Behind the Wall: My Brother, My Family and Hatred in East Germany

Germany, like many countries, has witnessed the rise of extremist far-right groups and parties in recent years, and no more so than in the eastern regions. Why have those parts of Germany that used to be part of the old GDR turned out to be so supportive of extremist groups and parties and such fertile ground for violence and hatred?

To try to find answers to this question, Ines Geipel, the former East German Olympic athlete, returns to her past in order explore the matrix of fear and anxiety that shaped the lives of people in the GDR. Spurred on by conversations at the bedside of her brother as he lay dying of a brain tumour, she probes into her own family background and discovers a web of secrets and denial that reflected larger processes of East German society. She finds that her father had worked as a special agent for the Stasi until the service had no further use for him, and her grandfather had joined the Nazi party in 1933 and was stationed in Riga at a time when tens of thousands of Jews were murdered in the nearby forests. Silence and denial within her family was mirrored in the collective loss of history outside her home, and the repression of ideological non-conformity made it difficult for a traumatized population to grapple with and come to terms with a brutal past. Instead, a politics of forgetting emerged which served the ends of an authoritarian state and seeped into private lives of individuals with deep and lasting consequences.

This powerful memoir, grippingly told, will appeal to anyone interested in the history of modern Germany, in the rise of far-right extremism and xenophobia and in the historical forces that shape the present.

德國，像許多國家一樣，近年來見證了極端右翼團體和政黨的崛起，尤其是在東部地區。為什麼德國的這些曾經是舊東德的地區會如此支持極端團體和政黨，並成為暴力和仇恨的肥沃土地？為了尋找答案，前東德奧運選手Ines Geipel回到過去，探索了塑造東德人民生活的恐懼和焦慮矩陣。在她的兄弟因腦腫瘤而臥床期間的對話激勵下，她深入研究了自己的家庭背景，發現了一個由秘密和否認組成的網絡，反映了東德社會的更大過程。她發現她的父親曾經是國家安全部特工，直到服務對他沒有進一步利用價值為止，而她的祖父在1933年加入了納粹黨，當時成千上萬的猶太人在附近的森林中被謀殺。她家庭內的沉默和否認在她家外部的集體歷史損失中得到了體現，而意識形態不一致的壓制使受創傷的人民難以應對和處理殘酷的過去。相反，一種遺忘的政治出現了，這種政治服務於一個專制國家的目的，並滲入了個人的私人生活，產生了深遠的後果。這本引人入勝的強大回憶錄將吸引所有對現代德國歷史、極右翼極端主義和仇外心理的人，以及塑造現在的歷史力量感興趣的讀者。

Ines Geipel is a writer and Professor of Verse Arts at Ernst Busch Academy of Dramatic Arts in Berlin.

Ines Geipel 是一位作家，也是柏林恩斯特·布施戲劇藝術學院的詩歌藝術教授。