“Good Bye Lenin!” by Wolfgang Becker is one of the most successful German films of all time. It tells the story of reunification of West and East Germany, but also comes back in time a little and reflects about the past of the country. Today, I will be talking about “Good Bye Lenin!” and how it portrays the past of the Germany, and in my eyes, it portrays the past in very nostalgic way and Ostalgie plays a big role in it as well.

Christiane who is Alex’s mother, is a communist activist and she strongly believes in socialism. After 8 months of being in a coma she wakes up in a completely different country and political system. The Berlin Wall does not exist anymore and the country is finally united. For her generation, those changes were very dramatic, and Christiane’s character and her behaviour is a very good representation of Ostalgie. Ostalgie is a German term and it’s about nostalgia for life in East Germany (ost- east, nostalgie-nostalgia). After destroying the Berlin Wall, Eastern Germany culture started to disappear. As Barney says “Significantly, ostalgie began with the “museumification” of East Germany and the collection of elements of everyday GDR life for national displays across Germany. (Barney, 2009). In the film Alex created almost a living museum in Christiane’s room. He brought back old furnitures,  and created a living museum for his mother.

Fashion, food and apartment design have been replaced by things from the West. We can see it in a clip below when Christiane is leaving the apartment on her own for the first time after waking up from the coma. She is walking down the street, where she can see for example the poster of IKEA or pink lamp which belong to people coming from West, and she knows that it is something new and rather rare in the East.

Sigmund Jahn is a very important character, in which we can see a symbol of Ostalgie. When we first see him on the screen he is the first Eastern German who flew into space and that’s how Alex remembered him as Jahn was a hero for him. After unification however Alex meets him in person, and Jahn is just a simple cab driver. It may suggest that after the wall fell, changes in Germany were so rapid, and the Eastern Germany was dominated by West, so Jahn’s achievements were forgotten and from now on he had to live an ordinary life. As Barney says “The idealized GDR has shattered, showing one of its legends as a taxi driver, a typically ambivalent comment from GBL on the fall of the East and the ensuing disappointment with what the West has in store.” (Barney, 2009).

In “Good bye, Lenin!” Becker presents the past as something good and worth to remember. Ostalgie presented in the film plays very a big role, because it shows, that even though East Germany was not a perfect place to live, it was a place that shaped many German people. They way Becker portrayed the past, almost makes us feel what was is like to be an Eastern German, when everything was simpler and easier.  

Bibliography

Barney, T. (2009). When We Was Red: and Nostalgia for the “Everyday GDR” . Communication and Critical/Cultural Studies, 6(2), pp. 132-151.