EuroLife: Day 104

In Leipzig we visited the Stasi museum. "Stasi" stands for Staatssicherheit, for state security. The Stasi was, as this mural designed for the entryway of the Leipzig office proclaims, the Ministry for State Security.

My response to this museum would have confirmed the worst suspicions of the idealistic Stasi agent, of whom, I have to imagine, there were at least a few. Our western media and consumer culture have produced people incapable of genuine social engagement, people who relate to the world and history through a veil of irony, people who evade responsibility and action through the allegedly open-minded multiplication of interpretations and perspectives, people who deploy humor as a means of detachment, people who are only capable of collective expression regarding matters of kitsch. Or so I imagine the accusations of my communist counterpart. If I had to make his ideology and his actions plausible, if I had to understand his point of view, if I had to state his case, I would do it in such terms.

At least with regards to me, one product of the enemy culture, his criticisms might be just, even if his his responses were wrong. For, as I can only admit with a genuine degree of shame, the pseudo-virtues of irony, kitsch, and open-mindedness were in ample display as I walked through that museum.

Regarding kitsch I am completely guilty. I've long been fascinated by communist paraphernalia. About ten years ago I visited the museum of arts in Budapest. Our Hungarian friends wanted to take us to the French wing to show us works by Picasso and the Impressionist, works of which they seemed quite proud, as though they demonstrated the fully cosmopolitan status of Budapest. We, however, insisted upon spending the day looking at truly bad works of Soviet realism. It was great. And then there's my Soviet pocket watch, a true treasure. And my fascination with the Trabi, clearly the result of Western advertising (see Levi's ad, Day 33) and the Western fascination with kitsch (see U2 video, also Day 33). In a similar spirit I found myself drawn to the murals, like the one above.

Apparently I am not alone in this strange communism as kitsch fascination. One of the exhibits in the museum focused on the largely positive portrayal the DDR era has received in the German media recently. Among other things, they mentioned the nostalgia/kitsch revival of the Trabi.

Humor and/or irony also played a large part in my experience of the museum. This was surely not intended by those who run the museum, and yet it was almost unavoidable. I offer exhibit A:

This poster talks about various tactics used by the enemy. The blue square in the middle warns of "ideological influences." To the left there is a poster of Iron Maiden, and to the right there are various other symbols of 80s culture at its zenith, including a poster of Abba. The inclusion of Abba is all the more strange, given a later exhibit which shows a sports propaganda film (strange in and of itself) set to a muzak version of an Abba song.

The spy equipment was surely intended to give a sinister impression, but the effect was comic in the same way that the "high tech" gadgets from old James Bond films are. Old TVs, old phones, old computers, old video games -- these things are funny, ironic, strange, fascinating. They are not sinister. Old technology is like a comedic figure from Shakespeare, like a Falstaff who claims to be brave and so clearly isn't. And Falstaff is funny. Truly memorable.

Then there is the open-mindedness thing. I will not say much on this count, but I will report my reaction to something I learned a month ago. After reunification, most of the liberal arts faculties in the East were simply dismissed as tainted. They were allowed to reapply, though if many did, few were successful in getting their old jobs back. I am told -- and my experience confirms this -- that there almost no former East Germans on the liberal arts faculty in Jena. This surprised me, and it surprised me how much it surprised me. Moreover, it seemed to indicate a difference between German culture and, at least, American academic culture.