Suddenly, a apartment in the panel was more prestigious, but the ghetto: How were the residents to go inside it?

For many Westerners synonymous with ghetto: DDR-plate photo: Reuters

He was involved "with the subject of Eastern Germany," says Steffen Mau at the start of the event. And one way or another, this applies to all of the the afternoon of the 9. November here in the far Hohenschönhausen have gathered to speak with Mau about "life in the East German transformation of society".

As the subtitle of the book, the Mau, a Professor of macro sociology at the Humboldt-University is, in this summer, in which he traces the changes in the neighborhood in which he grew up: Lütten Klein in Rostock, North-West, large-scale residential development in plate design.

large-scale residential development in plate design to apply to Neu-Hohenschönhausen. The Lichtenberger Network light looks organized event in the project room 360 degrees, something hidden behind a large shopping center, is not therefore only a reading from the mouse book, but also a conversation about life in these settlements, during, and after 89. As someone like many of the asks, Neu-Hohenschönhausen because sitting in the audience, go to a number of arms in the air.

the Neu-Hohenschönhausen can tell how it is to live here, so find they work well, says a woman. "It's so project people from somewhere that tell me how to live come, otherwise, always."

Mau has a sense of Humor, the audience also, and so will a lot of laughter this afternoon, it sometimes is also a kind of gallows humor. Because if here about the fall of the wall is spoken, far away from the Party at the Brandenburg gate, then it is also Painful: While the housing-large housing estates in the GDR, comparatively good living were areas where people lived, which were formed in the cut a little better than the Rest of the population, they were seen in the West, where large housing estates were built has been, as soon as a problem area.

"This was for many residents a shock, which triggered a crisis of identity," says Mau: "it forms suddenly at the very bottom in the perceived hierarchy of living; that the home is perceived as an aesthetic imposition." As Betnano will nodded in the audience, but in a victim-narrative does not stall the event, especially since there is also space for intra-German differentiation. A man from Schwerin told us he had placed the times of the GDR to be a building-residents and with the housing areas, little can start. Only in the last few years, he bonus veren siteler understand what could be in this type of architecture worth preserving.

It is a debate about loss, Identity crisis and alienation

And the prompt, from one's own 9. To tell November 89, to come especially the younger people in the audience were children at the time. An elderly woman says she does not want to even look back so much, but better "to the front not to discuss", a Professor of macro-sociology have in Hohenschönhausen.

another woman told how as a child you've always want to live in the plattenbau areas: "If we are at night passing, there were so many lights, that looked after life." But then later, in the 90s, and especially after Rostock-Lichtenhagen, have you cut off the ". For me, the Nazis in the ghettos, with which I wanted nothing to do were it, then.“

to be Mau the Pogrom speaks of the light of Hagen, and draws a connection to the consequences of the fall of the Berlin wall triggered a crisis of identity: a "tipping society, the fear of the ghetto". Apologetically that doesn't sound like him. In five of the 78 electoral districts, the AfD won at the last house of representatives election in 2016, with a direct mandate, Neu-Hohenschönhausen was one of them. Also resonates with this discussion of identity crises, alienation, and loss, also here, without these factors to apology.

The event with Mau is promoted to be the first in a new project of rays of light, by the land centre for political education. In the case of plate Hausen make for a good project Manager Thomas bar, the moderated discussion will come with the high beautiful hausenern on political topics into the conversation. In spite of the skepticism of "project people": A start is made this afternoon. So much is clear after the event.