way, objects can uncover the collective
dreams and fantasies that many inhabitants of a certain society share.
I do not think that it is a coincidence that the objects that show a combination
of prosperity and comfort are especially popular in East
Germany nowadays. In spite of the never-ending struggle of well-intentioned
East German designers to liberate people of their inclination
towards ‘imitation antiques . . . enveloped by the dust of the past’ (KiH,
1968[1]: 19), those so-called progressive, modernistic East German
objects not only were qualitatively less good, but all attempts to take
away the desire for old-fashioned, classical material forms were in vain.
J o u r n a l o f M AT E R I A L C U LT U R E 4 ( 1 )
98
FIGURE 1 Picture of a living room
on a handbill received by the author
while living in East Germany
05 Veenis (to) d 19/1/99 1:54 pm Page 98
© 1999 SAGE Publications. All rights reserved. Not for commercial use or unauthorized distribution.
at UCL Library Services on August 7, 2007http://mcu.sagepub.comDownloaded from
East Germans remained desirous of classic-looking, nostalgic objects; of
objects decorated with flowers, landscapes and natural prospects; ‘the
landscapes of our past, and our emotional links with those lost worlds’
(Berman, 1983: 35). It is as if those material objects were meant to
counterbalance the proclaimed – and, since it was never realized, continuously
corrupted – movement forward. Especially in material culture
people seemed to desire and look for objects that recall far-off days, traditions
and, in the words of the East German designer Letsch: ‘a heile
Welt, a protected life . . . situated beyond real daily life, in an idealized
past’ (Letsch, 1983: 90).19
It is as if material objects, with their supposed timeless motifs, provided
the roots and (hypothetic) origin that were renounced for the sake
of the anticipated modernist welfare. A welfare that mainly gave rise to
an alienating experience as it was not realized at all and only brought
rust and decay, despite the fact that progress was proclaimed. From an
East German perspective, Western material culture must have appeared
to be the symbol of their ‘longing for totality, accompanied by a strong
urge to appropriate immutabilities: the landscape, national traditions,
history and even the sky. All of these . . . introducing some of the sacred
into individual lives’ (Mosse, 1980: 12).
This probably was the fantasy that seemed to find its concrete realization
in the outer appearance of Western material objects. These things
represented a form of wholeness, which Christa Wolf describes as the
desire ‘to be truly the one, one could be’ (1994: 45); an organic wholeness
of ahead and rooted at the same time. Progressively moving forward
we build up something, and as a reward we retreat on our flowered
couch that surrounds us softly and from which we overlook a timeless
paradise full of flowers, animals, rural prospects and weathered – but
richly polished, shining – wood. ‘Die eigenen vier Wände’20 (Selle, 1993)
as a safe home, where one displays and feels achievement. Die eigenen
vier Wände as the expression of forwards and rootedness, of Becoming
and Being at the same time; this really is paradise.
That was the fantasy, the dream. But with their arrival, Western
objects did not make the dream come true. On the contrary: they are
jointly held responsible for another experience in which ‘all that is solid
melts into air’ (Berman, 1983). Because instead of well-being and rootedness,
they bring mutual detachment. And instead of self-realization,
many people increasingly feel estranged and lost. These feelings of
estrangement are not caused by the arrival of the Western material goods
as such. But as I pointed out before, within the overall confusing and
bewildering developments that have taken place in East Germany since
the fall of the Wall, material goods are much more than an extremely
meaningful symbol. More than anything else, they represent capitalism
with all its devastating effects, whereas at the same time they play an
Veenis: C O N S U M P T I O N I N E A S T G E R M A N Y
99
05 Veenis (to) d 19/1/99 1:54 pm Page 99
© 1999 SAGE Publications. All rights reserved. Not for commercial use or unauthorized distribution.
at UCL Library Services on August 7, 2007http://mcu.sagepub.comDownloaded from
active, stimulating role in (what is felt to be) the process of social disintegration
that takes place in East Germany.
One can recognize this phenomenon as the alienating phase preceeding
the ‘process of consumption by means of which goods and services
. . . are recast as inalienable cultural material’ (Miller, 1987: 17), or
(with Campbell) one can consider ‘all real consumption . . . a disillusioning
experience’ (Campbell, 1987: 89), ‘since the gap between the
real and the imagined can never actually be closed’ (Campbell, 1997: 38).
But the question that I think ought to underlie all interpretations, is: why
objects? Why are objects especially appropriate as a starting-point for
(day-)dreams and fantasies? And why also is it with the aid of objects
that people engage in a process of self-realization, with all the progressive–identificatory
and alienating consequences it entails? No matter
what one asserts about objects, no matter whether one recognizes them
as active or as passive, as static or as processual; the question that has
not been dealt with in most theoretical perspectives with regard to
material culture, is: why objects? And I think that part of the answer to
this question presents itself when we look at East Germany’s past and
present. I think, in other words, that the East German case might clarify
something, that in a more general way plays a role in the relation
between people and objects.
REALITY AS ARTIFICE
When one has to describe what is going on in East Germany today, the
word that directly comes to mind is ‘alienation’. After first the nationalsocialists
and then the socialists had tried to give (East) German life a
radically new form, sense and meaning, East German life has recently
been completely demolished again, to be rebuilt according to an
approved West German model. And this development is attended by a
basic feeling of doubt with regard to the question ‘who are we anyway?’
