"l'm Still Dealing With This Enemy"

lntensified pressure to develop a new identity, viewed as a behavioral problem among East-German young adults before and after the Wende

Abstract

Case histories of a former military officer and a nurse who campaigned for civil rights in the former GDR suggest that both aggression and a kind of „internal exile“ are two possible reactions to the process of reunification. The author reconstructs their life histories in order to demonstrate the importance of family background and the post-World War II division of Germany on the development of these respective personal adaptation strategies. The author also suggests that the structural denominators common to both cases indicate that both of the individuals studied were under pressure to adopt a certain identity even prior to reunification. This pressure was presumably specific to their generation and was exacerbated by the conditions resulting from the pre-reunification changes in the East. The question is then raised whether the aggressive reaction - which appears more problematic at first glance - might be a more constructive solution than the less conspicuous strategy of „internal exile“.