564
PARTISAN REVIEW
Three interrelated failures occurred: first, West Germans underesti–
mated the depth of cultural differences between themselves and the so–
called
Ossis,
the Easterners. Plainly, the citizens of the former GDR did–
n't feel guilty about their past. Each individual had tried to adapt to an
autocratic system that wasn't able to produce enough wealth for its citi–
zens. Partly that adaptation required co-operation with the authorities,
denunciation, and fraud, but as far as we can judge, every citizen of the
GDR was in the same situation. Their behavior in relation to the auto–
cratic regime was similar to the well-known German authoritarian past.
When government control over the people was loosened, they reacted
similarly to the time of the
Biedermeier
-
retreated to family life and
nonpolitical communication with close friends.
Second, a false historical analogy has been drawn. A relevant segment
of opinion leaders in East and West handled the SED regime in terms of
the Nazi past. A search for murderers and tortureres took place, but the
number of murderers was not as high as during the Nazi time. East Ger–
man society was not a democracy, but it was not a totalitarian dictator–
ship in the strict sense. While Nazi Germany was a power of its own, the
GDR was only a satellite of the Soviet Union. While Nazi Germany in–
tended to rule all of Europe and initiated World War II, the GDR
seemed to be a peaceful state, at least when compared to the former
one. And finally, extermination didn't happen during the forty years of
the German Democratic Republic.
Opinion leaders and functionaries thought about the past in terms of
moral obligation. The readiness to confess, familiar in a Protest
4
nt cul–
ture, was transformed into a bureaucratic ceremony after 1989. The
opening of the
Stasi
files led to a social condition that is virtually unten–
able: a society in which everyone knows everything about everyone can–
not work. Secrets, concealments, ignorance, and simple lack of knowl–
edge are prerequisites of public social life. Coping with a problematic
collective past by uncovering the failures in every citizen destroys the ce–
ment of society. Apart from the false confidence in the validity of bu–
reaucratic, routine bookkeeping, the failure was also due to the confu–
sion of personal guilt and shame with society's responsibility for its own
history.
Official Austria and Austria's citizens and opinion makers did not
show much interest in the unification process and the moral cleansing
ceremonies after 1990. I think there are two explanations. On the one
side, a Catholic culture like the Austrian one is not interested in public
confessions. In a universe where every Sunday sins are being forgiven, evil
does not accumulate. On the other hand, Austrians have always been
