East Germany – findingtimetowrite

K Drama Reply 1988 and the Power of Nostalgia

I heard that the TV series Reply 1988 (which aired in 2015-16 and is the final part of a non-linked trilogy of Replies, also including Reply 1997 and Reply 1994) is one of the most beloved TV dramas in South Korea, but less well-known and loved abroad. One of the reasons for that (and the one that put me off watching it initially) is that it’s 20 episodes of 90-110 minutes each, which is a huge time commitment. The other reason might be that it doesn’t contain any of the twists and turns and cliffhangers of typical K dramas: no revenge plots, no whodunit mysteries, no lost twins adopted from orphanages and misplaced in chaebol families, no time travel or amnesia, not even ill-fated romances. Instead, it is an immersive experience of living alongisde five families on the same street in the Ssangmundong neighbourhood in Seoul in 1988, just as the city is hosting the Olympic Games. It shows the friendship among the five kids (four boys and a girl) who’ve known each other almost since birth, as well as the bickering, teasing, food, financial and moral support that the neighbours provide for each other. Although the first episode might make you feel there is too much screeching and physical violence going on, and some of the characters (both parents and children) can feel farcical and over the top, it is worth persevering, because as the series develops you develop much more sympathy for every one of the characters, as you realise they all have their problems and shortcomings but also admirable traits. Nothing much happens – and yet everything happens, life itself with all its major and minor joys and aches. You become addicted this gentle, warm-hearted look at daily lives, their hopes and disappointments, their quarrels and misunderstandings, the need to grasp and make the most of each fleeting moment, to tell our loved ones just how much they mean to us while we still can.

1988 was a key year in South Korean history, and hosting the Olympics brought about a turning point to the politics and economics of the country, and this is beautifully (but not heavy-handedly) conveyed in the series. What particularly resonated with me was that I was almost the exact age of the young protagonists in 1988 and had been hoping to go to the Seoul Olympics to compete in athletics (I gave up a year or so earlier, when I realised that Romania had too many good athletes and I stood little chance of getting selected). That’s why so many of the details about the clothes and shoes, make-up, walkmans, mix tapes, videos, even high school games they played all resonated with me. It gave me a warm, fuzzy feeling, and reminded me that I also have many wonderful and happy memories associated with those years, not just the sudden flooding of trauma and regrets that arose recently after discovering some hitherto unsuspected bad behaviour from my mother, which led to me rereading my high-school diaries.

While I didn’t have such continuous friendships (having lived abroad for a good part of my childhood), there were some really close and dear friends in high school and we did spend all our free time at each other’s houses, watching videos of Duran Duran and Madonna, or smuggled films, or mooching about outside our blocks of flats until our parents called us in for dinner. Our mothers also exchanged dishes (despite the shortage of ingredients), our fathers exchanged bottles of home-made brandy, and we would occasionally borrow each other’s clothes and make-up. We also tried to imitate dance moves – more specifically, we tried to do breakdancing (so the recent ‘breaking’ at the Olympics added to my nostalgia). And we also discovered many years later that some of the boys in our friendship group quite fancied some of us girls, but were too shy to tell us so.

The five friends of Reply 1988. So much denim!

However, watching it now, I’m at the age of the parents in the series, who constantly struggle with financial pressures, worry about their children’s future, complain about their marriages and lack of communication or sex lives, or realise that the years have gone by and they are very far removed from the expectations they had in their youth,. Nevertheless, they have each other – or at least they do until they all move out of that neighbourhood. I liked the fact that the parents were complete characters in themselves, with their own hopes and dreams, occasionally putting pressure on their children, but never as extremely interfering or unreasonable as in some other K dramas.

The series feels so true to life, because we see time passing, the children growing up, life separating them; ultimately, the neighbourhood is abandoned and then demolished to make way for blocks of flats.

Time will always flow. Everything will pass by. Everything will age. That might be why youth is beautiful. It shines, blindingly bright, for just an instant. But you can never go back to it… This is the end of our Ssamundong story. Longing for that time and longing for that street is not because I miss a younger version of myself. It’s because it was the place of my father’s youth, of my mother’s youth, of my friends’ youth. It’s the place that holds the youth of everyone I love. I regret being unable to say my final farewell to that place, where we can never all gather again. To the things that are already gone, to a time that has already passed, I want to say a belated farewell. Goodbye, my youth. Goodbye, Ssamundong. A time so warm and pure, that it was painful.

