Comrades of Color: East Germany in the Cold War World
Comrades of Color: East Germany in the Cold War World
复制标题
有色人种同志：冷战世界中的东德
DOI：
10.1162/jcws_r_00867
复制
发表时间：
2019
影响因子：
0.8
通讯作者：
Radoslav Yordanov
中科院分区：
文献类型：
--
作者：
Radoslav Yordanov
沃尔夫冈·贝克尔的多项大奖获奖影片《再见列宁》(2003)，将在本书的最后一章进行讨论，讲述了1990年德国统一后新的生活方式与一些人在放弃过去对社会主义理想的幻想时遇到的困难之间的不和谐。在德意志民主共和国(德意志民主共和国)时期，社会主义理想从未实现。为了帮助观众理解这个微妙的主题，这部电影为一名出租车司机的临时演讲增添了重要的情感色彩。这名司机长得非常像东德陆军少将西格蒙德·耶恩(Sigmund Jähn)，他是第一位飞入太空的德国人(1978年，在苏联Salyut 6空间站执行为期八天的任务)。从电视屏幕上读到的Jähn的二重身捕捉到了多年来让电影主人公身患绝症的母亲克里斯汀普遍相信共产主义，尤其是民主德国版本的道德渴望：“我们知道我们的国家并不完美。但我们的信仰鼓舞了世界各地的人们。社会主义并不意味着把自己关在墙里。社会主义意味着走近他人，与他人共处。不仅是为了梦想一个更美好的世界，而且是为了让它变得更加美好。(全文在詹妮弗·马斯顿·威廉的《德国历史电影的认知方法：眼见为实》一书中用英文和德文原文复制，伦敦：帕尔格雷夫，麦克米兰：2016]，第50页，58页。)在这样做的过程中，这位出租车司机强调了一种信念，这种信念不仅让克里斯汀，而且让东柏林、马普托、河内和平壤的许多其他像她一样的人在那个两极时期宣誓信守社会主义团结的原则，当时东西方被墙和意识形态隔开了。奎恩·斯洛博迪安编辑的作品集《色彩的同志》反映了这种环境，试图将一种国际主义世界观结合在一起，将对更光明未来的承诺、兄弟般的团结和对他人的纠缠愿景与对共同过去的记忆和怀旧结合在一起。这本书包括了十几位对冷战期间德意志民主共和国与第三世界打交道有深入了解的学者的贡献。在构思这本文集时，斯洛博迪安指出，“从德国书写和叙述世界历史，以及德国在世界上的历史，仍然是一个亲密的政治问题”(第11页)。这种方法使本书有别于对苏联集团国家和第三世界之间的外交和国际关系的更多机构导向的研究。斯洛博迪安和他的合作者试图“理解演讲和宣传的高尚国际主义是如何转化为日常生活的”(第1页)。因此，第一部分的论文提供了丰富的案例研究，深入探讨“没有种族主义”的种族问题，包括支持安吉拉·戴维斯的团结运动；与越南和中国联合制作的电影；朝鲜和越南的城市规划；莫桑比克学生的培训活动，以及“他者”纠缠的愿景。
Wolfgang Becker’s multi-award winning film Good-Bye Lenin (2003), which is discussed in the final chapter of this collective volume, plays on the dissonance between the new ways of life that followed German reunification in 1990 and the difficulty some had in relinquishing the past’s illusions about a socialist ideal that was never realized under the German Democratic Republic (GDR). To help the viewer understand this subtle theme, the film lends an important emotional charge to a makeshift speech delivered by a taxi driver who bears an uncanny resemblance to East German Army Major-General Sigmund Jähn, the first German to fly into space (in 1978 for an eight-day mission to the Soviet Salyut 6 space station). Reading from a television screen, Jähn’s doppelganger captures the sense of moral longing that for years had made Christine, the terminally ill mother of the film’s protagonist, believe in Communism generally and in the GDR’s version in particular: “We know that our country is not perfect. But what we believe in has inspired people all over the world. Socialism does not mean walling yourself in. Socialism means approaching others, living with them. Not only to dream about a better world, but to make it so.” (The full text is reproduced in both English and the German original in Jennifer Marston William, Cognitive Approaches to German Historical Film: Seeing Is Not Believing [London: Palgrave, MacMillan: 2016], pp. 50, 58.) In so doing, the taxi driver pinpoints the belief that made not only Christine but many others like her in East Berlin, Maputo, Hanoi, and Pyongyang swear to the principles of socialist solidarity during that time of bipolarity, when the East was separated from the West by walls and ideologies. Quinn Slobodian’s edited collection Comrades of Color reflects this milieu, attempting to bring together an internationalist worldview that mixes promises of a brighter future, fraternal solidarity, and entangled visions of the other, with memories and nostalgia of a common past. The volume includes contributions from a dozen scholars with intimate knowledge of the GDR’s dealings with the Third World during the Cold War. In conceptually framing the collection, Slobodian notes that “writing and recounting the history of the world from Germany, and of Germany in the world, remains a matter of intimate politics” (p. 11). This approach sets the volume apart from more institutional-oriented studies of diplomacy and international relations between the Soviet-bloc countries and the Third World. Slobodian and his collaborators seek to “understand how the high-minded internationalism of speeches and propaganda translated into everyday life” (p. 1). Accordingly, the essays in Part I present a rich palette of case studies delving into issues of race “without racism,’ including solidarity campaigns in support of Angela Davis; film co-productions with Vietnam and China; urban planning in North Korea and Vietnam; training activities for students from Mozambique, and entangled visions of the “other.”