The eyes of the world are on Berlin today. There will be speeches and recollections from that unforgettable night of November 8, 1989. I just watched the talk show "Anne Will" in the ZDF and the film director Leander Haußmann, who grew up in the GDR and was 30-years old when the Wall fell, made some politically incorrect statements about the East German state and how history is being glossed over in the commemoration of 1989.
You can watch the entire show here (unable to embed). Among other things, Haußmann lays into Gesine Lötzsch, a LEFT Party representative in the Bundestag, when she attampts to defend aspects of the GDR society.
"Die DDR war alles andere als harmlos: die Stasi hat Menschen ermordet." (The GDR was anything but harmlos: the Stasi murdered people.)
Haußmann points out that the East German regime copntinued the Nazi practice of Sippenhaft – persecution and imprisoning relatives of dissidents. His own father was hounded by the Stasi and not allowed to work. Then Haußmann flies into a rage at a video of Margot Honecker, pointing out that she should be brought to the Hague to stand trial for crimes against humantiy. He mentions the program of "forced adoptions" that Margot Honecker allegedly presided over, where children of dissidents were taken away from their families and handed over to loyal GDR citizens to raise.
I am currently reading Julia Franck's novel Lagerfeuer, which deals with individuals who fled the GDR in the late 1970s. Anybody who is nostalgic for the "good old days" of East German "Sozialstaat" needs to read just the first thirty pages of this book.
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Yes, those first few pages are very harrowing. One thing I liked about the book though is that Franck doesn’t then see the West through rose-tinted spectacles either.