When the Berlin Wall fell in 1989 and the long-separated citizens of Berlin were finally reunited, the profound social differences between East and West came as a shock to many. Historians and political commentators have tended to focus on the contrasting economic and political situations of Berliners, yet the socio-cultural divergence between the two communities was also evident in another form: their language use.
This was a particular blow to Germany’s difficult reunification process of the early 1990s which had hoped to establish itself easily through a single shared national identity but was persistently undermined by the socially divergent identities of the two Germanies.
The division of both Germany and its capital city after the Second World War resulted in the overnight separation of areas of Berlin which had been exceptionally closely linked economically, socially and linguistically. This created the rare circumstances in which former members of the same communities, living just a few hundred meters apart on either side of the wall, had no means of communication and therefore began to diverge in their linguistic development. These changes were to be seen both in the Standard German ‘Hochdeutsch’ of East and West and in the Berlinish dialect itself.
The most noticeable differences were to be found in the vocabulary. In the GDR, various terms came into use specifically associated with the socialist state, whilst the West was more susceptible to the adoption of Anglicisms through the influence of American culture. Other more subtle differences of terminology served to reinforce markers of East German versus West German identity in everyday speech, such as the term for a retirement home: ‘Altersheim’ in the East, but ‘Seniorenheim’ in the West.
Even more marked differences were to be heard in language use and style of speech, however. As Professor Norbert Dittmar’s studies from the 1990s have shown, the use of particular grammatical forms and nonstandard variants were often a key indicator of a Berliner’s background in the East. In West Berlin, by contrast, Berlinish dialect usage declined far more rapidly but new grammatical developments occurred in spoken German, with West Germans tending to favour verb-second word order after ‘weil’, a conjunction which typically causes verb subordination to the end of the clause in standardised written German.
These contrasts can perhaps be explained to some degree by the differences in perception and attitude towards language in East and West Berlin, which were revealed in the years after reunification. Dialectologist Schlobinski concluded in a study of 1995 that there was in fact one dialect (Berlinisch) but two ‘codes’; that is to say, two completely different value systems on each side of the wall. In the GDR, Berlinisch was seized upon as the ‘Dialect of the Proletariat’, giving it a certain prestige as a language variety which fitted well with the state’s communist ideals. The positive connotations of Berlinisch led to its use in media and politics, and its widespread usage among East Berliners established the dialect as a cornerstone of identity, solidarity and pride in both the state and the city.
Berlinisch did not enjoy such a positive association in the western half of the city, however. In the West, the conservative preference for standard ‘Hochdeutsch’ and the stigmatisation of dialect led to a decline in usage, especially in Middle-Class areas of the city such as Zehlendorf. Although dialect usage and non-standard forms remained well-used in some working-class districts, Berlinisch was confined to the private sphere and never appeared in official life to the same extent as was acceptable in the East.
When these two socio-linguistic realities were forced back together after the fall of the wall, it is hardly surprising that linguistic differences became the source of great tension. The dominance of the western system defined social and political rules in the new Federal Republic, and so they also came to condition linguistic values and norms. West German variants in vocabulary were often adopted for ease of communication, but habits of language usage remained strong among East Berliners. Particular resentment was often expressed towards Americanised vocabulary, such as the term ‘Tram’ instead of ‘Straßenbahn’.
For many citizens of the former GDR, unification caused a crisis of identity, as unemployment rose and the wave of unfamiliar western culture overwhelmed them. All this was exacerbated by linguistic differences, as East Berliners sometimes complained of a ‘Sprachmauer’—a serious language barrier which divided them from Westerners, just as the Berlin Wall had done for so many years.