NO state has ever been more unloved than the German Democratic Republic, and few have been more swiftly forgotten. Visitors to Berlin these days are disappointed to discover that all that remains of the Berlin Wall is a few tooth like slabs of concrete and a thin line of red paint marking the old division between East and West.
Unlike the Nazi dictatorship that preceded it, East German communism has not even retained its power to inspire fear or outrage. "Ostalgia" parties have transformed the drab artefacts of East German life into style accessories, and Erich Honecker is remembered more as a slightly batty old grandfather than an architect of state repression.
Events moved so rapidly following the opening of the Berlin Wall in November 1989 that it is easy to forget that the GDR continued to exist for almost a year afterwards. It was a twilight life, especially after the election on March 18th 1990, when East Germans voted overwhelmingly for parties committed to reunification with the West. Currency union a few months later created a de facta merger between East and West, so that the official Day of Unity on October 3rd was no more than an official seal on a deal already done.
Desmond Fennell made his first visit to East Germany during the week before the March election to observe a state in the process of dissolving itself. He travelled from Berlin through Potsdam and Wittenberg, the birthplace of Martin Luther, to Leipzig and Frankfurt on Oder, at the border with Poland.
Fennell is one of Ireland's most unusual intellectual figures, a cultural conservative with an international perspective and a fierce opponent of communism with little affection for the capitalism system. He lived in Germany during the 1960s and his knowledge of German history and culture adds depth to his account of the last days of the GDR.
As he walks around Berlin, he thinks of Franz Biberkopf, the hero of Alfred Doeblin's Berlin Alevanderplatz. In Leipzig, he heads straight for Auerbachs Keller, which appears in Goethe's Faust and in Frankfurt he seeks out the house of the poet and playwright Heinrich von Kleist.
ON his first day in Berlin, Fennel sees a group of foreign journalists who have been flown in to cover the election. He is wary of them and complains that their "much vaunted hard boiledness" means that the last thing they want is to learn something new. His own approach could not be more different. He talks to everyone he meets, even interrupting conversations at neighbouring tables in restaurants, and turns up at as many political rallies as he can find.
He dislikes almost everything about the St German system, from the breakfast buffet style in hotels to the twisted language of communist political propaganda. He has little patience with westerners who complain that the drive towards unification is debasing East Germans with promises of material comfort, the "dreams of oranges" of the book's title. And he is a little too harsh on east Germany's Social Democrats, dismissing their call for a more humane route to unification as a muddled compromise.
But by the eve of the election, after a visit to the treasures from ancient Greece and Babylon at the Pergamon Museum, he has become wistful about the disappearance of the GDR. My head full of Nebuchadnezzar and the rising and falling of states and empires, I think: this is the last evening of the Marxist Leninist GDR, the last time the sun goes down on it. I wonder what Erich Honecker is thinking."
As the memory of the East German state fades, this book is a fine, sober elegy and a fascinating snapshot of one of history's great turning points.
