I worked as a stage designer for the theatre at the time and many of our actors were euphoric about the fall of the wall for which they had great hopes. But I knew that the East of Germany was not very well incorporated, so I had no hope that anything was really going to change. I therefore didn’t want to use the Begrüßungsgeld (welcome money) in a ‘meaningful’ way. And I thought: “Welcome to the society of abudance.” I am now no longer a citizen, but a consumer. And my son, then five years old, should immediately understand what ‘affluence’ means. That we now had an unlimited availability of objects we could previously only yearn for, such as Mars, Snickers and Bounty bars. So I used the money to buy sweets in a supermarket on Hermannplatz – sweets for one hundred mark. Enough to make you sick – chocolate, gummi bears, everything. I arrived back home at our two-bedroom apartment at Ostkreuz with two full plastic bags. Our house was always full of stuff, because as a stage designer in the economy of scarcity we had been living in up to that point, I collected pretty much everything. I emptied the bags on the desk full of rubbish. My son was beaming. But he wasn’t completely over the moon. He hadn’t viewed the past shortage as shortage. And even though I would not want East Germany back, dealing with money (or without money rather) in the East was great. And I earned a lot with illegal trade. More in one day than my parents did in a month. But you couldn’t really use the money. Little or a lot – it didn’t matter. That was so great. Those who had little or nothing were picked up and invited. It was a great form of freedom. And it was clear that this would suddenly change. You can’t imagine it nowadays, how carefree your life is when money doesn’t matter.
