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Published online by Cambridge University Press: 14 July 2023
Is there anyone who hasn’t heard the phrase: ‘Everything was better in the old days’? The more stressful the present feels, the greater the longing for the past becomes. The wave of Ostalgie (a play on the German words for ‘east’, Ost, and nostalgia) felt by some East Germans has since been joined by a ‘Westalgia’. Furniture and fashion venerate the retro and vintage look of previous decades, and a not insignificant number of citizens view the time before the fall of the Wall through rose-coloured glasses. In the Weimar Republic, when democracy was still in its infancy, many people longed for the return of the abdicated kaiser and his empire. The longing for a strong leader to rule the country was widespread. In 1925, it found its expression in the election of World War General Paul von Hindenburg as president, and in 1933 it was manifested in the form of Private Adolf Hitler. This chapter shows how appropriations of the past often go hand in hand with critiques of the present.
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