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Constructions of (Non-)Belonging: Marginalized Social Groups in “Actually Existing Socialism”
child care.° Altogether, these highly positive forms of depicting pensioners were to
take away the fears that could be connected with aging. Idyllic representations like
sitting on a park bench together and thus spending the remaining years together were
to promote old age “as a new beginning”.’
A remarkable glossing over of social problems and a notable trivialization of
daily life for pensioners during this period can be observed in the TV production
Rentner haben niemals Zeit (‘Pensioners Never Have Time’), with the couple Anna
and Paul Schmidt as the main protagonists. The idea of this series was to emphasize
the importance of work, permanent helpfulness, and the relevance of old people as
central elements for the socialist society in a very humorous way. The production,
which was first screened in 1978, was very popular and could always attracted an
audience rating much higher than average, and thus it was repeated three times
until the year 1990 (Viehoff 2004). Criticism of the symbolic policies regarding
the belittlement of the old-age pensioner’s life did not hold an important position
in the state-controlled media landscape. One of the very rare examples was that of
the journalist Barbara Faensen. In her article from the year 1980, she openly bela¬
boured the fussy “biddy” and “granny” language used in the official political con¬
text. These forms of communication—including the construction of the “hospital
atmosphere” in the retirement homes—would not refer to social care but rather to
arrogance, condescension, and disregard towards old age and, thus, would create
a dishonest image of this social group.*
Apart from that very remarkable exception of strongly ritualized propaganda,
one essential feature of the imaging of age—not only in the GDR but in the East¬
ern Bloc in general—and therefore the construction and media appropriation of
self and Other were the permanent and mantra-like repeated contrasts with the
demonized “capitalistic West”. This imagined opposition becomes strikingly clear
in an example from the year 1982. The image is situated on a single page in the
main medium of the Socialist Unity Party of Germany (SED), Neues Deutschland:
the one side portrays elderly GDR citizens, active, respected, and salvaged by the
state and the rest of the (still working) population, and the other side portrays the
experience of being old within the capitalistic sphere, visualized by an older man,
seemingly homeless, lying (and/or sleeping) on a park bench in Glasgow” (Fig. 2).
° For male pensioners as “teachers” of the youth, see S. Wolff, “Arbeit im Alter” (“Work in Old Age’),
Wochenpost, September 22, 1972; for women as an inherent part of the children’s education see M. Hein¬
richs, “Oma, was machst’n Du?” (‘Grandma, What Are You Doing?’), Neue Berliner Illustrierte, vol. 22,
1982; for the Bulgarian case, see Iliev 2001.
7G, Skulski, “Das Rentenalter—ein neuer Anfang” (“The Age of Retirement—A New Beginning’), Neue
Zeit, August 30, 1975.
$ B. Faensen, “Die niedlichen Alten” ("The Cute Elderly People’), Weltbühne (World Stage’), April 1,
1980; for contemporary observations, see Helwig 1980: 162, 188-189.
9 K. Wühst, “Ältere Bürger in unserer Republik—aktiv, geachtet und geborgen” versus “Altsein im
kapitalischen Alltag ...” (Older People in Our Republic—Active, Respected and Saved’, ‘Being Old in
the Capitalist Everyday Life’), Neues Deutschland, February 13, 1982, p. 9.
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