Abstract
The 32 years that have passed since the two Germanys reunified in 1990 have done little to heal the cultural rift between East and West Germany, and the GDR's art history, in particular, remains at best forgotten, at worst derided. Anja Tack's 2021 book Riss im Bild. Kunst und Kultur in der DDR und die deutsche Vereinigung explores this problem through an examination of the public debates over East German culture that took place between the fall of the Berlin Wall and the GDR's absorption into a unified Germany. Reviewing the biggest media sources at the time, namely newspapers and magazines with large circulations like the Berliner Zeitung or the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung and Der Spiegel or popular cultural magazines like art. Das Kunstmagazin, Tack demonstrates that a pervasive anti-East German sentiment made a more inclusive definition of art, one that embraced some aspects of the GDR's art history, impossible in post-reunification Germany.
As Tack writes in the introduction to her book, the stakes of the debate were raised by the high value that culture plays in Germany, where art is considered to be ‘a communicator and sometimes [a] seismograph of social tensions’ (p. 26). Art from East Germany competed against a schematic and altogether idealistic view of artistic autonomy (i.e. art made in a free market economy) as the ultimate expression of personal freedom. Revealing this to be a historical and not just a Cold War problem, Tack regularly returns to the twentieth century's most significant debate over the definitions of art (the so-called aesthetics and politics debates): ‘Which origin story does art need?’, she asks (p. 322), and, more importantly, ‘Under what conditions was art even possible in the GDR?’ (p. 322). A simplistic answer to this all-important question, namely that art cannot exist when it emerges in a context that is politically motivated, led to an all-too-hasty dismissal of art from East Germany. It was not just art, but also literature and consumer goods that were ‘shamefully hidden under the colorful wares of the West’ (p. 164). In short, all goods from the GDR – whether artistic or commercial – came to equal the country's corrupt politics.
Importantly, more subtle discussions about cultural reunification did take place. Tack outlines how artists from both East and West Germany shared a wariness over the grand promises being made by the art market. She describes a general ‘fear in the face of an open market’ (p. 240) and observes that a ‘parallel between East and West German criticism of the Western art scene seemed to shake its foundations for a short time’ (p. 373). Pressure placed on the government by artists across Germany contributed to the implementation of federal funding for the arts that continue to bolster the vibrancy of the country's culture to this day. It is significant that some of these supports have continuities with programs in both the Cold War era East and West Germanys.
Debates over the value of art from the GDR rarely entertained experimental forms of art, that is to say the art that did not conform to state culture. Popular memory has not been kind to these examples, of course, with well-publicized stories about the presence of Stasi agents among alternative circles of artists taken up by the press, politicians and artists alike as another reason to delegitimize East German art. It is, then, not surprising that Tack addresses this conundrum when looking at the Prenzlauer Berg poets whose history has been severely tainted by Stasi spies. Nevertheless, given that she occasionally engages contemporary debates over the status of art from the GDR in Germany today, it is unfortunate that Tack did not consider the advice of leading historians like Julia Hell and Konrad Jarausch who urge against Stasi-centric historicization, which has tended to overemphasize state power by prioritizing its presence over its impact. It would have been interesting to see Tack engage with the status of experimental art both during the time of the GDR and in the wake of reunification. In the few pages she dedicates to La Villette, a 1990 exhibition of experimental art from the GDR held in Paris that is widely understood to have been unsuccessful, Tack glumly defines its failure in commercial terms. A larger, more compelling argument might have explored how the GDR's opening to the western world actually reduced the appeal of its artists. No longer perceived by the West as valiant counter-agents in an oppressive context, East Germany's artists were panned by their hosts in France as derivative amateurs.
Yet, even this critique of Tack's argumentation reminds of her intended purpose: to focus on the evidence of the popular imagination of the GDR. Specifically, her research offers a clear explanation for how the general repudiation of art from East Germany came to be, and why it continues to be so readily accepted. Through an examination of the most ready-at-hand discussions that appeared in media with high visibility, she demonstrates as inevitable the rejection of the art and culture of East Germany. The book thus fulfills its objectives precisely. It likewise invites the reader to consider the persuasive power of popular opinion, and the hazards it poses to understanding.