love my Oma, she's turning 90 next week (born 1934!) and was the first person I came out as bi to. Defo hanging one or two of these up in my dorm
Whenever people imply communism = lack of incentive for human greatness, I think about how my grandparents had lower class parents and were extremely poor (even starving) in their post-war childhood, but ended up leading pretty impressive lives, despite knowing they wouldn't live much above the material reality of their neighbors for it.
My grandma was an interior architect and my grandpa an astrophysics professor and professional photographer. Both were gymnasts in their 20's (my grandpa has a couple medals below). They didn't do any of that shit for luxury, they figured they'd lead a modest life in the standard plattenblau housing block as the other working people of their town (small but cute and cozy apartment, I was there not too long ago), and that's what they wanted.
They never needed to drive a car in their lives, and often visited countries across the Eastern Bloc by bike/public transit. My grandma always had a thing for making fruit preserves and cool pottery (still killing it), and my grandpa for art from wood carving (he was also a mountain climber). They had a nice community garden they always tended to too. It's a beautiful town with a lot to see, honestly can't wait to visit again
My mom was 19 when the Berlin Wall fell. She studied english abroad when everything went to shit under capitalism. Ended up moving to the US just because she met my dad. Usually when she tells an American she grew up in the DDR, they look all shocked and ask some insane shit like if she was starving to death, or if she knew anyone who was shot and killed trying to climb the wall (💀⁉️). Certainly no one was starving by the 70s/80s. My mom and all her friends and acquaintances had great childhoods. She had a small town, middle of nowhere school system that pushed sports, music, art, multilingualism, sciences, etc. on her heavily (when I did track and field in high school she always told me how her school's facility was 10x better lmao). The DDR fostered genuine human greatness. But ig they didn't have bananas at grocery stores and a hundred car brands like the west 🤷♂️
I see that DDR turned out nicely for some. Unfortunately my Grandpa was imprisoned for being against the governmet at the time there, while the other part of my family was basically cast out for being capitalists (They had a small "factory" with 5ish workers). So there certainly have been some downsides.
Not really by the sounds of it, mate.
They arrested poor Opa until he stopped publicly advocating for fascism and HUMILIATED the small business tyrant by freeing his hungry serfs
they say like it's a normal thing to have
They were doing just a little bit of exploitation, as a treat
Yeah, like...I have no illusions that the DDR made some errors, but even if all of society was structured like his "factory" he'd be in the top 18%.
In any case, both the SU and the DDR were happy to place former owners in administration roles (made things simpler) as long as they were willing and well liked by the new Worker's Council.
sooo your grandpa was a nazi and your family were parasites
sounds like they got more or less what they deserved
This was my immediate thought. He was a small business owner in the DDR. He didn't start running a private factory DURING the DDR, right? It under the prior regime, AKA the Nazis. What do you call a successful businessman in the Third Reich? A fucking Nazi.
Political repression is obvious not ideal - political openness and free expression are objectively preferred over limiting political expression. But… this is the ideal. The practical reality is that, in times of war every country represses political expression. In the US, UK, and France, for example… in WWI or WWII, what happened to you if you spoke out against the war? Spoke in solidarity with workers in the “enemy” country? What if you expressed that you wanted your country to capitulate to the German Empire/Third Reich?
And make no mistake, for the entirety of the existence of the DDR, it was in a state of war. The capitalist west poured as many resources into toppling socialism in the east as they would a real shooting war. Allowing complete free expression would have opened the door to complete manipulation by the west. To do otherwise would be to betray the very workers - the great majority of the people - who built the DDR. You’re in a workers state and the state is entrusted with the protection of those workers. Anyone who is acting in a way that betrays those workers should be dealt with. Political repression isn’t great but as you saw what happened in the 90s in the former DDR, the workers suffered immeasurably from “losing” the Cold War.
There is very strong relationship between how much political expression a government allows and the level of existential threat that same government faces. In the US or Germany today, sure you can express your politics all you want. Because any form of political expression poses ZERO threat to the powers that be. If we were ever in a situation where in the US, the left posed a real threat, I guarantee you all our free speech protections would go out the window. By the way, in the free, capitalist Germany of today, what would happen to you if you went into the town square and openly expressed solidarity with Hamas - an organization which poses zero threat to Germany or Germans?
And to another point… I am more familiar with USSR than the DDR, but I think it’s fair to say the former was more repressive of speech. And the reality is that, at least after Stalin, in the USSR you could fit the number of people jailed for political crimes in any given year into one-half of a basketball court (that’s in a country orders of magnitude larger than the DDR). That’s for several reasons, but a big one is that the USSR had a policy of prophylaxis. First off, if you were just complaining about your representative or if you were a capitalism enjoyer, you were generally left alone. You actually had to do enough to get on the radar. And if it got to that point, someone would approach you and tell you to knock it off, or there would be consequences. And lots of people who were brought to trial weren’t convicted because they weren’t a big enough threat, and plenty more similarly had convictions overturned. The point of all this is to say, in much of the Eastern Bloc, it took quite a bit to actually get in jail for political expression. If you’re at the point where you are in jail, there’s likely a long road that brought you there. So when you say “my grandfather was jailed for speaking out against the government”, I am going to apply a hefty dose of skepticism that he was just expressing his displeasure to friends at the local cafe or whatever.
'If we were ever in a situation where in the US, the left posed a real threat, I guarantee you all our free speech protections would go out the window'
Look back to the red scare. The U.S felt somewhat vulnerable to the left, and repressed people for expressing leftist ideas. The 'House Un-American Activities Committee' (HUAC) existed until 1978. They banned all sorts of expression.
I see only upsides.
Good.
can you define "basically cast out"?
A lot of the younger ones weren't able to secure a apprenticeship at all, even if their grades were good. They also could not study, also a No from the government for them. People in towm generally were distancing because no one wanted to be associated with them.
I mean you can argue against capitalism, there are weaknesses and downsides. But I would say this method of basically punishing the family for the actions of one man ist not quite right.
Lmao
What's your opinion on immigration?
Were they Nazis?
No. You can dislike DDR or have been imprisoned there without being one.
Was grandpa one though? What reference did he have for disliking it since Germany in his lifetime was never good
What about "No" do you not understand? You just had to look to west Germany and would see an economically easier life. Also DDR was not exactly a real demoncary, so this was frustrating, too.
Grandpa was wrong if he couldnt see how and why West Germany got that money
Could be. Still wrong to imprison people just for wanting to leave. Also it's not like DDR was perfect with handling their workers, they did shit things, too
DDR were probably justified if the alternative is becoming a capitalist colonialist puppet state