Walled Prison, Walled Garden – or Both? The GDR and Images of Education: Film Media’s Relationship to History and Memory of the German Democratic Republic in the Post-Wende Period

This paper first examines the broad context of German historiography, then moves on to specific recollections of educational life in the GDR. The paper then attempts to link issues of education in the German Democratic Republic to larger forces of media, history and memory, arguing that both film makers and historians have viewed the nature of repression in German Democratic Republic in the post-unification period in several limited ways. The latter part of the paper examines the several films of the post-unification period, linking them to changes in the historiographical perceptions in GDR history, offering a model which suggests that while the German Democratic Republic was oppressive, it was also a nation where â normal lifeâ was possible, that the whole GDR was as a metaphor, a kind of dysfunctional, educative state. It concludes with a caution for educators in their use of film as history.M.A