Activism, Media, and Environmental Crisis in East Germany: Memories from the Past

• In Event: Memory Activism and the Berlin Wall before and after 1989

Abstract

In 1989, East Germany’s state-owned animation studio released Full Circle, a satire by one of their most prolific animators, Klaus Georgi, about the state’s reckless industrial practices and society’s inurement to an increasingly uninhabitable world. It followed his 1986 short Consequence, in which life everywhere is choking on pollution caused by human activity. At the same time, the state suppressed underground ecological groups, emerging mostly under the auspices of the Protestant Church, which extended its autonomy to oppositional groups, whose unsanctioned media—pamphlets and illegal video recordings—were disbursed across East Germany and the German border. Despite state attempts to slow grassroots mobilization, the growing momentum struck fear in the Party that such activities could destabilize the regime, resulting in both concessions and state coercion. The 1986 Chernobyl nuclear disaster united the peace and environmental movements, and in fall 1989, protesters took to the streets in a peaceful revolution that led to the fall of the Berlin Wall and the Wende. The media depicts challenges at the heart of the ongoing environmental crisis: the contradictions between progressive climate action, wartime agendas, and fiscal planning, and the overwhelming feeling of one's own incapacity to change things that are culturally, economically and ideologically entrenched. This paper looks at the documents to examine the provocations that shaped (East) Germany's story of environmental crisis and recovery and to reflect on how those lessons shape these issues today.

Author

• Victoria Rizo Lenshyn, DEFA Film Library