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[Urist McScoopbeard]

'96 muthahfuckahs! WOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO

EDIT: but like in all seriousness... '95-'96 kids: best generation. 

[Antsan]

Born 1989 in the GDR, half a year before the wall fell.

What bugs me about this time is how now the fall of the Wall is conflated with the reunion. I think great stuff was about to happen before people threw it all away for bananas and nostalgia.

So I made the very generalized defense "Well, that's because we've seen how our parents and grandparent's lives ended up, and we don't want that..."

She seemed to take offense, so I went on "I didn't mean that personally in any way.  I'm just saying that everyone my own age and younger knows older people whose entire lives have been about nothing but work, and it never payed off the way they thought it would and just amounted to bitterness and regret.  Why would we follow that example?"

Her retort... "Well that's because we wanted to make a better future for our children and grandchildren.  That's why you have all these nice electronics and stuff.  And the way you live your lives will shape the future of generations after you, too"
[…]
Tell me again about your most recent expensive luxury vacation that I never expect to experience the likes of, and then how you can't afford to retire... and maybe throw in one of those comments about kids these days were never taught to live within their means... and then make another passive aggressive comment about how someone else should take the stuff you don't want to do off your desk, because you never believe that anyone else is working.

It's funny how first she says that she worked for a better future for following generations and then goes on complaining about how following generations have it better than her (no matter whether that's actually the case).

My grandmother was of a different kind. She knew we have it better than her but she was happy about that and more likely to complain about how the capitalists still were in charge and now would get her grandchildren too.

[Helgoland]

Born 1989 in the GDR, half a year before the wall fell.

What bugs me about this time is how now the fall of the Wall is conflated with the reunion. I think great stuff was about to happen before people threw it all away for bananas and nostalgia.

That appears to be an at least somewhat common sentiment - what great stuff are you thinking of? Being the born-and-raised Wessi that I am, I can't think of anything.

My grandmother was of a different kind. She knew we have it better than her but she was happy about that and more likely to complain about how the capitalists still were in charge and now would get her grandchildren too.

Could you elaborate on this too? It sounds like your grandmother claimed the capitalists ran the DDR... What were her politics?

[Antsan]

Born 1989 in the GDR, half a year before the wall fell.

What bugs me about this time is how now the fall of the Wall is conflated with the reunion. I think great stuff was about to happen before people threw it all away for bananas and nostalgia.

That appears to be an at least somewhat common sentiment - what great stuff are you thinking of? Being the born-and-raised Wessi that I am, I can't think of anything.

My grandmother was of a different kind. She knew we have it better than her but she was happy about that and more likely to complain about how the capitalists still were in charge and now would get her grandchildren too.

Could you elaborate on this too? It sounds like your grandmother claimed the capitalists ran the DDR... What were her politics?

She was a Marxist.
She didn't believe the GDR was run by capitalists but she was firmly convinced that the GDR was as good or bad as the FRG. I think it was more along the lines of "after all the stuff we did, after all the progress we made, we're back to this idiocy."

According to her and others the economy of the GDR was not a problem but actually sufficient to allow people to live a comfortable life (it was always very infuriating to my grandparents and parents when they had to listen to someone on TV, who probably never set foot into the GDR when it still existed, talked about how poor and technologically underdeveloped the East was – especially bad were the people who seriously questioned whether they had electricity or even running water).
The problem lies with the Elite. In the GDR there were, so I hear, plenty of ideas on how to improve efficiency, ease distribution and other stuff like that. These suggestions normally would be recognized with a friendly smile and a nod and then promptly forgotten because, well, I don't know how the rationalized their arrogance.

The point is, the Elites did their thing, ignoring everything around them.

When the wall fell the old Elites were dethroned and actual elections were held. While the GDR still existed it now was a kind of a blank slate. Young people with progressive ideas who had learned Marxism had a chance to do something really new without any violent revolution beforehand.

Instead we get a reunion, where we just were absorbed into the FRG, without anything being rethought, no experiments done, 40 years of strife and learning just thrown away as if all that existed in the GDR was the government and the Stasi and as if all the ones who opposed the Elite only longed for the days when they were finally reunited with their western brethren. It's a sore spot that gets poked at almost every time someone talks about the GDR on TV. The whole population is reduced to four groups: The oppressors, the willingly suppressed, the unwillingly suppressed, and the heroic heroes of herodom who heroically fled to the West and Saw The Light of the Free Market and True Democracy, as if the only way to oppose the regime of the GDR was to be a fan of the West.

For me personally it's a missed opportunity. Instead of providing room for one more idea on how to do stuff we instead get one huge blob of the same as elsewhere.

Sorry, I got a bit off track.

[Angle]

Wierd. Wasn't the GDR basically the soviets taking revenge on the germans for the two world wars, with things specifically designed to be oppressive, just for the sake of being oppressive?

[Helgoland]

Eeeeeeh... Not really. There was a bit of that in the beginning, but all in all the GDR was a German state.

When the wall fell the old Elites were dethroned and actual elections were held. While the GDR still existed it now was a kind of a blank slate. Young people with progressive ideas who had learned Marxism had a chance to do something really new without any violent revolution beforehand.

[...]

For me personally it's a missed opportunity. Instead of providing room for one more idea on how to do stuff we instead get one huge blob of the same as elsewhere.

That's what I would like details on - what progressive ideas do you mean? What experiments do you think could have been done?

(These are honest questions by the way, not meant to poke fun at ostalgia or anything.)

