After German unification, former officers of the GDR state security service united with GDR professors and cultural managers to establish the East German Committee of Associations (OKV). On the basis of encompassing oral history into this complex web of interest organizations and memory clubs, Bouma argues that these activists are driven by an epistemic nostalgia: a longing for the time when their political understanding of the world was seemingly unchallenged. Far from constituting a ‘second life of the Stasi’, the main goal of OKV associations has been to validate the personal biographies of their activists, against the now prevalent view that the GDR was a ‘state of injustice’. While the OKV quickly adapted to the new legal procedures in post-socialist Germany, their staunch defence of the GDR heritage complicates their relation to SED successor party Die Linke and other radical left parties and associations, even when they share practical goals.
- Cover
- Table of Contents
- Acknowledgements
- List of Abbreviations
- Introduction
- Getting access
- Studying “fallen elites”
- The purpose of this book
- Remembering the GDR
- Three types of memory
- Political epistemics
- The Stasi stigma
- Overview of the book
- Part I. Memory and Nostalgia
- 1. The Emotional Factor
- Memory, Nostalgia and Politics
- Communicative memory
- Collective recalling and forgetting
- Compartmentalized disremembering
- Nostalgia and trauma
- Nostalgia as a coping strategy
- Claiming “trauma”
- Nostalgia and politics
- 2. OKV Biographies
- Shared Memories and Arguments
- The socialist autobiography
- I OKV activists’ stories
- Stasi officer
- Cultural functionary
- Former spy
- Socialist academician
- Stasi drop-out
- Hereditary communist
- OKV sympathizer
- II Analysis of the (auto)biographies
- A coherent age cohort
- Conversion narratives and social mobility
- The personal is political: On the arguments in OKV autobiographies
- Antifascism
- Social mobility
- Conclusion
- Part II. The Ostdeutsches Kuratorium von Verbänden
- 3. The Ostdeutsches Kuratorium von Verbänden
- Origins, Structures, Strategies
- The origin of the OKV
- OKV membership
- Internal organization
- Activities
- The OKV’s organizational core: GBM
- The pension issue
- Thematic and organizational development of the GBM
- Support for GDR functionaries against “Siegerjustiz”: GRH
- Conclusion
- 4. A Complimentary and Overlapping Web
- The OKV as a Social and Political Milieu
- Antifascism and peace advocacy
- Art and science
- Historical memory
- Associations of GDR traditions
- Conditional outreach: Local initiatives on social justice
- Conclusion: The afterlife of the GDR?
- Part III. The Maintenance of Communal Continuity in Activism and Outreach
- 5. Legal Activism
- ISOR as the OKV’s Major Lobby Organization
- The issue of Stasi pensions
- ISOR’s resistance to the pension laws
- Limited success
- Running out of options
- ISOR as Sozialverein
- Shifting to political strategies?
- GDR continuity?
- GDR legal practices: Petitioning the authorities instead of suing the state
- Mediation
- Contacting politicians
- Conclusion
- 6. Left Without Its Party
- OKV Attempts at Linkage
- After the divorce: The OKV and SED/PDS/Die Linke
- Patron or traitor? Hans Modrow as a political mediator
- Flirting with the DKP
- Connections beyond the party spectrum
- Conclusion
- Part IV. Conclusion
- Conclusion
- The Organization of Nostalgia
- Epistemic nostalgia
- Nostalgia narratives
- Strategies of continuity
- Organization
- Self-isolation
- (Re)framing
- The political environment
- Bibliography
- Index
- List of Figures and Tables
- Figure 3.1 The network of OKV member organizations
- Table 3.1 Organizational diagram of OKV-affiliated organizations
- Figure 6.1 The OKV’s possible partners and their placement a
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