The division of Germany has been history for over three decades. Nevertheless, we (and women) still encounter many clichés that are attributed to women from East and West Germany. Western women are often described either as “homebodies at the stove” or as tough career women. The East German woman, on the other hand, “stands her ground” in coal mining. She is described as tough or as a raven mother because she puts her children in a crèche. The western woman genders, while the eastern woman knows nothing about it. Eastern women are sometimes seen as losers, sometimes as winners of German unity. The list of attributions is long. Although some of them are grotesquely contradictory, they all testify to the conviction that we know exactly what makes THE Eastern woman and THE Western woman tick. One thing in particular seems to be clear: they all tick in the same way, but very differently compared to the other part of Germany. Where do these attributions come from? And what is true about them?

The exhibition “Women in Divided Germany” aims to answer these questions. Published by Bundesstiftung zur Aufarbeitung der SED-Diktatur and curated by Clara Marz, the exhibition is a contribution to the 35th anniversary of German reunification. The different realities of life for women in the Federal Republic and the GDR in the 1970s and 1980s are depicted on 20 posters.

The aim of the exhibition is to make the diverse experiences of women visible and to show the similarities and differences between their German-German lives. At the same time, the exhibition raises the question of whether women in both German states shared a common striving for self-determination in a male-dominated system, despite the different political and social conditions.