Transitions.
Transitions.
From German Democratic Republic to Federal Republic of Germany
The children and adolescents born after 1990 are no longer familiar
with the German Democratic Republic, they have no first-hand knowledge
of it, they haven’t seen the Wall, they only know from their
parents or grandparents, from their history lessons, from movies
or photos what it might have been like before the fall of the Berlin
Wall.
The first series of photographs of Angelika Kampfer and Ewald
Hentze shows how “exotic” this world of the GDR 1989 appears
to us today. Immediately after the fall of the Wall the two photographers
set out to take pictures of people – children, women and men
at their jobs, in kindergardens and in factories – in a state
that everybody knew would cease to exist soon or would undergo fundamental
changes.
In 1992 Angelika Kampfer and Ewald Hentze started out again
to take photos of the same people. Much had changed in those two
years. It seems that the labourer, THE protagonist of the old GDR
as the labourers’ and
farmers’ paradise, disappeared. Angelika Kampfer does not show
the emptiness of factories and slag heaps, she shows the workers
without work as early pensioners in their gardens.
In 2004 and 2005
the photographer set out again on a photo trip. The buildings photographed
in 1992 remind us to a large extent of the early 20th century. Since
then the factories that survived have been modernized, new trade
shops have been established, schools have been renovated. Within
a period of just 15 years a clean world of white as well as blue
collar workers emerged, a totally rationalized world. People cope
with it, some much better than before, some less.
Dr. Monika Flacke, Böhlau Verlag, 2006
„The rubber boats were fit for the open sea, but we were not
allowed to use them along the coast of the Baltic Sea.
In the times
of the old GDR we could spend our holidays only in the Cech Republic,
once we were assigned to a campground near Prag. We had a cottage
there, we were lucky, it was ok. The assignment was made by another
branch of our factory. We don’t have a
car, but we still have our “Schwalbe”. We are no longer
unemployed and earn our own money. You can’t even afford to
be ill, you lose your job right away. And we won’t get another
one.”
Klaus Buchholz, 2006