Utrecht — “Freundschaft!” Anja’s loud voice echoes through the classroom; they can even hear it next door. All the students jump to their feet and stand at attention. Arms straight, hands pressed tightly against their thighs. “Freundschaft” comes back timidly. Anja thinks they can do better. “You forgot to say the word,” she points out to a student. “One more time!” Laughter breaks out, but they’re still listening. All the third-grade students sit back down and then have to stand up again. This time it goes well. “Very nice, sit down. Wonderful.”
TV segment (RTV Utrecht), photos and text by Ulrike Nagel.
Anja Fricke, a 45-year-old woman from the former GDR who has lived in Utrecht for more than twenty years, gives guest lectures at Dutch high schools about life in East Germany. Through role-playing, 15- and 16-year-old students experience what it felt like to grow up in a military dictatorship.
With uniforms, textbooks full of military imagery, and strict commands, Anja brings the reality of the GDR to life. Her goal is to teach students to think independently and to appreciate democracy. In Germany, it would be more difficult for her to teach these lessons, because the subject is still too sensitive there.
This guest lecture is a role-playing exercise, so that students not only learn about history but also truly experience what it was like in the former GDR, the German Democratic Republic. Anja gives guest lectures throughout the country; today she is at Tabor College Werenfridus in Hoorn, which also collaborates with the Germany Institute and their “Blik op de muur” project for these lessons.
The students are 15 and 16 years old. In the former GDR, at age 14 you were already a member of the youth organization FDJ, the Freie Deutsche Jugend. Anja has brought along the uniform that goes with it: a bright blue blouse with a yellow logo. The GDR was primarily a military dictatorship, Anja emphasizes. “Because standing up, sitting down again, and then standing up once more—that served a purpose. It wakes you up. Just like in the military.” And immediately she snaps at a student: “When you walk into the classroom and there’s a teacher standing there, what do you do? You say ‘hello.’ Did you say hello to me? No. Then you’ve already earned your first demerits.”
Anja Fricke is 45 years old and has lived in Utrecht for more than twenty years. “I came here because friends of my parents asked if I’d like to move to Utrecht to study here. So I did. I wanted to discover the world, because my parents couldn’t. And I’m not going back either.” Those Dutch friends came to visit her parents in 1988. Anja comes from a small village in the Harz Mountains, near the border. A place where everyone kept a close eye on each other.
“It was different there than, say, in a big, anonymous city like Berlin. Teachers and parents—everyone knew each other—so you’d quickly run into trouble.” She brought her report cards to class, in which she herself is referred to only as “A.” The comments are full of criticism: she lacks logical thinking skills, it says; she’s falling behind in math; and her grades for behavior, participation, and diligence aren’t anything to write home about either. “The teachers didn’t like me—they didn’t say so, but I could feel it in everything. My parents dared to ask the teacher if she would write out my name, Anja, and then it got even worse.”
The group is everything; the individual doesn’t exist
She also lets the students experience in class what it’s like to be excluded. She shows them the uniform of the Jungpioniere, the Young Pioneers, a youth organization that everyone belonged to. “What do you think would happen if your parents said, ‘No, I don’t want my child to participate in this?’” she asks the class. “Then you’d probably be torn to pieces,” comes the reply. But it was much more subtle, Anja explains. “You were excluded. Because everyone participated in the youth organization, and group activities were organized that children loved to take part in. So naturally, you’d go to your parents to beg them to let you join.”
The students participate surprisingly well, though they are startled by Anja’s stern tone. “Be ready for peace and socialism! Always ready! For peace and socialism, be ready. Always ready!”—That stern, loud tone really hits home with Ruben, Anne, and Farah, students in this class. “It’s definitely a lot stricter than I had imagined,” says Anne. “That you really have to do your best at school, or else your parents will get a call. You’re afraid something will happen, even though you know you’re in your regular class.”
The students are quiet. “The lesson is better than just having everything explained to you. Then you lose your focus; now you can retain everything much better,” says Farah. “That you have to sit up straight, stand up straight—I think the kids felt less at home at their school back then; I’m definitely going to remember that much better now.” Her classmate Ruben agrees. During the lesson, Anja also briefly appoints him as class representative and lets him call out the other students about their clothing. “That feels pretty cool—it’s nice to exercise some authority. Then you can just tell someone what to do, and they listen right away.”
Designer clothes and a military dictatorship—they don’t go together
That’s also Anja’s goal. “You see that a military dictatorship works very easily—they go along with it very quickly themselves—and that’s the point I want to make. The underlying goal might also be for them to learn to think for themselves—to think: ‘I don’t want to stand up just because she says so,’ or ‘I don’t want to be called out on what I’m wearing.’”
That clothing—that was a bit of an issue. “What does it say on your shirt?” Anja asks the young people. Most of them don’t even realize it, but clothing from an American brand—that was, of course, out of the question. “It says ‘Tommy.’ What does that have to do with the GDR? So we’re going to call your parents right now, and then you can go explain to the principal why you don’t love our beautiful, wonderful socialist GDR, but instead love the Klassenfeind (political enemy of the working class, ed.).”
Anja eventually studies cultural studies in Utrecht and goes on to work in communications. She isn’t a teacher, but she regularly gives these guest lectures using role-playing. She shows the class a math textbook from 1980. “What did you use to learn math? Apples and oranges? Look, what do you see here?” The images of tanks and soldiers are unmistakable. “Ultimately, I also want the students to learn to appreciate democracy more again—the freedom they actually have in class,” says Anja. Ruben can relate to that. “It’s good to be a little stricter once in a while, but I do like the regular classes better,” he laughs afterward.
No Going Back to Germany
Why doesn’t Anja want to go back to Germany? Partly because she wouldn’t be able to teach these lessons there in this way. “I also worked in West Germany for a while, but I missed something there that I do have here—here, there are no prejudices because I’m from East Germany. It’s not immediately made into a big deal. Here in the Netherlands, I’m just German; if I wanted to teach those classes in Germany, it would be much more difficult. Then I’d have to watch what I say, for example, if there were a teacher who had previously taught in East Germany.”
The fact that the subject apparently hardly ever comes up in schools in Germany is another reason. “My cousin still lives in the Harz Mountains, and when I talk to her about it, she tells me that the Cold War is hardly discussed at school there either. She’s 18 now and has learned almost nothing about it. Apparently, it’s still too sensitive a topic. In the Netherlands, it’s even part of the exam curriculum.”
