Remembering the History of Repression and Domination in the GDR

An Ethnographic Study at the Lernort Keibelstraße

Abstract

In this article, I argue for expanding postsocialist debates by looking at the history of rule and repression in the GDR and its negotiations at sites of memory and commemoration. Based on my ethnographic research at the Lernort Keibelstraße, a former detention center of the GDR’s Interior Ministry and now a place for historical-political education, I examine the challenges and possibilities of a power-critical remembrance of the history of rule and repression in the GDR. How can the Western hegemonic perspective of the fall of communism and the injustice committed in the GDR relate to each other in GDR memories? Lernort Keibelstraße oscillates here between acknowledging experiences of injustice on the one hand and irritating Western hegemonic narratives on the other. Historical-political education at the site opens up a special opportunity for the simultaneity of these perspectives. In a multidirectional remembrance (Rothberg 2009) of the GDR and FRG pasts, a West German narrative of superiority can be questioned, imprisonment in the FRG can be produced as an object of remembrance, and visions of justice for the present and future can be opened up.