Unsere Menschen* | 1989

Spring 1989. In a country named GDR celebrations of the fortieth anniversary of its foundation are prepared by the political leadership. Despite a wretched economy and a climate of political lethargy, despite the developing protest movement and a constantly growing number of people wanting to leave the country does the regime engineer public festivals and political mass events that are bigger and more numerous as ever before.

All these sports festivals, fairs, city-anniversaries, press-parties, beauty-contests, dance competitions and of course the gigantic Whitsun-meeting of the states youth organisation FDJ find thankful participants in search for some variety in the homogeneous course of the everyday life.

At this time it was unthinkable that only half an year later this itself cheering GDR would actually no longer exist. Unthinkable, too, that biographic facts and merits that would have been a guarantee of a safe place on the sunny side within the social system, will turn into the opposite.
Unthinkable the idea that ones own life will have been of less value because one has lived in the wrong country.

So unthinkable that some would not like to remind these images any longer.



*Unsere Menschen (our people) – this stereotyped phrase was used by the political nomenclature of the GDR in their speeches and press releases. It functioned as an assumptous paraphrase when „they“ decided what was to be good, or bad, or needless for their people.



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