“That the Ossis were subject to authority is a cliché”

Mr. Kliche, how is it that you, as a West German, speak of East Germans with so much understanding?

It has nothing to do with feelings, but with facts. As a scientist, I have little choice. It is about processes of social destruction after reunification, which also threaten us in society as a whole.

How did you come across these processes of destruction?

Because of my incomprehension. I moved to Stendal ten years ago, was welcomed very carefully and did not understand what was going on with the people, why they bow their heads, are suspicious of every suggestion, experience innovations as an attack, attach so much importance to the fact that you knows each other personally, preferably for a long time. I thought this was self-made misery. Until I realized through interviews for a study that it had to do with life experience of the last 30 years. There is an official and a close, confidential discourse here. The confidential one often consists of allusions. And I, who don’t belong to this culture, often don’t understand them.

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Benjamin zibner

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Thomas Kliche

was born in Freiburg im Breisgau in 1957, studied psychology and politics in Munich, Freiburg, London, Hamburg and Leningrad. He is an educational researcher specializing in political psychology. Before his professorship at the Magdeburg-Stendal University of Applied Sciences, he worked at a social research agency and headed a research group at the Institute for Medical Psychology at the University Medical Center Hamburg-Eppendorf.

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Why did you move to Stendal?

For professional reasons.

So are you one of those West Germans who go east to make a career?

Yes. But I find it bad when people live in the West, only come to work at the university and describe a reality that may be completely different here. In the case of tenders, it is asked whether one is ready to shift the focus of life. If you say yes, you should do it too.

Guilt and shame towards the boys

The executives who commute from the west remember the visits of West German politicians to the east when elections are due.

These rituals are deadly. Because the data was already on the table after ten years. There were the first 100 books about it. After 20 years the next 100 books. 100 again after 30 years. And nothing has changed, and lip service is increasingly seen as part of the rubbish.

What data do you mean?

The basic data include: massive job losses after unification, emigration of 20 to 30 percent of the population, torn families, lower incomes on average, higher working hours, longer commuting times, lower pensions, higher risk of child poverty, smaller company structures, a lot of the supplier industry with its outsourced Economic risks.

Many West Germans can no longer hear the whining and say: Here people also feel disadvantaged.

Yes. And the Ruhr area is often cited as an example. But the dying of the pits there dragged on for over 40 years, here in the east everything happened in about three years, with much greater severity and brutality and with a rude awakening from illusions. East Germans voted for Kohl when he no longer had a secure majority in the West. They wanted to belong, to have opportunities to live and to consume, and then their environment, their existence, was liquidated. Many have the feeling that they have been unwise, but also that they have been cheated, feel guilty and ashamed towards the younger ones, for whom they cannot offer a good existence. It’s different in the West. No miner in the Ruhr area had the feeling that he had personally failed, according to the motto that your degree is no longer worth anything. The colliery has been closed, but the band is playing.

Everyday culture of resistance

The Eastern Commissioner Marco Wanderwitz sees the reasons for the success of the AfD in the east in the “dictatorship socialization”. Would you agree with that?

Yes and no. Adjusting to an authoritarian regime certainly leaves traces in the character, encouraging patterns of self-submission and high expectations of the state, which is supposed to direct everything. But after the GDR failed, many Ossis proved to be extremely flexible, moved where there was work, showed that they can adapt and have a sense of responsibility. It is a cliché that the Ossis were so obedient to the authorities. There was already an everyday culture of resistance in the GDR; people tried to evade the pressure from above with all sorts of tricks.

This everyday resistance, are you still observing it today?

Very often in the form of only looking at one’s own small area and as deep mistrust in official interpretations and narratives: There is the point of view that is presented in the media and next to it a reality that is fed by one’s own experiences. That is neatly separated and compared. This separation favors populism and corona denial. The causes are complex, however, and the problem with formulas like Wanderwitz’s are the stereotypes that run along. They convey: The Ossis are their own fault. Such stereotypes are also persistently used in the media.

