Since reunification, the population of the former GDR has fallen by more than three million people. Many of them have gone to Switzerland and miss their homeland there. Ilja Behnisch asks himself why.
If all German citizens residing in Switzerland were locked up in one city, Mannheim would be the result. 315,960 Germans had registered their residence in the Swiss Confederation at the beginning of 2023, the Federal Statistical Office [destatis.de] There is no other country in the world with more. Austria (225,000 Germans) and Spain (126,000 Germans) are clearly behind.
Unfortunately, it is not known how many East Germans there are among the Germans in Switzerland. A look at social networks shows that there are not exactly a few. Facebook group “Ossis in Switzerland” [facebook.com] 6,252 members. For some, the group name may sound like Ostalgie and GDR idealization. This raises the question: Why this distinction? Why this explicit emphasis on East Germanness?
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Those who want to integrate have a hard time
For Chris Wik, 44, a native of Strausberg (Märkisch-Oderland), the matter is explained quite quickly. It is “about the regional: Bautzen mustard, Thuringian sausage, East German beer.” Wik came to Switzerland in 2005. The trained painter and real estate agent had most recently been self-employed in Germany. Things weren’t going particularly well, he reports. Then an offer came from Switzerland. He has since met his wife there. In 2019 they bought a house. He has been in the “Ossis in Switzerland” group for around four years. Also because it is “not that easy to find connections”.
If you talk to members of the group, you hear this again and again. The general consensus is that Swiss people prefer to keep to themselves. Their friendships have existed since childhood and last because distances are short in Switzerland. There is often scepticism towards Germans.
It starts with the language, says Kathrin Jachmann. The 49-year-old originally comes from Elsterwerda (Elbe-Elster). She moved to Berlin at the age of 20 and met her husband there – a Swiss man. After a stopover in Lörrach, near the Swiss border, they have been living in Bern for six years.
Jachmann is in charge of ticketing at the theater there. She says: “East Germans are very similar to the Swiss: very polite and very reserved.” If only it weren’t for the language issue. “You stand out immediately,” says the Brandenburg native. “I’ve often experienced that when I start to speak, people become inhibited. Because they think: ‘Oh no, now I have to speak standard German.’ They have the feeling that they can’t do it well. But that’s not true at all.”
Jachmann has been in the Facebook group that emphasizes her East German origins so much “since Corona.” “Probably because I was homesick, because I thought maybe I could find people there who also come from the area.” She is not very active, hardly posts or comments, but rather reads along.
In the Facebook group’s football tournament, the teams Brandenburg will compete against Saxony (photo: private).
Ostalgie between industrial action and emptiness
If you talk to the “Ossis in Switzerland”, the otherwise much-maligned Ostalgie term takes on a conciliatory tone. This portmanteau of East Germany and nostalgia is meant to describe a longing for the GDR. Particularly in contrast to everything West German. Some also understand it as a longing for the GDR as such. But what if the memory is not meant to be political at all? What if Ostalgie is nothing more than a comfortable connection to one’s own biography, to one’s own childhood? This is always romanticized, and people are no different. It doesn’t matter in which (German) state they were born.
Now there are actually voices who see East Germany as a kind of battle cry. They take pride in their local origins. Chris Wik, a native of Strausberg, can’t relate to that. “The older generation can perhaps be proud of the peaceful revolution,” he says. He finds everything else “a bit too crude. It’s being pushed a bit too far, with T-shirts for example. That’s a bit empty.”
Glorification can be strange
Michael Kayser also describes these, albeit few, postings in the group as “somewhat strange”. The 45-year-old says: “Sometimes I read things that make me say: As young as you are, you didn’t even notice the GDR anymore. But you glorify the GDR as the ultimate.”
Kayser grew up in Potsdam and has lived there since he was five years old. When his first marriage broke up in 2008, he was overcome by wanderlust. He first took a job in the catering industry in Basel. Today he works for a company that offers services in the field of digitalization.
He has been in the “Ossis in Switzerland” group for about fourteen years. He has met many people through it. He counts the two administrators of the group among his extended circle of friends. He says: “Switzerland is my home, but Potsdam remains my home.” The group helps him to maintain his connection to it.
Cultureless at the stove
Ostalgie often appears as a term of conflict because it is associated with those who are supposedly left behind. With the so-called losers of the fall of the Berlin Wall, who long for the “old days” simply because they supposedly had a better time there. However, the exiled East Germans in Switzerland are mostly doing well – at least economically. Only a few go back. If they do, then it is after working life. After all, Swiss pensions make it easy to live well in comparatively cheap East Germany.
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“The problems here are probably smaller than there,” says Chris Wik, who is still in contact “with his boys” in Strausberg and sees them regularly. In the “Ossis in Switzerland” group, he found a co-worker and a carpenter who built his terrace. He likes to go to the regular meetings that are organized by the group. No friendships have been formed. Then “I talk to people for a bit, look at a Simson, eat my sandwich and then it’s OK.”
Wik is attached to his homeland, which is East Germany, but not to the GDR. He says he is happy in Switzerland. There is only one thing he finds difficult: “They have no cooking culture at all.” But maybe there is a Facebook group for that.
