After the Wall

This book is beautiful. Having briefly visited East Berlin in 1959, I was impressed with its cleanliness and dullness in contrast to the chaos, colour, mess and joy of life in West Berlin. Hensel explains the difference with skill and personal example: East Germany, the most successful and prosperous of the Soviet satellites, was a collection of industrious, intelligent and obedient ants. In many ways, her life until the collapse of "The Wall" was marvelous, packed with activities, programs, events and adults intended to uplift, enlighten and motivate youngsters to do good for others. The frightening aspect of her life was the unrelenting pressure to support these organizations to do good for others. East Germany was a cult without charisma, a ritual without religion in a minutely organized system designed to eliminate every element of chaos from the otherwise free human spirit. She is acutely aware of her parents' and grandparents' generations who lived a rigidly controlled life for almost 60 years, during which even so much as smiling at the wrong event would bring suspicion and possible punishment. When very young, Hensel knew it was dangerous to pick up a discarded Western chocolate bar wrapper from the street; but, she also knew the pure joy of such rebellion. As a teen, she suddenly plunged into a free lifestyle in which almost everything was possible and nothing was unlikely. This is a beautiful portrait of her astonishment at the democratic freedom -- much the same sense of astonishment I feel, having lived all my life in the luxury of such freedom -- the chaos and pure joy of "leaving people alone". In today's politics, too many talk about creating an inspiring sense of purpose for their country; Hensel deftly and with chilling starkness portrays the cost of such enforced "purpose", and the wondrous freedom and peace of mind that comes from respecting the rights of others. The happiness of Americans is the ability to celebrate or condemn their consumer culture without restraint; this book is a warm, human and personal memoir of what it is to not have such freedom. This book is everything anyone could want in a good book; it's well written, concise, poignant and utterly relevant to American society and the world at large. Thank you, Jana Hensel, for a marvelous explanation of what I saw in Berlin almost 50 years ago but didn't fully understand until now.

I recently spent 2 1/2 months in the former GDR working at a university. My trip was a great experience and I was really struck by the historical remnants and stories of those that had grown up and moved into the former GDR after the fall of the wall. When the wall fell I was only 9 years old and many of my friends there were in my age range and we had few memories of this time. Jana Hensel's book provided me with an in-depth understanding of what life was like for my friends and their siblings during the reunification. It was interesting to hear stories of her childhood that were similar to my friend's stories. "After the Wall" was fabulous and a must-read for those interested in the real-life of former East Germans.

Whereas one of the previous reviewers may not have "gotten" this book, I did. I visited East Germany right after the fall of the wall, and then five years later. What a change there was. Not only could you tell the difference on the outside, but the people changed too. Hensel writes about these changes and how it affected her. Then she relates how it affected the older generations. Hensel is a little flip, but maybe she has a right to be. There were big changes, and the young adapt to change. Older people do not. This is a story about one young lady changing to the new landscape. East Germany no longer exists physically, but does emotionally in millions of Germans. This is a nice read for those interested in Germany. I found myself laughing at some of Hensel comments. I can relate how she experienced life.