The series is a love letter to a certain time and place, but also the people who make such a time and place unforgettable. I enjoyed it very much and heartily recommend it to those who like a slower-paced, low-key, charming TV series running on vibes and character development rather than exciting plotlines. It got me ruminating, however, about the power and the dangers of nostalgia. The term ‘nostalgia = nostos + algia, literally the ache for returning home’ was coined by Swiss medic Johannes Hofer in 1688 to describe the homesickness that was particularly frequent in Swiss mercenary soldiers who pined for their mountain landscapes when out fighting wars in other countries. A century later it was also used to describe the condition that beset many of the crew sailing with Captain Cook, and it was seen as something to be feared or to be ashamed of, a disease that caused depression, lethargy, fever, and in some cases even death.

Psychologists have become more nuanced when discussing nostalgia nowadays. Some of them see the personal benefits of a moderate dwelling in nostalgia (which is hopefully what I’ve been doing for the past month or two, as I reconnect with my past with a view to possibly writing a memoir): it can help combat loneliness and sadness when we reminisce about a period in our lives when we were happy and felt connected. By triggering happy emotions and memories, it acts as a sort of abstract ‘pacifier’ that can soothe us when times are rough or even just a bit dull. The danger is when we become so wedded to the past that we find it difficult to accept and live in the present – whether as individuals or as a society (or social group) that is forever harking back to some glorious past, often a selectively remembered or even entirely imagined glorious past.

This is where it gets interesting for me as an anthropologist, for I see many worrying about and denouncing the so-called ‘Ostalgie’ in the former German Democratic Republic. It was (and sometimes still is) perceived by most West Germans as a lack of willingness to integrate or an attempt to reverse German reunification, but in fact it is a coping mechanism for East Germans who suddenly found their whole way of life, which contained happy memories as well as brutal and difficult ones, swept away and devalued. It is a way to validate and value their own experiences, and I see that with many of my friends of similar age from Romania too. The challenges of living under Communism meant we all experienced the same hardships, having hot water only for a couple of hours a day, or power cuts every day, having to queue for hours for eggs or milk or flour, having to tread a very fine line with censorship (which was, let’s admit it, at times a very thrilling line for us young people – to see what you could get away with!). The fact that none of us could rise too much above the others in terms of wealth or power (at least, not in our non-party-elite circles), this all created a sense of solidarity and community which got lost very quickly once competitive capitalism had us in its thrall. Reply 1988 suggests that this was what happened to South Korea as well, which is perhaps why it felt so relatable.

I was unfortunately roped in for two such stadium shows, one for 1st May and one for 23rd August (which was then our national holiday). The rehearsals were exhausting and the way we were treated was ghastly, but there were happy moments too of complicity, laughter and living together like in a summer camp.

What does puzzle me is when opinion polls in Romania show that quite a significant proportion of people believe that Communism was a good thing for Romania (48.1%) and that living standards were better under Communism (46.4% of all responses). While I admit that some of the changes were sudden and brutal, while other hoped-for improvements are taking too long to materialise, this is really selective amnesia or uncritical nostalgia and I hope that young people who never experienced that period themselves do not fall prey to it. As mentioned above, this is the dangerous kind of ‘Ostalgie’, which is not really about the East, but more about nationalist, so-called ‘anti-woke’ propaganda.

As I watched the Olympic Games in Paris, I have to admit that I was slightly sad that Romania won so few medals (more than in the previous few Olympic Games, but a definite decline since 2004), when in our heyday in 1984 and 1988 we won so many. But then I remember the pros and cons of the training camps and the harsh training regimes, and any regrets I might have are firmly stopped right there in their tracks. Sometimes the past is not as comforting as we believe it to have been, or at least not for others, even if it was sort of okay for ourselves. I prefer to temper my nostalgia with realism, but I can also fall in love with TV shows that make us come to terms with our past.

#InternationalBooker: Three from the Longlist

Sourcing the longlisted books can be an expensive and difficult business, as my local library only has a couple of them, but I have had a chance to read three of the books since the longlist was announced on Monday 11th March, so am hopefully on track to read most of them before the shortlist in April. However, the reviews will be quite short, because I will provide a more in-depth review of the shortlisted titles.

Andrey Kurkov: The Silver Bone, transl. Boris Dralyuk, Collins.

This was the only one of the longlist that I already had downloaded on my Kindle, not because I predicted that it would be longlisted, but because I like crime fiction generally, have been a Kurkov fan since Death and the Penguin, saw him speak a couple of months ago and heard about his struggles to get back into writing fiction when his country is at war.