Why actually?

This is the dynamic of prejudice: They relieve you of the pressure to act and feelings of guilt. To say: They are socialized in the GDR and their own fault, it means: Should they spoon out their own soup and be grateful that they got the solos and beautiful inner cities. It’s simply about your own interests and self-justification. Norbert Elias and John L. Scotson described this dynamic in “Established and Outsiders” in a village in Wales. A colliery was restructured, unemployed miners moved to the next village, because of work there were outsiders from the start. They also spoke Welsh and worked in the mining industry, just like the locals. There is hardly any more homogeneity. Nonetheless, the established ones have used their networks to marginalize the newcomers and devalued them as justification – their own fault for unemployment and the like.

What does it do with the marginalized?

They suffer, try to reinterpret the malicious images, even take on part of them themselves. This gives them at least an explanation and does not have to live with the fear-inducing insight of how unjust the world is.

How does the Saxony-Anhalt election fit into these descriptions? Did you expect the outcome so that it was not the AfD but the CDU that would be by far the strongest party?

Yes. Just nobody believed me. The press center was packed with hundreds of media people because everyone was sure beforehand that there was blatant news. It was clear that an important event was happening here before anything had happened. The basic mood in the country is not real turmoil, but rather: We want peace and security and not even more destructive change from outside; Reiner Haseloff at least stays on course and got a black zero.

Keeping a calm line helps many people manage anxiety.

Thomas Kliche, political psychologist in Magdeburg

Is it Haseloff who guarantees peace and security, or the CDU, including Angela Merkel?

Both. Merkel ruled like this for ten years. Until the refugee crisis, her basic promise was: Nothing will change for me. Everything stayed the same – a little more pension, some growth, no storm. One of Haseloff’s slogans was: This is not the time for experiments, just as it was for Konrad Adenauer in 1957. What is instructive about this is that if people are afraid of destructive change and you promise them a calm line, then this obviously helps many to cope with fear.

Can we gain insights from this for the federal election?

No. Take a look at the demographics here in Saxony-Anhalt: a lot more older people, a lot more non-voters, 40 to 70 percent depending on the choice. And hardly a country where so few first-time voters vote. And yes: As the environmental collapse increases, it will become more and more about coping with fear.

Many young people voted for the AfD. Why is that?

The basic experience of the next generation in the East is that life does not run smoothly, that society is fragile, that the state does not always take good care of you. They say: Nobody pays attention to us, the politicians don’t hear us, the media are distant and aloof. The same patterns as the elders about their post-union experience, just a generation later. The results are: alienation, non-voting, blanket rejection of politics and the elite, susceptibility to populism.

How can you change that?

Finding steps to understanding. Major studies say the anger is legitimate. For example, on the corruption when East German companies were sold by the trust. Such experiences in East Germany have never been dealt with impartially as a whole. That must finally happen.

The GDR as a normal comparison slide

But how?

Maybe through a truth commission. From a psychological point of view, what is important is a place where the suffering gets a voice and those who have been marginalized have the feeling: This is where we can find out what happened. We can say: a lot has been destroyed and we have paid for it with our livelihoods. This enormous biographical offense of the elderly must be discussed with the next generations. Also to understand why the GDR is a natural comparison slide here. Nobody says: GDR was a dictatorship, you can’t compare. Rather, it says: the health centers already existed back then. Or daycare groups with more didactics – we have already had one.

So some kind of group therapy for everyone?

It is methodologically pointless to put a whole company on the couch. And the implication is not: we have to save the East. That is no longer possible, and if so, then hardly in one generation, rather in the long term, through far-sighted structural policy. Rather, we have to see that something like this no longer happens to us on a large scale. Especially now that digitization is replacing many consulting professions. Jobs are rationalized away, career paths devalued, fields of work overturned. What is happening to the people? There is no nationwide strategy for this, the federal government missed that.

This text appeared in the weekend edition of the Berliner Zeitung – every Saturday at the kiosk or here on subscription.

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