[Antsan]

When the wall fell the old Elites were dethroned and actual elections were held. While the GDR still existed it now was a kind of a blank slate. Young people with progressive ideas who had learned Marxism had a chance to do something really new without any violent revolution beforehand.

[...]

For me personally it's a missed opportunity. Instead of providing room for one more idea on how to do stuff we instead get one huge blob of the same as elsewhere.

That's what I would like details on - what progressive ideas do you mean? What experiments do you think could have been done?

(These are honest questions by the way, not meant to poke fun at ostalgia or anything.

I'm not quite sure what ideas they had. It's been years since I last cared about that stuff.
I'll need to talk to my parents first. They were directly involved.

[Helgoland]

Please do! I know shockingly little about the New States and its people...

[XXSockXX]

According to her and others the economy of the GDR was not a problem but actually sufficient to allow people to live a comfortable life (it was always very infuriating to my grandparents and parents when they had to listen to someone on TV, who probably never set foot into the GDR when it still existed, talked about how poor and technologically underdeveloped the East was – especially bad were the people who seriously questioned whether they had electricity or even running water).

I've been to the GDR when it still existed (in 1990 - before reunification), and I was surprised by the lack of available stuff and the poor quality of the stuff that was actually available. Of course questionig whether they had electricity and running water is silly, but the standard of living was well below the FDR, it was more like the FDR in the late 50s - early 60s, when my parents were growing up (minus the political freedom of course).
I wouldn't say reunification was totally inevitable, but the lack of funds would very much have limited the room for progressive experiments in a new state. Most people I know who grew up in the GDR were rather fed up with Marxism, planned economy and political repression and were quite keen on joining the FDR ASAP. On the other hand, they also hoped that this would raise the standard of living almost immediately, which it didn't, so I guess that is where most of this general feeling of disappointment comes from.

[Antsan]

According to her and others the economy of the GDR was not a problem but actually sufficient to allow people to live a comfortable life (it was always very infuriating to my grandparents and parents when they had to listen to someone on TV, who probably never set foot into the GDR when it still existed, talked about how poor and technologically underdeveloped the East was – especially bad were the people who seriously questioned whether they had electricity or even running water).

I've been to the GDR when it still existed (in 1990 - before reunification), and I was surprised by the lack of available stuff and the poor quality of the stuff that was actually available. Of course questionig whether they had electricity and running water is silly, but the standard of living was well below the FDR, it was more like the FDR in the late 50s - early 60s, when my parents were growing up (minus the political freedom of course).
I wouldn't say reunification was totally inevitable, but the lack of funds would very much have limited the room for progressive experiments in a new state. Most people I know who grew up in the GDR were rather fed up with Marxism, planned economy and political repression and were quite keen on joining the FDR ASAP. On the other hand, they also hoped that this would raise the standard of living almost immediately, which it didn't, so I guess that is where most of this general feeling of disappointment comes from.

My grandmother was a confidant at her place of work and after the collapse of the previous government there was a lot of discussion going on about what should be happening next, whether they wanted to join the West or not, stuff like that. She warned that when they did that unemployment rates would be going way up and soon they'd have to deal with maybe ten thousand people without a job. This was, of course, totally ridiculous – ten thousands unemployed – where would those come from? Obviously she was just being totally pessimistic and just hateful towards capitalism.
Or, from our perspective: She greatly underestimated how bad the problem was and almost everyone else thought the West was some kind of magical fairy land with rivers of milk and honey. Their expectations were completely unrealistic to begin with.
The point is, if they had known what they were in for, many would have probably decided differently. They were blinded by promises. My mother likes to say the GDR slipped on a banana peel.

[Scoops Novel]

Quick question, why not take this to reddit?

[Tack]

'Cos I don't live on Reddit.

Do we have any "Generation ME" people here?

[Aklyon]

Quick question, why not take this to reddit?

Because it'd probably end up full of terrible there, unless theres a reasonable subreddit for the topic.

[Helgoland]

Quick question, why not take this to reddit?

Because it's actually very much within the scope of this thread. Sure, it's the East German portion of that generation, but this board is hardly exclusively American, is it?

[Reelya]

I'd like to join this thread, but it's too much of a hassle reading 29 pages right now.

So, I'm in generation Z, I think. Born right on the beginning of the year 2000, which is neat.

Anyways, what is the current topic of conversation?

You're probably more of a late gen Y, with 20 year generations counting from the end of WWII (1945), we have boomers -> gen x -> gen y -> gen z.

By that measure Gen Z starts 60 years after the boomers, so 2005+

I think one issue is that everyone wants their own generation to be more narrowly defined in time-range, because they can't see the connection to people who could theoretically be up to 20 years younger or older than themselves (depending on where you fall inside your "generation"). But that's the rub, if we're fitting 4 generations since WWII (and nobody seems willing to subdivide things further) then we can't all define our own generation narrowly around our own birthdate. Because if we demand our own generation be only a 10 year age-range around our own birthday, then we're really also demanding that everyone else who isn't our own age fits neatly into "generations" that are now 25 years long:

i.e for the sake of feeling more connected to "our" generation, (not talking abour Caroline, but about a tendency of gen-y'ers to say that gen y is a 10 year range spanning 5 years before or after their own birthdate) we are implicitly insisting that other people born 24 years apart must accept that they are the same generation, which is a little hypocritical.

By the 20 year rule, the leading edge of Gen Z are now turning 10. These are going to be the generation who grew up immersed in Youtube, who can't remember a time before streaming videos or facebook. I guess we just need to wait now for some Gen Z kids to grow up and start claiming Gen-Z is only kids born from 2010 - 2020, and that Gen Y spans 25 years from 1985-2010.