Wow, what a fantastic thing to see that photo of a cosmonaut wearing the the old DDR patch. For me it's a curiously sentimental mix of the idealism of modern day progress and forgotten historic nostalgia. The first of which I still believe in, and the second of which seems more of a ruefully likely prospect to have to consider as I age.
I wonder if studying to become an astronaut around the world (like for NASA or JAXA, etc.) there is required reading on Jahn or if they just become fans of a cult hero like him?
Probably because when his country was annexed to the federal republic 28 years ago, the new governors decided that everything that took place in the 40 years before was worthless and had to be forgotten. Well, everything except the bad things like the state security, which we have to remember every day. That's why we have the Stasi museum and things like that.
I remember a lot of east germans who rather
wanted to be „annexed“ than living further in the dull DDR. But if you want, we can build the wall again. I heard the american president is also a huge fan of walls nowadays.
Well, that doesn't change anything about how the reunification was done and how the East Germany history was summarized into the wall and the state police, leaving everything else out of the picture, as this article points out.
<mandatory disgruntled western counter-comment about how the east germans took all the west's money and built way too nice streets and downtowns from it>
Tbh, taking the example of a country that didn't disappear, very few people in France would know who the first Frenchman in space was. Then he was not relentlessly hyped by a state propaganda apparatus.
In the grand scheme of things, all but Gagarin and Armstrong are also ran...
(There are at least two current MEPs who have been in space, but I will grant you that few people in most EU member-states can name their own MEP, let alone any of the others elected from their country).
Certainly there are many U.S. and Canadian astronauts who have never been anything close to well known public figures, but both sets certainly have enjoyed state propaganda (even on the official state broadcaster): https://www.cbc.ca/news/technology/canada-s-astronauts-1.875... (for example)
Perhaps "grand scheme" implies international name recognition?
How soon Chris Hadfield's international prominence fades away is an open question; he certainly appears in the UK often enough (he was a "get" -- as in an invited guest the production staff felt fortunate to have present -- on more than one of the the annual BBC astronomy shows put together by Brian Cox and Dara Ó Briaian) and he has been on a number of other broadcasts as part of an "outreach" programme. You yourself may well remember him from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KaOC9danxNo
has quite celebrity status. Also "nearly everybody" in East Germany knows the Siegmund Jähn from the article and because of the movie "Good Bye, Lenin!", he also became quite well-known in West Germany (see my post https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18268728). I openly admit that I had to look up the first West German and second German in space (Ulf Merbold; he is also mentioned in the Zeit article). In my defense, this was before my time. On the other hand, I can immediately additionally name Gerhard Thiele (SRTM - Shuttle Radar Topography Mission)
made Sigmund Jähn pretty well-known in West Germany, too. In the story of the movie, the protagonist convinces a taxi driver (who is or resembles the cosmonaut Sigmund Jähn, the first German in space and Alex's childhood hero) to act in a false news report as the new leader of East Germany and to give a speech about opening the borders to the West.
If you can read German, read the following article at Heise about the 40 year celebration of Sigmund Jähn's space flight:
On 1999, the German band "Die Prinzen" (which was quite popular in the 90s and 00s) created a song "Wer ist Sigmund Jähn?" to celebrate this "unknown cosmonaut":
One of main characters of "Goodbye, Lenin" is an East-German woman who earnestly worked building up the Socialist society and earned high-ranking position, but then she fell into a coma to wake months up after the wall came down. Most of what was built during the soviet times has been or was being thrown out - cars, furniture, food, TV programming, clothing, display advertising. So basically all that she worked for, and was proud of, was thrown to the trash.
This undermined her life-long accomplishments, sense of importance, sense of self. Except that it didn't, because her son hid everything from her, as she lay in bed recovering, he draped he windows, brought in old furniture and food, created(!) fake TV program for her, and even brought in kids to pose as Socialist-era uniformed boy-scouts. Eventually unable to keep up the charade he made a video in which Western Germany begged, and was allowed to join Eastern Germany. He took the video of Easterners jumping over the wall to the West and reversed it - it was the Westerners now jumping over to the East. She came to accept the new unified-Germany reality, under these terms, and recovered from her illness.
Russian citizens suffered two big problems since the wall fell. First, in the 90s the economy was devastated by the governmental mismanagement, pervasive corruption, and general feebleness of the state. Second, in the oughts the economy improved (thanks to oil prices), but the populace started feeling that Russian contribution to and influence on the world is unappreciated, and maybe even mocked by the west. The the cold war's end, which started out like a truce between equals, was now looking more like a defeat (the theme fo treachery came up as it always does), the turning point there was ascension of the Baltic states to NATO. The industrial achievement of the older generations looked increasingly less important, and there were very few new industrial achievements (see "Dutch disease"). The recent military campaigns did not deliver, and when the subject comes up it goes all the way back to WW2. The soft foreign influence waned with the collapse of the Eastern block and flailing economy. The science was pretty much defunded in the 90s and it took a big hit.
