By Ulrike Helwerth
"Farewells and Beginnings" is the title of a photographic exhibition currently being held at the German Historical Museum in Berlin. Taken between Autumn 1989 and 1990 by the photographer Stefan Moses, the photo-portraits of individuals and groups give a fascinating picture of everyday life in the GDR [East Germany] in its period of change.
Of all the photos, my favourite is one entitled "Open-cut coal miners, Borna". Three people stand in front of an industrial wasteland dominated in the background by a huge factory complex with chimneys smoking. In the centre, flanked by two younger male co-workers, is a woman, solidly built, perhaps in her 40's, with a helmet, and wearing dark-blue work-clothes under a padded jacket. Leaning forward slightly, she holds the handlebars of a Simpson motorbike. She looks resolutely and directly into the camera, her lips pursed to a half-smile.
I'm riveted by the photo. It presents the GDR in condensed form — or rather the stereotype of the other Germany which I, as a woman from the West had for so many years. It also points to an illusion which I have had to take leave from — that "real existing socialism" was really a historical step forward towards women's liberation.
In a draft program presented at the Weimar congress of the Unabhõngiger Frauenverband [UFV, Independent Women's Union] in late September 1991, the authors attempted to chart a common feminist position in the wake of German unification. It contains passages like: "Feminists in the GDR womens's movement see themselves as having been set back three steps in history in terms off preconditions for their liberation ..." It goes on to state that "guaranteed basic social rights on relatively equal footing with men, as well as a high degree of economic, legal and sexual self-determination, are no longer taken for granted, but are rather the goal of feminist politics".
I take a closer look at the photos in the exhibition: the three "Agro-Technical Engineers", one of them an elderly woman almost of retirement age; the four apprentices from the Borna brown coal works, looking either sceptically or ashamedly flirtishly into the camera in their blue work clothes and helmets; the two older "Vegetable Production Specialists" in their overalls with scarfs,rubber gloves and gumboots; the three middle-aged "Vegetable Processing Specialists" from Neukirchen-Wyhra in their nylon smocks with buttons straining. Broad in the hips, big hands, thick legs propping up a sack of potatoes.
These are all women who played an active role in the socialist economy, women with an income of their own, many of them with children in the state day-care centres, some of them probably single mothers, some of them definitely with several abortions to their name. What did these women gain from the right to work? Was it the chance to make career and family compatible, the right to abortion and all the other "achievements" which tody even feminists praise as a "high degree of economic, legal and sexual self-determination"? I see the legs varicosed from endless chores and standing in long queues, the work-worn hands, thick-set bodies, taut shoulders and sceptical looks. Is this the "feminist paradise" which the GDR was supposed to be compared with the FRG [West Germany], as some East German feminists now claim?
One thing is certain: feminists in East and West didn't want unification, and they certainly didn't want it in the way men brought it about. There's also no doubt that the cost of unification has largely been borne by East German women.
But we'll get nowhere if we stubbornly stick to our positions and hide from each other behind an "identity" which rarely gets defined, nor if we posthumously elevate our respective pasts to the status of paradise and whine endlessly about being torn out of it.
This is the case with both East and West German feminists. There are quite a few of the latter who are convinced that feminism was in a better position before unification, and that the last 20 years of life and work in the women's movement have now been undone overnight. That's equally as far from the truth as the statement by our sole parliamentarian, Christina Schenk, that "patriarchy in the GDR was nothing compared to that in the FRG".
Communication between women's activists in East and West is poor. Two years after the fall of the Wall and one year after unification, German sisters are as foreign to each other as they ever were before, just like the rest of the two halves of Germany. We make use of every available chance to tell each other that we have problems with each other. We're continually rehashing our stereotypes of each other. Both treat the others "over there" as less emancipated and independent than themselves.
At the same time, we keep affirming the need for a strong united movement, because we know that that's our only chance to get out of the present jam where, socially and politically, our backs are against the wall. That will take time, many say. After all, in the women's movement we don't want to repeat the blunders of hasty unification: the bigger gobbling up the smaller, with all the forced conformity, patronising and brain-washing entailed.
The problem is that we're on unequal footing — some know the rules of the society which we now share, they have their place in it, while the others don't (yet). But we should finally make a start, now that even the UFV opened itself towards Western women at its last congress.
To make this step, we need to critically re-examine our respective "feminist paradises". For some this involves recognising that employment, child-care and the right to abortion, for example, do not in themselves equal self-determination. Others have to realise that their cherished, well-protected male-free nooks and crannies are far from posing a serious threat to the patriarchy.
So why not make a virtue out of necessity? Why not put our heads together and work out which of our differences are real ones, rooted in our very different social backgrounds, and where we are simply burdened with prejudices fed by grudges and competitiveness. Let's go to each other, look around, listen. It could be the start of a new movement. That is something we need desperately in this "Fatherland", Goddess only knows!
[From the East German women's magazine Weibblick. Translated by Will Firth.]