‘Alienation follows alienation’, was the bitter comment of Christa
Wolf (1994: 46) when everything she used to orientate herself, everything
that had formerly been her daily life, changed from one day to
another. This not only pertains to practical things such as traffic lights,
rules of the road and the system with regard to the separation of waste,
but also to the more meaningful aspects of life. Because no matter how
people personally related to them, virtually all existing (social, cultural,
mental, but also emotional and psychic) direction-signs have changed
since the Wende; they have all been adjusted to the West German
example. Rules and regulations for such divergent topics as military
service, depression, abortion, sexual disposition and class-differences
have changed. In the old days, attracting attention to one’s personal
capacities was not really encouraged, but nowadays it is not only
J o u r n a l o f M AT E R I A L C U LT U R E 4 ( 1 )
100
05 Veenis (to) d 19/1/99 1:54 pm Page 100
© 1999 SAGE Publications. All rights reserved. Not for commercial use or unauthorized distribution.
at UCL Library Services on August 7, 2007http://mcu.sagepub.comDownloaded from
possible, but also necessary to upgrade oneself. Contrary to the old days,
one now has to choose one’s own profession, taking into account the
(formerly unknown, nowadays very real) possibility of unemployment.
And whereas formerly it was better to present oneself in a somewhat
modest and undemanding way, nowadays it is better to be as selfassertive
and self-confident as possible.
And in the midst of all these changes, Christa Wolf asks herself if
she still knows who she actually is: ‘Me? Who was that? Which one of
the multiple creatures do “I” consist of?’ (1991: 57). Worded differently,
these are feelings which one can record everywhere in East Germany.
‘We have lost ourselves’, people say. Or they almost protectively speak
about the ‘fractures in our biographies’. The East German psychiatrist
Joachim Maaz asks himself ‘Where do I belong? What do I want to do?
What am I supposed to do? I have to change, but how and in what direction?’
(1991: 177).21
These questions all express deep despair and doubt; despair and
doubt about a life which, when looking back, almost inclines people to
wonder if it was really theirs; a life which makes people almost wonder
whether they still remained the same in the midst of all changes that
have occurred. The present-day situation in East Germany could be
described as one in which people are confronted with ‘the postmodern
condition’. It is a confrontation with the experience that nothing ‘Is’ and
that, on the contrary, everything is variable, relative and artificial. And
the fact that the tensions and anxieties with regard to this can be
recorded on every East German street corner makes it clear that this is
felt to be an extremely painful and confusing confrontation. It is a confrontation
about which Michael Taussig has recently formulated an
intriguing question. ‘With good reason’, so his argument starts,
postmodernism has relentlessly instructed us that reality is artifice. Yet, so
it seems to me, not enough surprise has been expressed as to how we nevertheless
get on with living, pretending . . . that we live facts, not fictions.
(Taussig, 1993: xv)
With this sentence Taussig draws our attention to the fact that, no matter
how true it may be, the conclusion that ‘reality is artifice’ is unlivable.
Who can survive in the full consciousness of his own relativity? It is
an issue which is very topical in East Germany and it is clear, even for
outsiders, how impossible it is for people to live with this realization. But
at the same time, it is also visible how people nevertheless succeed to do
so: they search for a hold; they search for something that helps them to
(temporarily) experience that they still are Somebody. They search for a
hold in order to feel that their Existence Is Something which also exists,
independent of the changing social circumstances in which they – time
and again – find themselves.22 They search for the experience of really
Veenis: C O N S U M P T I O N I N E A S T G E R M A N Y
101
05 Veenis (to) d 19/1/99 1:54 pm Page 101
© 1999 SAGE Publications. All rights reserved. Not for commercial use or unauthorized distribution.
at UCL Library Services on August 7, 2007http://mcu.sagepub.comDownloaded from
Being Somebody; for ontological certainty. And while a growing number
of East Germans seem to find this within (political) extremist groups and
circles, less-threatening possibilities abound as well; the local book-shop
in Rudolstadt, for instance, always had some new-age publications in its
shop-window and there are many East Germans who seem to find a comparable
sense of certainty in a form of nostalgia for the old socialist days,
‘when we were still One People’ – as the popular saying has it (this is
actually a widespread phenomenon in East Germany and even has a
name: Ostalgie).
But I think that apart from these phenomena, more or less typical
for East Germany, we can also detect a more general ‘solution’ to the
problem of ‘cultural estrangement’ (Van de Port, 1998: 3), which is so
omnipresent in East Germany today. Because I think that, against their
own better judgement, East Germans also try to find a new hold in
material things. It may be an unsatisfactory choice, but nevertheless;
‘hast du was, bist du was’ (‘you are somebody if you have something’).
After all, what provides a better grip than objects, objects in which one
recognizes one’s ideal self in a ‘material, substantial and tangible’ (Van
Beek, 1996: 17) form?
THE MATERIAL AS MATTER OF FACT
For a long time, social scientists have studied material objects mainly as
the reflection of attitudes, norms, values, mentalities and identities of a
people. On the other hand there was the classical Marxist interpretation
of the growing importance of consumer goods in present-day, industrialized
societies, as being characteristic of people’s alienation and false
consciousness. Miller’s work (1987) gave an important impulse to the
development of a new theoretical conception of the role of material
goods in present-day societies. Searching for a non-reductionist perspective
on the relation between people and things, Miller developed a
processual perspective in which people use the material world which
surrounds them in order to develop their identities. Miller emphasizes
the fact that neither people nor objects essentially Are Something; both
are constantly Becoming and they develop each other, in a dialectical
relationship in which they constantly define each other anew.