Having once been a part of a great project, and no longer struggling to eat every day, people now wanted to get back the sense of importance and glory. And so a virtual parade of past achievements was deployed to sooth the pain, both in the movie and in the real life. A huge part of the modern-day Russian media coverage is dedicated to the achievements of the old days: WW2, the noble Tsarist regime, the heroic Bolshevik regime, the classic literature, the scientists of earlier centuries, the soviet-era cosmonauts, etc. It's quite a mix really, and can be baffling at first but there is a thread tying them up - pride and dignity. And it's not just the government either - you will find a ton of nostalgic material on social media, even predating the 2012 change in policy. I think the government is responding to the nostalgia trend they mined from the social networks, and extending it, which I think is rather innovative.
So anyway, I thought of this all when I was re-watching the movie recently, and the puzzle pieces came together for me. Maybe they will for you, maybe not.
> The the cold war's end, which started out like a truce between equals...
Maybe it was taught that way in Russian schools, but I don't know anyone in any part of the West who considers the end of the Cold War to have been a "truce between equals." The Soviet Union collapsed. The Russian Federation is the internationally recognized successor state to a failed empire. It was so in the 90s as much as it is so today.
I always wondered why the west didn't push a west german citizen to go to space with one of the later missions, given how much Jähn's flight was considered a success of socialism by eastern propaganda.
If you consider "East German" as "born in the GDR", also Ulf Merbold, the second German in space, who is seen as the first West German in space, is actually East German. :-)
I was recently in Mongolia, and one of the more memorable sights (in a country packed to the brim with them) awaited me next to the station building in the godforsaken town of Choir, a heat-blasted former Soviet military base in the middle of the Gobi Desert. The scenery all around was rocky desert, battered commieblock apartments and barbed wire... and a solitary silver Socialist Realist statue of Jügderdemidiin Gürragchaa, the first & only Mongolian in space, proudly springing off into the skies.
Mongolia, too, seems very much like a country trying to forget its long Socialist era, and there were no statues of the guy to be seen in the bright lights of Ulaanbaatar.
When Anousheh Ansari went to space as a paid "tourist", first Iranian in space, it was on like page 10 of Iranian newspapers in Tehran, because she is both an American citizen and quite firmly a political opponent of the current Iranian government system.
27 comments
[ 3.0 ms ] story [ 59.3 ms ] threadThank you for sharing the article.
In the grand scheme of things, all but Gagarin and Armstrong are also ran...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marc_Garneau and https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Julie_Payette
respectively the first Canadian and just one of the twelve Canadians to have been in space.
How about Spain? Recently: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pedro_Duque
(There are at least two current MEPs who have been in space, but I will grant you that few people in most EU member-states can name their own MEP, let alone any of the others elected from their country).
One might also compare John Glenn, who while alive, was certainly well known in the USA: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Glenn
Certainly there are many U.S. and Canadian astronauts who have never been anything close to well known public figures, but both sets certainly have enjoyed state propaganda (even on the official state broadcaster): https://www.cbc.ca/news/technology/canada-s-astronauts-1.875... (for example)
Perhaps "grand scheme" implies international name recognition?
How soon Chris Hadfield's international prominence fades away is an open question; he certainly appears in the UK often enough (he was a "get" -- as in an invited guest the production staff felt fortunate to have present -- on more than one of the the annual BBC astronomy shows put together by Brian Cox and Dara Ó Briaian) and he has been on a number of other broadcasts as part of an "outreach" programme. You yourself may well remember him from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KaOC9danxNo
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Helen_Sharman
At least in Germany, Alexander Gerst
> https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Alexander_Gerst&o...
who is currently on the ISS
> https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=List_of_Internati...
has quite celebrity status. Also "nearly everybody" in East Germany knows the Siegmund Jähn from the article and because of the movie "Good Bye, Lenin!", he also became quite well-known in West Germany (see my post https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18268728). I openly admit that I had to look up the first West German and second German in space (Ulf Merbold; he is also mentioned in the Zeit article). In my defense, this was before my time. On the other hand, I can immediately additionally name Gerhard Thiele (SRTM - Shuttle Radar Topography Mission)
> https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Gerhard_Thiele&ol...
and Thomas Reiter (ISS)
> https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Thomas_Reiter&old...