It’s set in Kyiv in 1919 and is about a very confusing and painful period in Ukrainian and Russian history, in the immediate aftermath of the Bolshevik Revolution. There are many details about hunger, violence, ideological contradictions, rapid changes which reminded me of Marina Tsvetaeva’s Moscow Diaries from the same period. But there is also a fantasy element to it, a cut-off ear stuffed in a drawer which can eavesdrop on people, that could have come straight from Bulgakov or Gogol – probably a deliberate choice, since both of those writers have strong Ukrainian links, although they wrote in Russian, just like Kurkov himself.

The two contrasting covers to the book probably show the lack of certainty as to what this book is exactly. The dark cover seems to indicate a noir novel, but it is too slow-paced to satisfy crime fiction aficionados, too full of historical details and descriptions, with a forgettable whodunit element that I really didn’t care about solving. However, as an insight into a particular time and place, it is fascinating – yes, quite anti-Russian, as some reviewers have pointed out, but there are some decent Russian characters there too. There are also satirical strands to it – or rather absurd and grotesque elements, to fit in with an absurd and grotesque period of history – but overall it does not strike me as a humorous or cosy crime book in any way other than the fantasy element of the hidden ear, which is why the white cover feels a bit off. Personally, I’d have preferred a cover featuring a historical image of Kyiv during that period, but publishers probably feared that might make it look too much like non-fiction.

Although it’s competently written and well translated, I’m a bit puzzled why this one made the longlist. There isn’t a single paragraph there that makes me think ‘This is so beautifully written, I want to share it with the whole world’ – maybe it is a sort of recognition of Kurkov’s body of work and because it feels relevant to the present day? It is not one of his strongest or most imaginative novels in terms of literary prizes, but I will certainly continue to read this series as a crime fiction fan.

Ia Grenberg: The Details, transl. Kira Josefsson, Wildfire.

This book, as the cover indicates, is made up of four vignettes, four portraits of important people in the narrator’s life, in non-chronological order, with the narrator looking back on her youthful escapades from a vantage point of twenty-plus years.

Through the descriptions of these people and the relationship they forge with the narrator, we of course get a better understanding of the narrator herself. We are all shaped by the people we come into contact with, or at least the ones we have most loved or hated or been obsessed by. The other way in which we get to know the narrator is through the shared books – the ones that she and her friends/lovers discuss or love or hate.

It’s a quiet, short book, easily read one sitting, with several passages about a procrastinating writer where I smiled in rueful recognition, as well as general ruminations about the world which gradually reveal things about the narrator – in some cases subtly, in other cases more obviously. The author’s approach is captured best in a quote about one of the briefest and most mysterious episodes in her life, the section entitled Alejandro:

…what he told me, the information he shared with me, I carefully committed to memory with a view to recounting it to Sally and others who might ask, and perhaps also for the benefit of future me, but the information was just the container and not by any stretch the details that woke me up the next morning, heart thumping…

It’s these details that the author tries to capture, the unspoken, the gesture, just what it is that makes our heart beat faster when we see a person, or forgive them or abandon them. It’s a perfectly nice novella, with flashes of wit and lyricism, but once again I was slightly puzzled about its inclusion in the longlist. I’ve read many books that were equally as good that would have been eligible for the prize. I’ve also read some Romanian books that were on par with this, but which are not getting translated…

Jenny Erpenbeck: Kairos, transl. Michael Hofmann, Granta.

A love story set during the cusp of transformation in East Berlin in the late 1980s – this was always going to be catnip for me, so I thought I could not be entirely objective about it. And I’m probably not, for I love a blend of the personal and political, and have always felt close to Erpenbeck’s own experience.

I loved all the descriptions of life in the city before and after the collapse of the Wall, and this went a long way toward quashing my reservations about the love story. The masochistic and punitive aspects of the love affair made me feel deeply uncomfortable. I had to remind myself repeatedly that the love story itself – between the authoritarian, gaslighting, egocentric older man and the naive, often passive younger woman – is a metaphor for those of us living under Communism.

Once again, the main protagonist, Katharina, is remembering the past from a safe distance, but there is a final twist which makes her question all her memories – and makes us rethink all that we believe we know about their story.

Of the three I’ve read so far, Kairos is the one that I hope to see on the shortlist, and that I want to analyse in more detail, from the title itself, with its ‘seize the moment, but make sure it’s the right moment’ kind of guarded urgency, to the double disillusionment of both the love affair and the social order (socialism AND capitalism). This is no Ostalgie, but a clever and affecting look at how major historical changes affect two different generations.

