Maxim Leo's memoir "Red Love: The Story of an East German Family", his account of growing up in East Berlin behind the Iron Curtain, was published in his native language in 2009. In 2011, it won the European Book Prize, with the chair of the jury, Julian Barnes, describing it as an "unofficial history for a country that no longer exists". For Leo's maternal grandfather Gerhard, a Berlin-born Jew and veteran of the French Resistance during the Second World War, the German Democractic Republic was a bulwark against fascism (the residual anti-semitism the regime tolerated, and sometimes fomented, notwithstanding). When I spoke to Leo on the phone from Berlin, where he works as an editor at the Berliner Zeitung, I began by asking him how the fall of the Berlin Wall had affected Gerhard.
He was travelling in France around the time of the first anniversary of the collapse of the Berlin Wall—France was always the country of his heart and at that time he felt more comfortable there than in Germany. He didn’t speak a lot about how he felt, but of course he was disappointed. On the other hand, he always said that the Communist Party couldn’t have carried on in the direction it was going.
Growing up, were you proud of Gerhard's exploits as a member of the French Resistance?
My grandfather was a hero to me. As a kid I was always impressed that he knew how guns worked. He was a very good storyteller, too. He would always play the part, do the voices. He loved to entertain people with stories of the war. For me, it was always a great adventure to listen to him.
You describe the GDR as a “ghostly presence” in your family. Do you think that’s typical of families from the former East Germany?
I was surprised by the reaction to the book, because I thought our family’s history was special—of course, it is special in that there’s the Jewish background, and one grandfather in the French Resistance, the other in the German army. But when the book came out I got so many letters in which people told me, “I see myself in your book, I see my life.”
Are people in Germany still coming to terms with the legacy of the GDR, then?
No, not really. Today, the GDR is principally a subject for books and movies. The other day I went to the Stasi archives in Berlin, where I met two Hollywood scriptwriters looking for good stories. They told me that the GDR was the new Third Reich for Hollywood.
German filmmakers have also taken the GDR as their subject haven't they? One thinks, for instance, of Wolfgang Becker's Good Bye Lenin! or Florian Hecnkel von Donnersmarck's The Lives of Others.
I wasn’t especially enthusiastic about either of those! It’s interesting that films like Good Bye Lenin! were better received in the West than in the East [of Germany]. In the west, they got the impression they were understanding what went on. For East Germans, though, it’s more complicated.
Is it important to you and other former East Germans that your Chancellor, Angela Merkel, is an East German?
It’s an interesting question. I guess I’m a little bit proud of it, though not too proud! I actually know Angela Merkel very well. She worked in the same laboratory as me in the 1980s, so I spent a lot of time with her. We used to have lunch together. When she became Chancellor, she said to me, “Today, I’m no longer Angela to you, but ‘Madame Chancellor’.” So I have a very special relationship with her. But I’m always proud when East Germans do something special or are successful.
You write that the book is partly an attempt to answer the question of how you “became a Westerner”. But you also say that the East still “clings” to you. Do you think the process of becoming a Westerner is one that you could ever complete? Will there always be a bit of the East in you?
I think it’s complex. I already was a West German in the East—in the sense that I valued freedom of thought. And that was due to my parents. So, in that sense I was always from the West. Yet, in certain ways, I still want to insist on being from the East. It’s not like entering a carwash—you don’t go in as a dirty little East German and emerge a pristine West German! And I think it was a great experience to see a state fall down like [the GDR did]. Things that were supposed to last a hundred years collapsed, just like that. This is very important for me. I spent half my life in East Germany, after all. I’m very glad to have had this experience.
The book gives a very vivid account of just how quickly the regime in the GDR collapsed. What effect do you think what was happening at the same time in the Soviet Union under Gorbachev (Glasnost and Perestroika) had on people in East Germany?
Without that process in the USSR change in the GDR would not have been possible. The question in the summer of 1989 in East Germany was whether there would be a “Chinese solution” or a “Glasnost solution”. It wasn’t clear which one we’d get until Gorbachev visited Berlin in October of that year.
In your account, it dawned very suddenly on people in East Germany that they no longer needed to disguise what they were thinking. The psychology of that is fascinating; it must have felt like a kind of intoxication.
It was a matter of just a few of weeks. It started in the summer of ’89, with all these people leaving the country and going to Hungary and Czechoslovakia. In East Germany itself, things were also changing quickly. I was less interested than others in leaving the country; it was so interesting to see all the demonstrations and debates. In Berlin things began later than in Leipzig and Dresden. The first demonstration in Berlin didn’t take place until 7th October. To suddenly have thousands of people around you thinking the same, wanting the same thing as you … I was arrested, along with many others, that day. But by the time we were released on the 8th it was clear that the state had given up.
Having lived through that extraordinary moment, do you now find politics in the unified Germany boring?