So from my "sister posts" seems to me that in Germany, astronauts have more appreciation from fellow-countrymen than in many other countries.
> https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Good_Bye,_Lenin!
made Sigmund Jähn pretty well-known in West Germany, too. In the story of the movie, the protagonist convinces a taxi driver (who is or resembles the cosmonaut Sigmund Jähn, the first German in space and Alex's childhood hero) to act in a false news report as the new leader of East Germany and to give a speech about opening the borders to the West.
If you can read German, read the following article at Heise about the 40 year celebration of Sigmund Jähn's space flight:
> https://www.heise.de/newsticker/meldung/Ich-hatte-einfach-Gl...
On 1999, the German band "Die Prinzen" (which was quite popular in the 90s and 00s) created a song "Wer ist Sigmund Jähn?" to celebrate this "unknown cosmonaut":
> https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gY6uRERGWBw
Could you elaborate on this point somewhat more?
Spoiler alert.
One of main characters of "Goodbye, Lenin" is an East-German woman who earnestly worked building up the Socialist society and earned high-ranking position, but then she fell into a coma to wake months up after the wall came down. Most of what was built during the soviet times has been or was being thrown out - cars, furniture, food, TV programming, clothing, display advertising. So basically all that she worked for, and was proud of, was thrown to the trash.
This undermined her life-long accomplishments, sense of importance, sense of self. Except that it didn't, because her son hid everything from her, as she lay in bed recovering, he draped he windows, brought in old furniture and food, created(!) fake TV program for her, and even brought in kids to pose as Socialist-era uniformed boy-scouts. Eventually unable to keep up the charade he made a video in which Western Germany begged, and was allowed to join Eastern Germany. He took the video of Easterners jumping over the wall to the West and reversed it - it was the Westerners now jumping over to the East. She came to accept the new unified-Germany reality, under these terms, and recovered from her illness.
Russian citizens suffered two big problems since the wall fell. First, in the 90s the economy was devastated by the governmental mismanagement, pervasive corruption, and general feebleness of the state. Second, in the oughts the economy improved (thanks to oil prices), but the populace started feeling that Russian contribution to and influence on the world is unappreciated, and maybe even mocked by the west. The the cold war's end, which started out like a truce between equals, was now looking more like a defeat (the theme fo treachery came up as it always does), the turning point there was ascension of the Baltic states to NATO. The industrial achievement of the older generations looked increasingly less important, and there were very few new industrial achievements (see "Dutch disease"). The recent military campaigns did not deliver, and when the subject comes up it goes all the way back to WW2. The soft foreign influence waned with the collapse of the Eastern block and flailing economy. The science was pretty much defunded in the 90s and it took a big hit.
Having once been a part of a great project, and no longer struggling to eat every day, people now wanted to get back the sense of importance and glory. And so a virtual parade of past achievements was deployed to sooth the pain, both in the movie and in the real life. A huge part of the modern-day Russian media coverage is dedicated to the achievements of the old days: WW2, the noble Tsarist regime, the heroic Bolshevik regime, the classic literature, the scientists of earlier centuries, the soviet-era cosmonauts, etc. It's quite a mix really, and can be baffling at first but there is a thread tying them up - pride and dignity. And it's not just the government either - you will find a ton of nostalgic material on social media, even predating the 2012 change in policy. I think the government is responding to the nostalgia trend they mined from the social networks, and extending it, which I think is rather innovative.
So anyway, I thought of this all when I was re-watching the movie recently, and the puzzle pieces came together for me. Maybe they will for you, maybe not.
Maybe it was taught that way in Russian schools, but I don't know anyone in any part of the West who considers the end of the Cold War to have been a "truce between equals." The Soviet Union collapsed. The Russian Federation is the internationally recognized successor state to a failed empire. It was so in the 90s as much as it is so today.
Quite a propaganda qoup, I'd say.
This issue is somewhat subtle. Let us look at the list of German astronauts:
> https://de.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Liste_deutscher_R...
If you consider "East German" as "born in the GDR", also Ulf Merbold, the second German in space, who is seen as the first West German in space, is actually East German. :-)
https://driftingclouds.net/2018/07/07/from-siberia-to-tibet-... (photo towards the end)
Mongolia, too, seems very much like a country trying to forget its long Socialist era, and there were no statues of the guy to be seen in the bright lights of Ulaanbaatar.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Abdul_Ahad_Mohmand
When Anousheh Ansari went to space as a paid "tourist", first Iranian in space, it was on like page 10 of Iranian newspapers in Tehran, because she is both an American citizen and quite firmly a political opponent of the current Iranian government system.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anousheh_Ansari