Reference Book to Treasure: Crime Fiction in German (Der Krimi)

If you have any interest at all in German literature or in crime fiction, you will enjoy leafing through this erudite and yet still very readable collection of articles. Or, if you are slightly obsessed like myself, you will read it from cover to cover and then start all over again. And I’m not just saying that because I was flattered to receive an electronic proof copy by the University of Wales Press. It is that rarest of creatures: an academic study which is also very enjoyable and could become a bestseller!

What is remarkable about the book is the breadth and depth of topics it covers. In terms of breadth, no stone is left unturned. The editor Katharina Hall (known to many crime fiction fans as Mrs. Peabody from her much-loved blog) and the other contributors cover not just the obvious subject areas (West German, East German, Austrian and Swiss crime fiction), but also lesser-known categories such as women’s crime writing, historical crime fiction, the place of Africa in German crime fiction and even television dramas. Furthermore, the definition of crime fiction itself is deliberately broad, and includes literary authors writing crime-infused experimental or social novels (Hans Fallada, Peter Handke, Elfriede Jelinek) as well as more traditional crime.

In terms of depth, you will find here not only comprehensive overviews of the development of crime fiction in each of the German-speaking countries, as you might expect from an academic tome, but also a focus on specific writers or books. Martin Rosenstock’s analysis of Dürrenmatt, for instance, is beautifully nuanced, pointing out how the Swiss author breaks all the classic formulas of the crime genre, whilst also poking fun at the self-aggrandising Swiss myths of neutrality, wealth and historical heritage.

Each chapter (or article) is followed not only by endnotes and a select bibliography of books (mostly those available in translation), but also recommendations for further secondary reading. Where no English translations are available for a work cited, there is a small extract in English at the end of the chapter as well, just enough to give you a flavour of the original and whet your appetite for more. This is also one of the stated aims of the book: ‘to provide readers with a springboard for further reading, viewing and research’. There is also an excellent table at the front with the chronology of crime fiction in German, including political, criminal and publishing milestones from 800 until the present day.

I will not attempt a blow-by-blow account of each topic, but allow me to highlight just a few.

Viennese tram. No relation to the book, but couldn't resist smuggling in that photo. — Viennese tram. No relation to the book, but couldn’t resist smuggling in that photo.

I may be slightly prejudiced in favour of Austrian writers, but I certainly appreciate the article on the odd humour and often extreme experimentation by Austrian authors, written by Marieke Krajenbrink, and have already ordered several books from her list of recommendations.

Thanks to an article Katharina Hall agreed to write for Crime Fiction Lover, I had previously experienced her encyclopedic knowledge of crime fiction dealing with different aspects or periods in German history (mostly the Nazi period and the reunification of the country after the Cold War). It was a pleasure, however, to read a more thorough analysis of the topic, as well as a detailed discussion of two fantastic (and very different) novels: Fallada’s Alone in Berlin and Simon Urban’s Plan D.

Finally, I cannot forget the fascinating articles which open up an entirely new world to me: Julia Augart’s analysis of the so-called Afrika-Krimi and Faye Stewart’s research on the Frauenkrimi (women crime writers). I had never heard of the first as a subgenre, and never stopped to compare the themes and styles of male and female German crime novelists.

In conclusion, either this book is a great exception to the rule, or else academic books have evolved considerably since my time, because I find it very approachable indeed. It achieves that wonderful balance between ‘speaking to ordinary readers’ without ‘dumbing down’. I’ve learnt something new in every single chapter and yet, try as I might, I can’t find any pretentious or obscure references which so often plague literary criticism. I was hoping for some Lacan or Foucault or at least Wittgenstein to throw my arms up at, but no! It stays admirably grounded throughout.

Congratulations to all the contributors and editors involved in this project. There is nothing quite like it in the English language. I will certainly treasure it and return to it as a work of reference for many years to come.

Traumatic Memories: David Young’s Stasi Child

David Young’s new series set in 1970s East Germany just about qualifies as historical crime fiction, but the history is so recent that the scars are still prone to reopen and suppurate. Personally, I found this book quite an emotionally draining experience (some things were just too familiar, even though I did not grow up in East Germany but in another Soviet satellite state). But for those who have a sufficient distance from the events, it is a thrilling and entertaining tale. The background feels quite fresh, as it’s not been used too much in crime fiction to date.

