Home in an East German suburb

A model GDR family entertained foreign guests under Stasi's watchful eye

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By Kristiina Markkanen
     
      Allee der Kosmonauten was a model street of housing construction in the East Berlin suburb of Marzahn in the winter of 1979 - 1980.
      At that time, Ursula Günther, now 55 years old, was on maternity leave after the birth of her second child.
      There was a small gathering of neighbours in the Günthers' apartment of 74 square metres. The event was completely staged for the benefit of a Finnish woman - a journalist who wanted to meet an East German family. Günther had already forgotten the name of the journalist.
      Naturally, a couple of the "guests" were actually agents of the East German secret service Stasi.
     
"We always knew who were Stasi, but it was quite normal. You just had to watch what you were saying", Günther says.
      Consequently, conversations that evening revolved around innocuous family subjects, such as how much rent people pay, how much they earn, and how long maternity leave is.
      "I was asked to go to the Delikat and buy something better to put on the table - salmon and salami, perhaps some olives. I was later reimbursed for the money", Günther says, somewhat amused. "The idea was to show how well the workers lived in the GDR."
      "We fit the image well. We were young, we had two children, a large apartment, and our own garden. We had no contacts in the West, or any other problems."
     
There was no need to embellish their life. The Günthers really had things as well as a young couple in the GDR might hope for. The Allee der Kosmonauten was no ordinary suburban thoroughfare: it was the main street of the most modern residential area of the capital of the GDR, where President Erich Honecker would take his foreign guests when he wanted to show them what his country had  achieved.
      "In other areas people wore rubber boots, but here we had good shoes", Ursula Günther laughs.
      "It was really funny. There was mud and construction debris everywhere, but just before Honecker came to visit the first time, the street was paved overnight.
      Ursula's husband worked at a nearby waste incinerating plant. Most of the other residents of the building worked for Stasi, the police, customs, or other similar state institutions that wanted to buy the loyalty of their employees by giving them good homes. The monthly rent was a mere 150 East German marks, and it never increased.
     
The ten-storey buildings that lined the Allee der Kosmonauten, where the Günthers lived, were of the type QP 71 10. The residents did not have to take part in the cosntruction work, and the interiors were ready when the tenants moved in. Further back were apartment houses of the most common type in the GDR: 11-storey buildings of the WBS 70 model, where most ordinary workers lived. The residents had to take part in their construction, and the interiors were not ready: the residents had to get thei rown wallpaper, cover the floors, and build the closets.
      "My ex husband was good at talking he always got what he wanted, and I was pregnant, so we got a slightly bigger flat right away."
      However, the model family suffered the same fate as the GDR itself. As the mid-1980s approached, the dream apartment was full of anger. The Günthers divorced in 1984, but they lived in the same apartment until 1989. The housing authorities did not have a new dwelling available for the husband.
      "It was good for the children. We lived like a normal family, in a way. Many others did that, because there were no flats available. In some families, the wife would already have another partner in a separate bedroom, with the husband living alone in the other."
     
The GDR found itself politically, and to a large extent economically bankrupt in 1989. Ursula Günther also decided to start a new life. This time she was able to persuade the ladies of the housing authority to get her ex husband a home somewhere else.
      "I got the Trabant, and my husband got the garden. Then I decided to take one year off of work and just look around. I also had some Western currency, as I worked as a waitress at a tourist restaurant on Alexanderplatz."
      When the wall came down Ursula Günther was ready to leave. She took a short-term job with a West German catering company.
      Her life began to change fast. She met a new man with whom she set up a restaurant. However, the location was not good, and the rent was high. The restaurant went out of business.
      The children have moved out. Daughter Alexandra, 33, is a cook, and her son John (25) is a carreer soldier with the Bundeswehr.
     
Ursula has never considered moving to West Germany, or even out of Marzahn.
      "I have grown up in this environment, and I have a certain attitude. If I were to go to the West in pursuit of luxury, I would end up near people with a strange mentality. Some day I would become homesick in the midst of all of that luxury. It would be like living in a golden cage."
      Ursula has lived in the same apartment at Allee der Kosmonauten 68 for more than 25 years. Her neighbours are her friends, and most of them are also original residents of the building.
      The rent is still quite reasonable, EUR 320 a month, and the house has been thoroughly renovated. The bath room, the plumbing, and the kitchen have been redone, the balcony has been expanded, and the outdoor walls have been painted with financial aid from the federal governemnt and the state.
      She now has both work and a future. Last autumn she and her husband opened a small snack bar. The food is "classic German": Berlin potato soup, Thuringian grilled sausage, meat rolls, and red cabbage.
     
Helsingin Sanomat / First published in print 13.3.2005

More on this subject:
 Marzahn: a model neighbourhood - once again

KRISTIINA MARKKANEN / Helsingin Sanomat
kristiina.markkanen@hs.fi