The process in which this development takes place is positively
valued by Miller, and he particularly emphasizes the identificatory
potential of goods. The feelings of alienation, which Miller recognizes as
being part of this process, are not extensively analysed by him. According
to him, alienation is only a temporary phase, which can be overcome
by consumption. It is also striking that in his thinking the phase that precedes
the phase of alienation is not really distinguished or identified. He
seems to take for granted that people find certain objects attractive and
J o u r n a l o f M AT E R I A L C U LT U R E 4 ( 1 )
102
05 Veenis (to) d 19/1/99 1:54 pm Page 102
© 1999 SAGE Publications. All rights reserved. Not for commercial use or unauthorized distribution.
at UCL Library Services on August 7, 2007http://mcu.sagepub.comDownloaded from
worth buying, but the questions as to why this is so and what role
specific objects play in this process of personal self-realization are not
really dealt with.
Yet the only way in which I can give some concrete form to his
abstract ideas about objects as constitutive of people’s identities is by
imagining that people recognize Something (definite, fixed and thereby
easily appropriable) in objects, with which they want (or are able) to
identify themselves. In my view, people recognize (an aspect of) their
(ideal, future) identity in material objects and this is only possible when
they perceive objects as having some essential quality. As Gosewijn Van
Beek has observed correctly, the dialectical process between people and
things can only take place on account of the fact that, in our perception,
things are ‘truly autonomous’, ‘fundamental’ (1996: 13) and essential.
For the people who buy them, material objects with their fixed, permanent
and material form do not embody a phase in a developmental
process, but they represent the contrary: something solid and stable:
[T]he cultural object and subject constitute each other and thus are not
reducible to fundamental properties or qualities, but this can only be so if
they are culturally perceived . . . to have precisely the qualities our processual
understanding says they don’t have. (Van Beek, 1996: 13)
And by appropriating these (supposed) ‘fundamental properties and
qualities’ by means of consumption, I think that people not only try to
develop (as described by Miller) their ‘own identity’; they first and foremost
try to find it. By appropriating it in a material form, people, as it
were, try to fix and materialize their identity.
The social-scientific conclusion that ‘identities’ do not exist as established
entities, but on the contrary are always changing, relative and artificial
constructs, does not detract anything from the fact that – as the
present-day situation in East Germany certainly makes clear – we do not
want to experience ‘our identities’ as relative or as artificial constructs.
On the contrary: we want them to be fixed, inalienable and essential. And
the confrontation with the opposite is not only painful and extremely
estranging, it is also ‘a strong incentive to actually capture part of this
world as inalienable possession in an effort to control . . . what is uncontrollable:
one’s identity in relation to the world’ (Van Beek, 1996: 22).
Why is it that many times, when one feels depressed, disoriented or
somehow disintegrated, the ‘solution’ seems to be to go to a shop and
buy a new lipstick, a new pen, a watch or a book? In my view, buying
things is an (inadequate) effort to (temporarily) experience that one Is. It
is an effort to experience that one has an identity. And seen in this light,
it is understandable – as the East German situation clearly shows – that
the consumption of highly desired goods does not overcome the
alienatory feelings, but, on the contrary, feeds them. In my opinion,
Veenis: C O N S U M P T I O N I N E A S T G E R M A N Y
103
05 Veenis (to) d 19/1/99 1:54 pm Page 103
© 1999 SAGE Publications. All rights reserved. Not for commercial use or unauthorized distribution.
at UCL Library Services on August 7, 2007http://mcu.sagepub.comDownloaded from
alienation is not a temporary phase in a developmental process; it is a
permanent and inherent part of consumption, which is much more than
a means to satisfy our ongoing desire for better, for new, for fashion and
for more. Consumption certainly is all that, and while buying, people
certainly experience what Miller has called the progressive development
of their identities. But on a less visible level, I think that the power of
consumption also thrives on a desire which is more or less the opposite
of this quest for development, and that is: the desire for fixedness and
rest; the desire to Be, instead of to Become. And exactly because people
expect to materialize and fix their identities with the aid of objects, the
confrontation with the fact that this does not work is estranging.
Campbell has rightly emphasized that consumption is always a disillusioning
experience. But unlike him, I am not inclined to think that
the East German desire for goods is a ‘non-specific desire’ (Campbell,
1997: 39). I think that this actually is a quite specific desire; it is the
desire to Have an Identity and to Be Somebody. It is a desire that (as the
East German situation very pointedly makes clear) is constantly shattered
and the question, therefore, is why people keep on searching for
its satisfaction. Why do people keep on buying, in search of something
which they know they will never really find?
According to Campbell this does not relate so much to the objects as
such, but rather to an ever emerging desire for new and ‘more perfect
experiences’ (1997: 47): ‘products are desired less because of their character
as material objects than because consumers anticipate their possession
will bring pleasurable experiences’ (1997: 39). In my view, however,
this quotation artificially separates two aspects which are in fact strongly
related. The pleasurable experiences which people expect from things are
directly related to their character as material objects. The expectation
about things is that something of their materiality, stability and wholeness
passes on to the one who buys them and the expectation is that the object
thereby contributes to the inalienability, stability and wholeness of the
buyer. Yet although material things never live up to people’s expectations
because – their materiality and prosperous, cherishing appearances
notwithstanding – objects bring about alienatory and competitive experiences
as well, they nevertheless remain attractive. And I think that the
‘deceptive power of attraction’ of objects is related to their materiality; it
is related to a promise that they seem to convey: to bring about the same
experience of wholeness which their materiality embodies.