When I was born in 1945, my mother, a German armed forces helper on the way from Prague (deep South) up to an isle named "Ruegen" (in the very North), in the middle of her long journey through a breaking down Germany: she came down with me and, after one day in hospital, she stuffed me away into a children's home (in a town called "Wuppertal", West-Germany) - and left me to my fate. So she robbed me (among others) the experience of a childhood in the GDR, German Democratic Republic, "Wuppertal" should be "West-Germany" (American sector), the isle of Ruegen became Russian sector, behind the "Iron Curtain". So I did not learn anything about "Young Pioneer meetings", socialism, communism, STASI (the secret police) or summer camps of young "Pioneers". In the Western hemisphere I grew up, drinking Pepsi Coke, receiving American Care packages, later on: listened to the Beatles, noticed the students movement in 1968, had no Ulbrich or Honecker, but chancellor Willy Brandt and Helmut Kohl. But I tried to find out the place, where the woman could live, who had born me in that dark year 1945. After 40 years of persistent search, 1985, before the Berlin Wall fell (1989), I found out: She was living behind the "Iron Curtain" on the isle of Ruegen. And I started to look at this lost childhood, which I did not enjoy: She showed me her photo album: summer beach near "Kap Arkona" at the north-point of the isle, snowy winters on Hiddensee, flight ducks, cranes - but on the other hand coal heaps on washed-out sidewalks. Color films (Orwo), books, Trabi substitute parts: only hard to get. Nevertheless, I wanted to make up for my life in the GDR - in 1990 when the Berlin Wall was fallen: A schools inspector on the island pointed into a corridor, filled with former Stasi employees (security police) and informed me in this manner in an almost dumb "cadre conversation", he unfortunately (thanks to the "reunification" of East and West-Germany) would have to hide many people in the teaching profession now (in hastiest kind). I should return please to West-Germany, where I just had come from. The direction of my journey seemed to be absolutely atypically, out of character, and not recommendable. No "Ossi" (vs. "Wessi") - no job. As a result my mother, noticing, that all her dreams collapsed, joined an acute epidemic disease at that time: She committed a so-called balance sheets suicide. I was deprived of the chance to become a "zone child" a second time. Did I miss really much? Because the book of Jana Hensel has stimulated me to these thoughts - maybe her sometimes nostalgic "Ossi" writings (of course very different to my "Wessi"-point of view) are not as superficial, simple, banal, as I thought in the first moment? Compare her point of view ...

Jana Hensel was born in 1976 in what was then the German Democratic Republic. Her childhood was filled with Young Pioneer meetings, clubs, school, recycling, swearing allegiance to world socialism and summer camp. But there was a dark side to all this. As Hensel writes, " . . . to avoid being denounced to the secret police, you also had to watch what you said to whom. You had to really trust your friends." Hensel's parents protected her from the government man who came around offering sports scholarships to girls who wound up with "man sized shoulders and physiques." There was a constant hunt for stylish clothes, Western food, and appropriate Christmas gifts. In 1990, a year after the fall of the Wall, the GDR came to an end. Hensel would spend her high school years in the same place, but in a different country. Her generation was able to adjust by learning West German slang, figuring out which clothes to wear, and understanding that the television shows and other artifacts of her childhood were gone. Hensel's parents' generation, however, did not adjust as well. They weren't just losing comic books, they were losing their jobs: the new owners of former-GDR factories shut them down and many teachers and other civil servants were forced out. These middle-aged people who had spent their lives under socialism could not easily adjust to the change to a market economy. Hensel's experience is similar to those of immigrants to a different country, where the children adapt to the new culture more easily and wind up interpreting it for their parents. And, like some immigrants, Hensel's generation of GDR children wound up both more confident than their parents ("We felt like monarchs, founding a new kingdom on the ruins of the old") and protective of them. The rub is that these "immigrant" parents are German, speak German fluently, and haven't moved an inch. This is the third personal memoir of life inside the GDR that I've read, and the only one to describe a childhood in East Germany from 1976 until the fall of the Wall. Hensel has no axe to grind, and no need to justify the GDR or its policies. She was not a communist. She did not voluntarily emmigrate to the GDR -- she was born there. The book is thus neither "Ostalgie" (nostalgia for the East) nor specifically anti-GDR. It is just an accurate and interesting description of life before and after the wall. I have not been able to find a memoir of life in the GDR written by someone in Hensel's parents' generation (probably born in the late 1940s or early 1950s.) It would be interesting to read the story told from the perspective of one who was born in the GDR and lived in it through middle age. However, I can recommend other memoirs of life in East Germany: "Twelve Years" by Joel Agee, who lived as a child in East Germany from 1948 to 1960; and "Crossing the River," by Victor Grossman, an American Communist who, as a soldier stationed in West Germany, fled to the GDR in 1952 and