Back to the East
“We want to go back there, where we were at home.” After 20 years in Central Hesse, the Schneiders are packing up and moving house. The family is returning to their homeland – to Eastern Germany.
Just after the fall of the Berlin Wall, Angelika and Jochen Schneider moved with their children to the West in order to procure better opportunities for the future. For 20 years, they lived in the Federal State of Hesse. “We lived in our perfect little world, earned good money, and were quite content – but we never really used to it.”
After retirement, they were resolved: back to the east! A big city was a priority: they wanted some excitement. They deliberately sought out an apartment in East Berlin, way out in Köpenick. The western part of the city was out of the question. They have neither friends nor relatives in Köpenick either, but all the same: “Here, people understand us, we are just like them.”
In the meantime, there row house in Lich has been sold. They have opted against a farewell party: “We arrived without a big fuss, and we are leaving the same way.”
Many native East Germans share the sentiments of the Schneiders. Home, here we come! Nearly all of these emigrants carry their homeland close to their hearts. Many return to the east – provided they have decent prospects there. In this documentary, we accompany two individuals as they return to the east. This topic has never been more current: twenty years after German Reunification, a vast wave of “Ostalgie” (east nostalgia) is making itself felt in Germany.