MATERIAL OBJECTS: THE SENSUAL EXPERIENCE OF
WHOLENESS
Always, when I tried to understand the eagerness to buy in East Germany,
I thought of the woman who lived in the outskirts of Rudolstadt. Every
J o u r n a l o f M AT E R I A L C U LT U R E 4 ( 1 )
104
05 Veenis (to) d 19/1/99 1:54 pm Page 104
© 1999 SAGE Publications. All rights reserved. Not for commercial use or unauthorized distribution.
at UCL Library Services on August 7, 2007http://mcu.sagepub.comDownloaded from
time I visited her, she complained about her lack of money; she never
had anything to spend because her husband’s salary was hardly enough
to make ends meet. And then, one day, when I entered her flat, she almost
stumbled over her words in her eagerness to tell me that she had just
bought a vacuum cleaner. Contrary to her habits, she had welcomed the
salesman who came to her door in order to sell her a vacuum cleaner for
900 DM. Oh, she knew very well that she did not need a new vacuum
cleaner, but she just could not wait for it to arrive! It was such a beautiful
vacuum cleaner! And the most wonderful quality of the thing was that
it distributed a real perfume of fresh woods! Wherever the cleaner had
been, the air would smell of pine-resin.
900 DM is not exactly a small amount. In her case it meant about
40 per cent of the monthly income she had at her disposal for the costs
of living for herself, her husband and two children. Apparently, the
piney smell was worth quite a lot to her. Or would it be a coincidence
that the scent settled the matter for her? Would it be a coincidence that
she was prepared to spend such a large amount of her income on something
that she did not really need, but which smelled so good? I don’t
think so.23 The vacuum cleaner with the piney fragrance draws our
attention to a quality of material objects, that in most theories is hardly
identified as such: the sensuousness of things. Things are not only part
of an objectifying process; they are not only the starting-point in people’s
day-dreams. Things are first and foremost material and tangible, aesthetic
and sensuous and exactly because of their multi-sensory qualities,
they can bring about the promise of ‘The Real Thing’ and ‘An Identity’
in such a variety of physical ways, that, no matter what one rationally
thinks about them and no matter what contrary experiences one has
with them afterwards, it is hardly possible to relativize this experience.
Everyone who has missed a loved one for a long period of time
knows what it means when one suddenly smells his (or her) fragrance,
for instance in the clothes that he has recently worn. The power with
which he suddenly seems to be there is incomparable with what happens
during a telephone conversation or when reading his letters. In his scent,
the whole person suddenly seems to be there; not just his words or
thoughts, but the whole physical person and everything that makes him
attractive, desirable and him. By means of smell, a whole atmosphere,
person or situation comes to you in a very direct and unmediated way.
And a comparable power of attraction proceeds from objects.
When one asks people in East Germany to describe the power of
attraction of Western objects, it is striking how most attempts are hampered
because of the difficulty to find words for aesthetic–physical
experiences. In most descriptions, people try to represent how things
from the West were ‘somehow’ softer, brighter, more colourful and
cheerful and how their scent was better than that of East German things.
Veenis: C O N S U M P T I O N I N E A S T G E R M A N Y
105
05 Veenis (to) d 19/1/99 1:54 pm Page 105
© 1999 SAGE Publications. All rights reserved. Not for commercial use or unauthorized distribution.
at UCL Library Services on August 7, 2007http://mcu.sagepub.comDownloaded from
‘A yellowish shine behind the counter’ (Rosenlöcher, 1992: 7), ‘those
aromas and colours’ (Simon, 1995: 60), ‘everything that came from
drüben,24 had this new-ish scent which, as a flavour of faraway-ness,
filled the banana-symbol’ (Rosenlöcher, 1992: 9); the West as a ‘sensuous–aesthetic’
(Simon, 1995: 60) experience. The Westpakete,25 with their
‘far-away flavour’ (Rosenlöcher, 1992: 9); the Intershops: ‘those glossy
caves’, with their ‘different flavour’, and in general: ‘this shine of
progress’ (Rosenlöcher, 1992: 10) that surrounded Western things.
And after having lived there for more than a year I can imagine that,
conversely, there was the sensuous–aesthetic experience of the GDR,
with its stony couches and chairs, its flaking plastic, its straight severity
of form and its smell of brown coal. Here, colours were always paler and
more grey than drüben, everything seemed more dreary and in a sensuous–aesthetic
respect, one could describe the two Germanys as bright and
refreshing on the one hand versus musty and stuffy on the other. It is no
coincidence that during my first visit to East Germany I jokingly wrote
that it would be a good idea to concentrate on flavours in my research; it
is one of the most characteristic, most discerning and powerful channels
of information in its associations.26 It is almost impossible to describe the
GDR without using sensory means, and in a report which was published
in 1971 in the West German periodical ‘the Arbeitgeber’ (the employer),
the readers of the magazine are told: ‘one has to have seen, smelt, felt
and tasted it . . . because it is unimaginable’ (in Kleßmann and Wagner,
1993: 376).
