KALEIDOSCOPIC NATION

Amid the darkness of economic hardship and state-sponsored fear, East Germany could also be a society of opportunity and hope. Katja Hoyer profiles some of the people whose stories bring this full, complex picture to life

- Katja Hoyer

The warm summer air hummed with music and energy. Drums sent rhythmic undercurrents through the streets as young people danced, debated, sang and kissed. Alcohol flowed freely. Ideas were exchanged in dozens of languages as concerts, marches, floats, talks and spontaneous jam sessions combined to give the sense of a bustling festival. This gathering of idealists and dreamers was held not at Woodstock or Glastonbury but in East Berlin, where 8 million people flocked between 28 July and 5 August 1973 to attend the 10th World Festival of Youth and Students. Its tagline: For Anti-Imperialist Solidarity, Peace and Friendship.

More than two decades had passed since East Germany, formally known as the German Democratic Republic (GDR), had been established on 7 October 1949 as a socialist counterpoint to its capitalist neighbour in the west, the Federal Republic of Germany (FRG), founded in May of the same year. During that time, the two German states had coexisted in tense competition, straddling the faultlines of the Cold War.

We like to think of the world around us in clear categories, and the divided Germany is no different. The west began to see the GDR and the FRG as black-and-white versions of Germany – a vision that lasts to this day. Where the West is portrayed as a functioning democracy with a prosperous and free society, the East is seen only as an oppressive dictatorship whose planned economy caused so much misery that people had to be walled in to make them stay. One was good, the other evil – and any attempt to complicate the picture of the evil also throws up uncomfortable questions about the nature of good.