Young takes a number of historical facts, such as political prisoners making IKEA furniture in East Germany, repatriation agreements for under-16s between the West and the East, the Stasi turning family members against each other, youth work camps for ‘difficult’ children and escape tunnels to the West, and spins an enthralling and claustrophobic tale out of them. If anything, one might reproach the author with trying to tackle too many of the grim GDR realities at once, throwing everything plus the kitchen sink at this story, a common enough failing with debut authors. He does, however, blend the multiple storylines quite skilfully, and there is no arguing with the sinister atmosphere of paranoia and fear which he creates.

Karin Müller is everywoman – as her name (a very common German name) indicates – a police officer trying to survive in a tough world. She gets roped into a strange investigation into the death of a young girl in the no-man’s land around the Berlin Wall. It appears the youngster was trying to escape from the West to the East – almost unheard of at the time. So why is the Stasi getting involved, are they trying to cover up something? Karin feels increasingly uncomfortable about Jäger – her Stasi superior – and his interference in the investigation, nor is she sure she can trust her partner Tilsner, despite the strong physical attraction she feels for him. Finally, she feels guilty about her husband Gottfried, a good man, a teacher with Western sympathies, from whom she feels more and more estranged. The author does an excellent job of conveying that feeling of helplessness, of not being able to trust anyone, which was a permanent fixture of Communist dictatorships.

Berlin, Germany, 19th November, 1961, East Berlin border guards adding barbed wire to the newly built Berlin Wall, The wall was set up the Soviet army to prevent refugees escaping from the Soviet sector in the East to West Berlin (Photo by Popperfoto/Getty Images)

There are some elements which stretch belief here (the tricks which Karin and her team have to resort to at times, the lengths to which she is prepared to go for the sake of the investigation), but overall it’s a cracking little thriller, with a fantastic cover to boot. I’ve also heard it’s been recently optioned for a TV series – and it does sound perfect for that, so here’s hoping it gets made.

Women in Translation Month: Judith Schalansky

Bibliobio is organising another Women in Translation Month this year, a challenge with very few prescriptions other than to read as many women authors as possible. I’m reading plenty and I hope to review a good fair few. Today we’re heading over to Germany. I read this book in the original, but it has been translated very skillfully into English by Shaun Whiteside, published by Bloomsbury.

Judith Schalansky: Der Hals der Giraffe (The Neck of the Giraffe)

Inge Lohmark is a biology and sports teacher in a ‘Gymnasium’ (selective state school, grammar school equivalent) in a provincial town in what was once East Germany. The town is dying, as is the school, forced to close soon because of lack of pupils. Everyone dreams of escaping from that claustrophobic place to search for jobs or a better life, including Inge’s own daughter, who has been living in the States for the past 10-12 years.

Inge, however, is inflexible and judgemental. She believes in the survival of the fittest and refuses to intervene in bullying incidents. Although she teaches biological adaptation, she is unwilling to alter any of her principles and firmly-held beliefs herself. Short shrift, military in style, believing any display of emotion or affection to be a weakness, her style is perfectly captured with the short, staccato sentences, often without verbs, like barked orders. She is the teacher we all feared and loved to hate or mock at school.

Her story is in many ways the story of my parents’ generation, for whom the fall of Communism came too late and who will never be able to adapt to a new world they do not understand nor like very much. Because of my own experience with recalcitrant relatives who live in a nostalgia of a life that never really was the way they remember it, I have more patience for Inge than most readers would. Many of her acerbic observations of modern life and young students will strike a chord, perhaps provoke a wry smile of recognition. She is also a profoundly lonely person, barely sharing a word with her husband – who is immersed in his ostrich farm – and rarely engaging in conversations with her colleagues or neighbours, unless they become arguments or point-scoring exercises.

The book is presented entirely from Inge’s point of view and I have to admit that I would have liked to see her through the eyes of others at some point. There are also plenty of digressions about the animal kingdom and evolution theory, with some beautiful illustrations. These digressions are quite interesting and (of course) symbolical, albeit not always in the way Inge thinks of them, but they do become repetitive after a while. Nor is there much in the way of a plot, other than being a witness to Inge’s increasingly disturbing thought processes, which do not really translate into any major action. Finally, my main bone of contention is that Inge has not really learnt or changed as a character, there has been no development as such (and we learn next to nothing of the other characters). For a Bildungsroman, there was remarkably little ‘Bildung’ (learning).

I thought it was well-written and an interesting love-hate elegy for a lost world. Inge is remarkably clear-eyed about the GDR society and ideology as well. I thought it did a great job of giving voice to a thoroughly difficult, unlikeable and yet pitiable character. But, blame my shrinking attention span or my love for crime fiction, I did feel this book was too long at 200 pages. I think all the points would have come across, the character would have been fully described in a novella half that length.