Especially because of their flavour, their gloss and their colour,
Western things seemed to be an all-embracing experience of The Real
Thing; of How We Really Are; of Self-realization as feeling, as flavour, as
colour and as sheen. And although East Germans have had every opportunity
to experience the fact that objects fulfil their sensory–aesthetic
radiation only to a certain extent and in a very ambiguous way, yet their
power of attraction remains the same: they are so pretty, their appearance
reminds them of all paradisiacal promises about prosperity and rootedness
that have dominated East German lives for so long and to such an
enormous extent. And then there is their flavour; that smell of fir-trees
that comes from an extremely advanced vacuum cleaner. How wonderful
it must be to come home after another day of hustling with colleagues
and be surrounded by the fresh scent of fir-woods. Or the shine of a new
car: competitive and boasting, of course, but besides that, also a blessing
for the body to be surrounded by these chairs and to notice how this enormous
weight starts to move with a little pressure from one’s hand.
‘Don’t buy!’ we say to ourselves when passing the shop-windows, but
it is already too late. Our eyes come across a sweater with a flower motif,
and before we have been able to think about it, the associations are there:
soft, warm, cherishing and stylish at the same time. When I put it on, in
J o u r n a l o f M AT E R I A L C U LT U R E 4 ( 1 )
106
05 Veenis (to) d 19/1/99 1:54 pm Page 106
© 1999 SAGE Publications. All rights reserved. Not for commercial use or unauthorized distribution.
at UCL Library Services on August 7, 2007http://mcu.sagepub.comDownloaded from
a sensuous way the sweater will give some of its appearance to me, the
bearer; before I know it, I will be like the sweater: it will not only warm
me up, but it becomes like me and I will become like the sweater.
. . . yes, that is what I want . . . that’s how I want to be . . . if I wear
that, I am like that: . . . soft, protected, guarded and cherished . . . rich,
prosperous, with golden adornments . . . and at the same time: connected
with nature, out of which these beautiful flowers spring . . . now
and in eternity.
Things do something to people: not only in a social developmental
process, not only as a representation and a starting-point for day-dreams,
but also as a physical experience. And it is this aspect that makes them
especially irresistible. With their sensuousness, things are able to convey
the ideal of The Real in such a multitude of physical ways that the body
aches for things; their warmth, flavour and shine bring about a physical
experience of Being as fully and whole as they are. And even though it
is clear that things in the end do not work that way, this rational insight
will not help. People fall for things; for the sensuous–aesthetic promise
they convey: Be like me.
Things are the ‘facts’, which Taussig refers to: material, whole, sensuous
and appropriable in such a variety of physical ways, that they
make it clear that (be it only for a short period of time): This is me, I am
what I buy: whole and united, one with myself. I am Me.27
In a country where every hope for a true and inalienable Self has
time and again proven to be an illusion, there is nothing left but to dream
about a ‘Me’:
but I, I promise you that, my love; I will find myself a new name . . . and
that will be all right, because then I will have dreams again at night, dreams,
that will gently help me to remember myself. (Wolf, 1994: 204)
Instead of dreaming about a real Me, one can also buy an experience that
– in an imperfect and diverted way – temporarily reminds one of oneself.
People buy things in order to seem one with the object they choose and
as such, objects make us feel One; one, whole and indivisible.
Physical, aesthetic, at one with its sensuousness and its material
wholeness, the sweater tells me:
Buy me, then You will Be Me
Buy, then You Are
Hast du Was, Bist du Was.
Notes
I want to thank Gosewijn Van Beek, Birgir Meyer, Daniel Miller, Mattijs Van de
Port, Bonno Thoden van Velzen and an anonymous reviewer for their stimulating
and helpful comments on an earlier version of this paper.
Veenis: C O N S U M P T I O N I N E A S T G E R M A N Y
107
05 Veenis (to) d 19/1/99 1:54 pm Page 107
© 1999 SAGE Publications. All rights reserved. Not for commercial use or unauthorized distribution.
at UCL Library Services on August 7, 2007http://mcu.sagepub.comDownloaded from
1. The material on which this article is based was collected during fieldwork
in Rudolstadt, from September 1993 until December 1994. Apart from
observations of daily life in Rudolstadt, archive-research, as well as research
on other (secondary) literature, I interviewed inhabitants of Rudolstadt,
shopkeepers, (former) local politicians, designers and people who worked in
various East German museums. The research, which is part of my PhD
research, was supported by the Amsterdam School of Social Science
Research.
2. Intershops were shops where Western things were sold in exchange for
Western currency. They are an extremely interesting phenomenon, because
East Germans were officially not allowed to possess Western money and
Western objects were officially considered to be the hallmarks of an alien
society and an estranging way of life. At the same time, East Germany
produced many consumer goods that were exported to Western countries in
exchange for hard currency. In these shops East Germans could thus buy
certain products, which they themselves had produced, in exchange for
money which they officially were not allowed to have, in a shop which they
in fact where not allowed to visit and where some Stasi (social security)
employees inevitably worked in order to keep an eye on the local visitors. I
have seen several Stasi-documents, in which it is described how often couple
B. visited the Intershop, what they bought and how much money they spent.
3. Western visitors who entered East Germany had to change a certain amount
of money, at the official rates. It was never easy to spend this money and
the Intershops were a solution to this problem. Although the prices for
ordinary Western goods (ranging from chocolate and washing-powder to
radios and television-sets) were much higher here, visitors at least had the
opportunity to spend their good money on something other than (what they
considered as) worthless East German things.
4. ’Wessi’ and ‘Ossi’ are the pejorative terms for respectively West and East
Germans.
5. Also see Diesener and Gries (1992), Borneman (1992: 143–4), Niemöller
(1991), Moeller and Maaz (1991: 142–3) and Veenis (1997).
