Die Sprachmauer: Die Verarbeitung der Wende und ihrer Folgen in Gesprächen mit Ost- und WestberlinerInnen. By Norbert Dittmar and Ursula Bredel. Berlin: Weidler Buchverlag, 1999. Pp. 207. Paper. € 20.00.

Extract

In 1993 and 1994, starting from a seminar series led by Norbert Dittmar, Professor of Sociolinguistics at the Free University of Berlin, a considerable number of interviews with Berlin residents were recorded on the topic of the Wende, the events of 1989–1990 from the mass exodus of East Berliners to the west via Hungary and Czechoslovakia, through the opening of the Berlin Wall and the collapse of the GDR regime, to the unification of the two German states. Of the 77 interviews conducted by participants in Dittmar's seminars and other students at the University, 56 were of adequate quality for transcription and analysis, 31 with East Berliners (33 interviewees, as some interviews involved 2 informants), and 25 with residents of the western part of the city (28 interviewees). Of the eastern interviewees 19 were women and 14 men; in the west there were 15 women and 13 men. Ages ranged from around 20 to around 60 (some ages were unknown), with a considerable clustering of informants in the age ranges 30 to 39 in the east and 40 to 49 in the west. Despite the reasonably representative nature of the sample, the data have not, to my knowledge, been submitted to quantitative analysis but have formed the basis of two qualitative studies, Braber 2001 and the current book.