The 1.5 generation's memory of the GDR: Child victims testify to the experience of forced exile

Abstract

This article investigates the legacy of violence in the children of East German refugees, émigrés and victims of persecution exiled from the German Democratic Republic in the 1970s and 1980s. Through the analysis of Susanne Schädlich's memoir Immer wieder Dezember: der Westen, die Stasi, der Onkel und ich (2009) and the essay collection Ein Spaziergang war es nicht: Kindheiten zwischen Ost und West (2012) edited by Schädlich and her sister Anna Schädlich, we argue that this testimony reveals a distinct generational cohort. This age group (born between the mid-1960s and early 1980s) is shaped by their parents' experience of persecution, but also by the loss of the country of their childhood. ..