6. For an elaboration of this question, especially see Van Beek (1996).
7. This is my interpretation of Miller’s ideas and I am not sure whether he
would use the word ‘identification’ himself. In his book, Miller principally
pays attention to the relation between people and things after the phase in
which people feel alienated. Therefore everything that precedes this phase
and the alienation itself are only dealt with in a rather abstract way. It is not
quite clear what actually happens with (and within) a person when he sees
something and notices that it evokes his desire. I will come back to this point
later.
8. With regard to the relativity of ‘the German identity’, see Forsythe (1989).
9. Also see Borneman (1992: 314): ‘prosperity, automobiles, and vacations
abroad – the generative symbols of West Germanness’. And in their famous
essay about the ‘impossibility to mourn’, A. and M. Mitscherlich write that
‘these promises, that it would be possible to achieve an ideal . . . with the
purchase of a new article, only deal with morality at the periphery’ (1967:
205).
10. See, among others, Moeller and Maaz (1991), Buruma (1994: 63), Borneman
(1992: 229) and Diesener and Gries (1992: 61).
11. Also see Veenis (1997), in which I extensively deal with the ideological
differences between both Germanys, especially with regard to the material
developments in both countries.
J o u r n a l o f M AT E R I A L C U LT U R E 4 ( 1 )
108
05 Veenis (to) d 19/1/99 1:54 pm Page 108
© 1999 SAGE Publications. All rights reserved. Not for commercial use or unauthorized distribution.
at UCL Library Services on August 7, 2007http://mcu.sagepub.comDownloaded from
12. Also see Habermas who, in a letter written to Christa Wolf, writes that in
the post-war history of both East and West Germany, there is a strong (but
according to him just) taboo on all ‘seductions of the archaic’ (Wolf, 1994:
147). In the same letter Habermas pays attention to what he considers to be
the worst consequence of the ruined and fraudulent defeat of socialism
within the GDR: ‘with its political rhetoric (this state has) misused progressive
ideas for its legitimation; and through its inhuman praxis it has not only
jeeringly repudiated them, but thereby also discredited them fully. I am
afraid that these dialectics of invalidation will have more ruinous effects on
the spiritual hygiene in Germany, than six generations of anti-enlightened,
anti-Semitic, false romantic, German-gushing obscurantism have been able to
bring about’ (143–4). Note especially the (for ‘right-thinking’ Germans selfevident)
relation between anti-enlightened and anti-semitic ideas, which is
suggested here!
13. Although the picture about the material composition of daily life in the GDR
is more complex and differentiated than I can describe here, terms like
‘Sachlichkeit’ and ‘Minimalgestaltung’ are nevertheless characteristic for the
East German material world. See also Bertsch (1990), Halter (1991), John
(1978), Kelm (1971), Kühne (1981), the volumes of the East German design
journal Form und Zweck, the women’s magazine Kultur im Heim, the advertising
journal Neue Werbung, the journal of the furniture industry Möbel und
Wohnraum and especially the pictures in the book of the East German
designer Heinz Hirdina (1988).
14. Although all the woods in the country were cut down, the timber was
exported to Western countries, in exchange for Western currency. The topic
‘East German economic relations with capitalist countries’ is extremely
interesting, because it makes clear that the GDR was willing to deny its own
idealist principles, in order to satisfy (at least to a certain extent) the internal
material situation. Also see Kleßmann and Wagner (1993: 377).
15. For an elaboration of the role of socialist regimes as (supposed) civilizing
forces, see also Mattijs Van de Port (1994).
16. Also see Gries (1991: 327).
17. I think that for many people the severest damage to life under (an ideologically
‘supported’) totalitarian dictatorship is perhaps not so much the deprivation
of liberties, which they have to endure, but the fact that personal
thoughts, strivings and desires are blended with, and (in an almost imperceptible
way) corrupted and absorbed by, hollow ideological war-cries, that
serve no other goal than the maintenance of totalitarian power as such.
18. The German expression ‘heile Welt’ can be translated as ‘a world in which
everything is all right’, but one could argue that it is significant that there is
a German term to express this, whereas there is no such English (or Dutch)
expression.
19. This quotation is torn out of its context, because although the East German
author writes about the desire for old-fashioned looking things, he asserts
that these desires are characteristic of capitalist societies and that they do
not exist in the GDR. Although he warns against ‘specific problems’ with
regard to the longing for old objects, he reassures his readers: in as much as
these wishes emerge in the GDR, they ‘usually don’t have anything to do
with a hankering after a past heile Welt’ (Letsch, 1983).
20. Die eigenen vier Wände is a German expression. Literally it means ‘the four
private walls’, but its emotional connotation is much stronger. It refers to
the home as the only place where one is private, safe, well.
It is an expression one can record everywhere in East Germany nowadays:
Veenis: C O N S U M P T I O N I N E A S T G E R M A N Y
109
05 Veenis (to) d 19/1/99 1:54 pm Page 109
© 1999 SAGE Publications. All rights reserved. Not for commercial use or unauthorized distribution.
at UCL Library Services on August 7, 2007http://mcu.sagepub.comDownloaded from
‘everybody withdraws within die eigenen vier Wände’. There, people are said
to look for the safety and well-being they so strongly miss outside. It is a
development that was already apparent within the GDR (the GDR was
called a Nischengesellschaft: niche-society) and contrary to what everybody
expected, this development has only increased since the Wende. One could
say that this development is characteristic of the feelings of insecurity and
threat which have increased instead of diminished after the Wende.
