Unheroic reading: "Red Love: The Story of an East German Family" by Maxim Leo

This was one of those unplanned, serendipitous purchases. It took place in the new Hatchards in St. Pancras station, thereby providing some hope that the role of that station in providing me with unexpected good reads is not over following the tragic disappearance of the old Foyles bookshop. Maybe it was prompted in part by an upcoming visit to Berlin (just concluded), but, as regulars will know, I am in any case a sucker for Cold War era history and anything to do with Berlin in general, so it stood a fair chance of jumping off the shelf into my hand anyway. 

It was a good choice, it seems. Only after reading it did I notice all the highbrow accolades and commendations this book had received, including a citation from Julian Barnes on behalf of the European Book Prize jury, which awarded Maxim Leo the Prize in 2011. Said Barnes: 

He describes these 'ordinary lies' and contradictions, and the way human beings have to negotiate their way through them, with great clarity, humour and truthfulness, for which the jury of the European Book Prize is delighted to honour Red Love. His personal memoir serves as an unofficial history of a country that no longer exists... He is a wry and unheroic witness to the distorting impact - sometimes frightening, sometimes merely absurd - that ideology has upon the daily life of the individual: citizens only allowed to dance in couples, journalists unable to mention car tyres or washing machines for reasons of state.

"Red Love" is the maybe slightly questionable English title of the translation of the original Eine ostdeutsche Familiengeschichte (An East German Family Story). The original title (and the English subtitle) however sums it up: this is a family memoire covering three generations of Maxim Leo's family. And a remarkable story it is too.


The heart of the book lies in the story of Maxim Leo's parents, his mother a true believer in the ideals of the German Democratic Republic and in many ways favoured by the regime, his father an unsuitable match, critical and instinctively subversive of the system. For all this, for as long as the GDR exists, their marriage holds up, and young Maxim is brought up in a supportive and loving home, albeit one which embodies many of the contradictions and conflicts inherent in the system. Leo observes his mother's progressive disillusionment, as, working as a journalist, she is called upon to lie repeatedly for the Greater Good. He watches his father constantly skirt the boundaries of the acceptable, opting out into an artistic space, but just staying the right side of falling seriously foul of the Stasi. Leo himself, by his own telling, grows up an acquiescent young citizen of the GDR, though, like most of his generation increasingly distant from politics and detached from the regime, going through the motions rather than holding any convictions. In 1987 however, he is confronted more directly than most with the fact of living as a prisoner in own land by the experience of travelling to the West, thanks to the connections of his maternal grandfather, Gerhard. After his return, just a couple of years later, he is thoroughly wrapped up in the events leading to the fall of the Wall, though his telling of the story is characteristically clear-eyed about the extent of the heroism he actually displays. 

The East German stories in this book are fascinating enough, but they are far from the whole story. Clearly, if Leo is venturing into his grandparents' generation, he is also venturing into a period predating the creation of the East German state. As luck (?) would have it, the Leo family is of a nature to expose it to different sides of modern German history. For one thing, the family is Jewish. As a result, though some family members do perish in the Holocaust, others take other paths. Gerhard, mentioned above, is born in Paris, where his parents have fled in exile, and grows up more French than German. He ultimately participates heroically in the French resistance, albeit always as a German (his mother tongue standard German is useful) and becomes a convinced communist as a result. So, for him, it is his convictions which lead him to take his family back to the GDR, also to work for East Germany as a spy, and his history which makes him a heroic and respected figure in the country. Indeed this is almost certainly what protects Maxim's parents in their ideological faltering and rebellion, and allows Maxim to travel to France with his grandfather in 1987.

His other grandfather, Werner, is an altogether different proposition. Latterly a model GDR citizen, Werner is in fact the model of the acquiescent German, as happy with the Nazi state (which improved his personal lot considerably in the 1930s) as he later professes to be with the regime of the GDR. Werner is not depicted as evil - he was not "a Nazi" - but as a typically unthinking citizen, adapting to circumstances, more or less favourable as they might be.

The author, Maxim Leo

Leo's book had me reading avidly. His family's story, which contains within it so much modern German history, is told wryly, honestly, humanely. There is heroism here, but few unambiguous heroes. It is the story of how ordinary people live through not only extraordinary change, but also with the daily compromises of living in an absurd and oppressive system. I finished the book just before arriving in Berlin, and as a result probably spent more time than I would have done digging into the remnants of the GDR, from the kitsch of contemporary Checkpoint Charlie with its Wall Panorama and Trabi Museum to the well-intentioned, but touristy, DDR Museum and the genuinely moving Tränenpalast.

If you, like me, find this period and these phenomena interesting, then read this book.

PS, an interesting interview with Maxim Leo in Prospect here.