Behind the Wall: The Inner Life of Communist Germany

Maaz, a psychiatrist in the former East Germany, recalls the Communist-ruled society of his country as a system of continuous coercion, manipulation, control and punishment, its symbols the Berlin Wall and the ubiquitous Stasi, or secret police. East German schools enforced a ruthless leveling of individual potentials; authoritarian parents rewarded conformity. In a remarkable, intimate psychological profile of a people scarred by 40 years of repressive Communist rule, Maaz depicts an infantilized, submissive population, kept in eternal childhood, for whom autonomy, self-awareness, responsibility and openness were extremely rare character traits. Beneath the average East German citizen's unemotional facade of respectability and discipline, he maintains, festered pent-up rage, pain and deep resentment at the more prosperous and freer West Germans. First published in Germany in 1990, the year of German reunification, this prescient study predicts that East Germans will have a tough time adapting to freedom of choice, social mobility and a market economy. (Jan.)