21. Also see the dialogue between Maaz and his West German colleague Moeller
(Moeller and Maaz, 1991, especially 150–2).
22. ’Time and again’ because, as the man at the Rudolstädter Christmas market
made clear, it is the third time in half a century that people have experienced
this. Nevertheless, there is one important difference between this
experience and former ones. Because, contrary to both the situation during
and after national-socialism and during socialist rule (when there was
always a dictatorial state that could be blamed for estranging and disrupting
any experiences whatsoever), the present-day situation is the first time
that people are fully responsible for the (estranging, disrupting) feelings and
developments they undergo.
23. Of course, one can also interpret this example (and the way in which East
Germans relate to the new material world that surrounds them in general)
in terms of the attraction that stems from the new-ness of Western objects.
One could then point out that Western objects are much more fashionable
than those that were previously for sale here. It may sound as a contradiction
(the desire for things as a search for solidity, versus a search for newness
and fashion), but I don’t see it as a contradiction. The interpretation I
am presenting here is not meant to be exhaustive. There is much more to
say about the ways in which East Germans relate to (Western) objects. In
this article I merely want to present a possible line of interpretation, which
has to be developed further and in more detail.
24. Literally: ‘from there’, but usually meant to circumscribe (people, things,
phenomena) from the other Germany.
25. Literally: parcels from the West; people usually refer to the Christmas
parcels that were annually sent from hüben to drüben and the other way
around.
26. Especially see the first book (1989[1913]) of the famous cycle of novels from
Marcel Proust, À la recherche du temps perdu, in which the author brilliantly
shows how his youth-memories come back to him through the associations
that arise from the flavour of a biscuit which he dipped in his tea.
27. In the words of Van Beek: ‘Material things rather than intangible essences
surely must be privileged to ground the completeness of one’s identity
vis-a-vis a world that threatens us with the fluidity . . . of our person’
(1996: 22).
References
Bataille, Georges (1991[1967]) The Accursed Share. An Essay on General Economy.
Volume I. New York: Zone Books.
Bauman, Zygmunt (1991) Modernity and Ambivalence. Cambridge: Polity Press.
Berman, Marshall (1983) All That Is Solid Melts Into Air. The Experience Of
Modernity. London/New York: Verso.
Bertsch, Georg and Ernst Hedler (1990) SED Schönes Einheits Design. Köln:
Taschenverlag.
J o u r n a l o f M AT E R I A L C U LT U R E 4 ( 1 )
110
05 Veenis (to) d 19/1/99 1:54 pm Page 110
© 1999 SAGE Publications. All rights reserved. Not for commercial use or unauthorized distribution.
at UCL Library Services on August 7, 2007http://mcu.sagepub.comDownloaded from
Borneman, John (1992) Belonging in the Two Berlins. Kin, State, Nation.
Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Buruma, Ian (1994) Het loon van de schuld. Herinneringen aan de oorlog in
Duitsland en Japan. Amsterdam/Antwerpen: Atlas.
Campbell, Colin (1987) The Romantic Ethic and the Spirit of Modern Consumerism.
Oxford: Basil Blackwell.
Campbell, Colin (1997) ‘The Romantic Ethic and the Spirit of Modern
Consumerism: Reflections on the Reception of a Thesis Concerning the
Origin of the Continuing Desire for Goods’, in Susan M. Pearce (ed.) Experiencing
Material Culture in the Western World, pp. 36–49. London/Washington:
Leicester University Press.
Dagerman, Stig (1947) Duitse herfst. Een naoorlogse reportage. Amsterdam:
Meulenhoff.
Diesener, Gerald and Rainer Gries (1992) ‘Chic zum Geburtstag unserer
Republik’. Zwei Projekte zur Produkt- und Politikpropaganda im deutschdeutschen
Vergleich. Geschichtswerkstatt 25: 56–96.
Dornheim, Karl (1966) ‘Ein Neubeginn und seine Erfolge’, in Dunkle Vergangenheit,
helle Gegenwart. Beiträge zur Betriebsgeschichte des VEB Chemiefaserwerk
Schwarza ‘Wilhelm Pieck’. Heft I. Zirkel ‘Schreibende Arbeiter’ (Hrsg.),
pp. 101–20. Rudolstadt: CFK Schwarza.
Form und Zweck (1956/57–1990).
Forsythe, Diana (1989) ‘German Identity and the Problem of History’, in Maryon
McDonald and Malcolm Chapman (eds) History and Ethnicity. London:
Routledge.
Geissler, Christian (1961) Een generatie zwijgt. Amsterdam: Moussault.
Gries, Rainer (1991) Die Rationengesellschaft. Versorgungskampf und Vergleichsmentalität:
Leipzig, München und Köln nach dem Kriege. Münster: Westfälisches
Dampfboot.
Halter, Regine (1991) Vom Bauhaus bis Bitterfeld. 41 Jahre DDR-Design. Giessen:
Anabas.
Herting, Helga (1968) ‘Sozialistischer Humanismus – sozialistischer Realismus.
Zur Diskussion um das sozialistische Menschenbild in den dreiziger Jahren’,
Weimarer Beiträge, 14(5): 901–28.
Hirdina, Heinz (1988) Gestalten für die Serie. Design in der DDR 1949–1985.
Dresden: VEB Verlag der Kunst.
John, Erhard (1978) Probleme der marxistisch-leninistischen Ästhetik. Band 2. Kunst
und gesellschaftliches Leben. Halle: VEB Max Niemeyer Verlag.
