Today is November 9th (oh. you probably see the date at the top of the post.), which is a day with a lot of baggage for Germany.
Germany celebrates the reunification of Germany on Tag der Deutschen Einheit (the day that East Germany was incorporated into West Germany), which was last month. Despite the fact that the fall of the Berlin Wall was a much bigger celebration than the official unification day, Germany does not recognize November 9th as a national holiday; it is the same day as Kristallnacht. I haven't heard a thing the whole day about the Mauerfall or Kristallnacht.
We discussed this briefly in my German class today, where I proved my dumb Ami-ness by saying that pretty much everything I know about the DDR, I learned from Goodbye Lenin and Sonnenallee. I mean, she asked. It's a little scary how little I know about European history and especially German history. I've taken plenty of 17th-19th century literature classes and even a class on post-Wende (after 1990) literature, but I have never actually discussed the 1930-1990 period in a German class. This means that I look... well... like a dumb American. And it's kind of true.
To be fair, I don't think the other students had very insightful things to share, either, although it was interesting to hear how their perspectives were shaped by their native countries. For example, the students from Hungary, Poland, Romania, and Russia thought of the DDR as a place with a lot more freedom, where socialism was functioning pretty darn well. (Also, most of the other students are older than I am, so they at least had something to say. It's easier to talk about memories of the DDR when you actually remember it existing. I was barely a year old when the wall fell; the other American wasn't even born.)
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