Coca-Cola and Legos, the Bane of the GDR

David Brown
Professor Tejada
English 1102 F
12 March 2009
Coca-Cola and Legos, the Bane of the GDR
One of the major aspects of modern German culture is the fall of the Berlin wall. At the end of World War Two Germany was divided into two halves. The eastern half of the country formed an authoritarian style government modeled after the soviets and was called the German Democratic Republic (GDR). The western half of Germany was liberated by the remainder of the allies and became the Federal Republic of Germany. To have a country split into two and eventually be reunited is a unique case that isn’t observed very often. It’s like an experiment where half of the control group is given one pill (capitalism) and the other is given a different pill (socialism) and we can sit back and observe the side effects of each while having all our other variables under control such as heritage, culture, and language. Goodbye Lenin and Sonnenallee (Sun Alley) are two German films about the fall of the Berlin wall and how it influenced the German people and their national cinema. In this piece I argue that these two films show a unique view of the fall of the German wall and how it affected the people around it while also maintaining global themes to appeal to a wider audience.
Goodbye Lenin is a film concerning an East German family and how they handle the fall of the Berlin wall, but with a twist. The mother, a socialist idealist, falls into a coma after a she witnesses her son in a protest march. When she awakens nine months later in a frail state the GDR has fallen and to protect her, Alex, her son, goes to extreme lengths to recreate the GDR in their little apartment.
Sun Alley takes place in the 70’s in the middle of the GDR’s forty year span. The film tells a story about the neighborhood at the end a road named sun alley that for most of its length runs through West Germany, but ends across the wall in East Germany. Centering on Micha and his group of friends, the film follows as they live their lives in the GDR. How they buy forbidden western goods on the black market and pursue the East German girls. It’s a heartwarming story of growing up in East Germany despite the restrictions put in effect by the government.
Coming of age is a common global theme these two movies share. In the movie Goodbye Lenin Alex finds himself thrust into adult by his mother’s heart attack because now he must head the family and take care of her. Also Alex finds himself discovering love in the form of Nurse Lara. Similarly, in the film Sun Alley Micha takes charge by deciding to commit to the military so he can go on to post secondary education in Moscow. He also finds a love of his own named Miriam and he proceeds to woo her. This global theme of coming of age helps these two movies appeal to a wider, global audience. While these movies do contain several global themes they also contain some that are wholly German.
A distinctly German theme in these two films is the effect the Berlin wall had on the people living around it. One effect was it caused some to want to flee to the other side. In Goodbye Lenin the father escaped to West Germany to find a better life, but at the cost of leaving his family behind. Similarly in Sun Alley the mother stole a passport in order sneak across the border into West Germany. Even though she had the passport and the costume, she still did not leave, but instead she stayed with her family and made do with what she had in East Germany. Another effect the wall had was limiting the outside influence of other cultures. This can be seen in the clothes that the director selected to use in Goodbye Lenin the East German clothes were all bland and shapeless representing the isolation of East German style from the rest of the world. Likewise the dress of the characters in Sun Alley is very ordinary compared to that of the Western Germans that appear in the film. Another powerful way that the directors contrast the west and the east are the cinematographic techniques they employ.
The directors chose to show the growing differences between the two cultures by their cinematography. Leander Haußmann includes a scene that pans across the East/West German border showing an East German guard tower in the middle ground in stark contrast to a bright red glowing Lego sign in the background that appears just as large as the guard tower. A guard tower typically is a foreboding image that represents control and authority but, when it is juxtaposed with such a blatant sigh of commercialism mockingly it just creates a ridiculous situation and a message to the audience.
The message is that the west is just as big as an influence as the authoritative power of the state. A similar shot appears in Goodbye Lenin when a Coca-Cola banner unfurls in full view of Alex’s mother despite his best efforts to shelter her from the ubiquitous influence of West Germany.
Another way cinematography is used by Haußmann in the Sun Alley is the use of a low angle shot to show an observation tower built by the West German’s to view the East Germans as if they were an exhibit in a zoo. This shot is used more than once and is employed to show how the “Wessi’s” perceive themselves as better than the “Ossi’s” (Cooke 161). Sun Alley comments on this type of rift that was formed between the two sides of the wall, and that was ever present when the wall stood.

Both of these films make a comment on the nostalgia of the former GDR. Something that has become referred to as “Ostalgie” (Dale 167). This glorification of life in the GDR has become a sort of a German theme and a genre of movies in itself in Germany. Both of these films have Ostalgie qualities, but neither could be defined avoid some of the common characteristics of an Ostalgie film by focusing more on global themes like growing up as a teenager, and a story of a broken family. The movies also focus on the good and the bad aspects of the former GDR instead of just skimming over the less glamorous parts of life in the GDR. Goodbye Lenin accomplishes this with the scene were the peaceful protestors are beaten arrested Alex included, but it also comments on Ostalgie and its obsession with viewing the GDR through rose tinted glasses. The world that he creates in the apartment for his mother is a perfect example of Ostalgie, but because it is made up and a lie it shows the audience that the true face of Ostalgie is a lie. “ Albeit in lighthearted vein, it continues that rich tradition of German literature and cinema of designing an imaginary, idealised Germany in order to contrast it with the shortcomings of the real thing” (Dale 167). This comment on Ostalgie is supported by the fact that Richard Alleva points out in his article “East Meets West”, “Alex completes his latest homemade video for his mother’s viewing and, as it shows thousands of West Berliners fleeing Moloch and running into the welcoming arms of newly reformed East German communism-with-a-human-face, Alex murmurs on the sound track, ‘The GDR I created for her became the one I had always wanted for myself’” (24). Sun Alley also reminds us of the strictness of life in the GDR by the ever-present border guards with machine guns in hand.
These two films Sun Alley and Goodbye Lenin both take place in different places in Germany’s history, but they share many common universal and uniquely German themes that give the audience a better understanding of a German’s view of the Berlin Wall.


Works Cited
Alleva, Richard. “East Meets West: ‘Goodbye, Lenin!’ & ‘Kill Bill---Volume 2’.” Commonweal (2004):23-4. Galileo Georgia Tech Lib., Atlanta, GA. 3 March 2009 .
Cooke, Paul. “Performing ‘Ostalgie’: Leander Haussmann’s Sonnenallee.” German Life and Letters 56 (2003): 156-67. Galileo . Georgia Tech Lib., Atlanta, GA. 3 March 2009 .
Dale, Gareth. “Heimat, “Ostalgie” and the Stasi: The GDR in German Cinema, 1999–2006.” Debatte, vol. 15 (August 2007): 23-4. Galileo . Georgia Tech Lib., Atlanta, GA. 3 March 2009 .