Kaes, Anton (1989) From Hitler to Heimat. The Return of History as Film.
Cambridge, MA/London: Harvard University Press.
Kelm, Martin (1971) Produktgestaltung im Sozialismus. Berlin: Dietz Verlag.
K.i.H. (1965–1989) Kultur im Heim.
Kleßmann, Christoph and Georg Wagner (eds) (1993) Das gespaltene Land. Leben
in Deutschland 1945 bis 1990. Texte und Dokumente. München: C.H. Beck.
Kühne, Lothar (1981) Gegenstand und Raum. Über die Historizität des Ästhetischen.
Dresden: VEB Verlag der Kunst.
Letsch, Herbert (1983) Der Alltag und die Dinge um uns. Berlin: Dietz Verlag.
Maaz, Hans-Joachim (1991) Psychogram van Oostduitsland. Amsterdam: De Arbei-
derspers.
Meuschel, Sigrid (1992) Legitimation und Parteiherrschaft in der DDR. Zum Paradox
von Stabilität und Revolution in der DDR 1945–1989. Frankfurt am Main:
Suhrkamp.
Miller, Daniel (1987) Material Culture and Mass Consumption. Oxford: Basil
Blackwell.
Veenis: C O N S U M P T I O N I N E A S T G E R M A N Y
111
05 Veenis (to) d 19/1/99 1:54 pm Page 111
© 1999 SAGE Publications. All rights reserved. Not for commercial use or unauthorized distribution.
at UCL Library Services on August 7, 2007http://mcu.sagepub.comDownloaded from
Mitscherlich, A. and M. Mitscherlich (1967) Die Unfähigkeit zu Trauern. Grundlagen
kollektiven Verhaltens. München: Piper.
Moeller, Michael Lukas and Hans-Joachim Maaz (1991) Die Einheit beginnt zu
zweit. Ein deutsch-deutsches Zwiegespräch. Hamburg: Rowohlt.
Mosse, Georg (1980) Masses and Man. Nationalist and Fascist Perceptions of Reality.
Detroit, MI: Wayne State University Press.
Niethammer, Lutz, Alexander von Plato and Dorothee Wierling (1991) Die volkseigene
Erfahrung. Eine Archäologie des Lebens in der Industrieprovinz der DDR.
Berlin: Rowohlt.
Niemöller, Joost (1991) Over de muur. Oostduitse levensverhalen. Amsterdam: Bert
Bakker.
Pracht, Erwin et al. (1978) Ästhetik heute. Berlin: Dietz Verlag.
Proust, Marcel (1989[1913]) Combray. Amsterdam: Bezige Bij.
Rosenlöcher, Thomas (1992) ‘Der Untergang der Banane’, in Wilhelm Solm (ed.)
Begrenzt glücklich. Kindheit in der DDR. Marburg: Hitzeroth.
Schmidt, Jutta (1966) ‘Über die Gestaltung des sozialistischen Menschenbildes’,
Einheit, 21(11): 1434–43.
Simon, Annette (1995) Versuch, mir und anderen die ostdeutsche Moral zu erklären.
Giessen: Psychosozial Verlag.
Selle, Gert (1993) Die eigenen vier Wände: zur verborgenen Geschichte des Wohnens.
Frankfurt am Main/New York: Campus Verlag.
Taussig, Michael (1993) Mimesis and Alterity. A Particular History of the Senses.
New York/London: Routledge.
Touraine, Alain (1995) Critique of Modernity. Oxford: Basil Blackwell.
Uhlitzsch, Joachim (1966) Bildende Kunst auf dem Bitterfelder Weg. Berlin: Verlag
Tribune.
Van Beek, Gosewijn (1996) ‘On Materiality’, Etnofoor 9(1): 5–25.
Van de Port, Mattijs (1994) Het einde van de wereld. Beschaving, redeloosheid en
zigeunercafés in Servië. Amsterdam: Babylon/De Geus.
Van de Port, Mattijs (1998) ‘The Modernist’s Fado. Coping with cultural estrangement
in a globalizing society’. Unpublished research proposal, University of
Amsterdam.
Veenis, Milena (1997) ‘Fantastic Things’, in Susan M. Pearce (ed.) Experiencing
Material Culture in the Western World, pp. 154–75. London/Washington:
Leicester University Press.
Volkswacht, Volkswacht. Organ der Bezirksleitung Gera der sozialistischen
Einheitspartei Deutschlands.
Wolf, Christa (1990) Patronen van een jeugd. Amsterdam: Van Gennep.
Wolf, Christa (1991) Wat blijft. Amsterdam: Van Gennep.
Wolf, Christa (1994) Auf dem Weg nach Tabou. Texte 1990–1994. Köln: Kiepenheuer
& Witsch.
x MILENA VEENIS (MA) studied cultural anthropology at the University of
Amsterdam. At present, she is writing her PhD thesis about the changing role
and meaning of Western consumer goods in East Germany. Address: Amsterdam
School for Social Science Research, Oude Hoogstraat 24, 1012 CE Amsterdam,
The Netherlands. [email: veenis@pscw.uva.nl]
J o u r n a l o f M AT E R I A L C U LT U R E 4 ( 1 )
112
05 Veenis (to) d 19/1/99 1:54 pm Page 112
© 1999 SAGE Publications. All rights reserved. Not for commercial use or unauthorized distribution.
at UCL Library Services on August 7, 2007http://mcu.sagepub.comDownloaded from