Yes, compared to 1989, it’s always boring! But in a democracy, you don’t have to be so interested in politics—it’s just one thing, among many others, that you can take an interest in. The advantage of living in a democracy is that your life is more than politics. I did an interview the other day with the BBC in Berlin. Their studio is not far from the Brandenburg Gate. And every time I pass through there, I thank the Lord for what happened in 1989.
He was travelling in France around the time of the first anniversary of the collapse of the Berlin Wall—France was always the country of his heart and at that time he felt more comfortable there than in Germany. He didn’t speak a lot about how he felt, but of course he was disappointed. On the other hand, he always said that the Communist Party couldn’t have carried on in the direction it was going.
Growing up, were you proud of Gerhard's exploits as a member of the French Resistance?
My grandfather was a hero to me. As a kid I was always impressed that he knew how guns worked. He was a very good storyteller, too. He would always play the part, do the voices. He loved to entertain people with stories of the war. For me, it was always a great adventure to listen to him.
You describe the GDR as a “ghostly presence” in your family. Do you think that’s typical of families from the former East Germany?
I was surprised by the reaction to the book, because I thought our family’s history was special—of course, it is special in that there’s the Jewish background, and one grandfather in the French Resistance, the other in the German army. But when the book came out I got so many letters in which people told me, “I see myself in your book, I see my life.”
Are people in Germany still coming to terms with the legacy of the GDR, then?
No, not really. Today, the GDR is principally a subject for books and movies. The other day I went to the Stasi archives in Berlin, where I met two Hollywood scriptwriters looking for good stories. They told me that the GDR was the new Third Reich for Hollywood.
German filmmakers have also taken the GDR as their subject haven't they? One thinks, for instance, of Wolfgang Becker's Good Bye Lenin! or Florian Hecnkel von Donnersmarck's The Lives of Others.
I wasn’t especially enthusiastic about either of those! It’s interesting that films like Good Bye Lenin! were better received in the West than in the East [of Germany]. In the west, they got the impression they were understanding what went on. For East Germans, though, it’s more complicated.
Is it important to you and other former East Germans that your Chancellor, Angela Merkel, is an East German?
It’s an interesting question. I guess I’m a little bit proud of it, though not too proud! I actually know Angela Merkel very well. She worked in the same laboratory as me in the 1980s, so I spent a lot of time with her. We used to have lunch together. When she became Chancellor, she said to me, “Today, I’m no longer Angela to you, but ‘Madame Chancellor’.” So I have a very special relationship with her. But I’m always proud when East Germans do something special or are successful.
You write that the book is partly an attempt to answer the question of how you “became a Westerner”. But you also say that the East still “clings” to you. Do you think the process of becoming a Westerner is one that you could ever complete? Will there always be a bit of the East in you?
I think it’s complex. I already was a West German in the East—in the sense that I valued freedom of thought. And that was due to my parents. So, in that sense I was always from the West. Yet, in certain ways, I still want to insist on being from the East. It’s not like entering a carwash—you don’t go in as a dirty little East German and emerge a pristine West German! And I think it was a great experience to see a state fall down like [the GDR did]. Things that were supposed to last a hundred years collapsed, just like that. This is very important for me. I spent half my life in East Germany, after all. I’m very glad to have had this experience.
The book gives a very vivid account of just how quickly the regime in the GDR collapsed. What effect do you think what was happening at the same time in the Soviet Union under Gorbachev (Glasnost and Perestroika) had on people in East Germany?
Without that process in the USSR change in the GDR would not have been possible. The question in the summer of 1989 in East Germany was whether there would be a “Chinese solution” or a “Glasnost solution”. It wasn’t clear which one we’d get until Gorbachev visited Berlin in October of that year.
In your account, it dawned very suddenly on people in East Germany that they no longer needed to disguise what they were thinking. The psychology of that is fascinating; it must have felt like a kind of intoxication.
It was a matter of just a few of weeks. It started in the summer of ’89, with all these people leaving the country and going to Hungary and Czechoslovakia. In East Germany itself, things were also changing quickly. I was less interested than others in leaving the country; it was so interesting to see all the demonstrations and debates. In Berlin things began later than in Leipzig and Dresden. The first demonstration in Berlin didn’t take place until 7th October. To suddenly have thousands of people around you thinking the same, wanting the same thing as you … I was arrested, along with many others, that day. But by the time we were released on the 8th it was clear that the state had given up.
Having lived through that extraordinary moment, do you now find politics in the unified Germany boring?
Yes, compared to 1989, it’s always boring! But in a democracy, you don’t have to be so interested in politics—it’s just one thing, among many others, that you can take an interest in. The advantage of living in a democracy is that your life is more than politics. I did an interview the other day with the BBC in Berlin. Their studio is not far from the Brandenburg Gate. And every time I pass through there, I thank the Lord for what happened in 1989.
