Berlin Wall divide that once shaped German women’s lives still echoes today

Like many other young women living in communist East Germany, Solveig Leo thought nothing about juggling work and motherhood. The mother of two was able to preside over a large state-owned farm in the northeastern village of Banzkow because childcare was widely available.

Contrast that with Claudia Huth, a mother of five, who grew up in capitalist West Germany. Huth quit her job as a bank clerk when she was pregnant with her first child and led a life as a traditional housewife in the village of Egelsbach in Hesse, raising the kids and tending to her husband, who worked as a chemist.

Both Leo and Huth fulfilled roles that in many ways were typical for women in the vastly different political systems that governed Germany during its decades of division following the country’s defeat in World War II in 1945.

As Germany celebrates the 35th anniversary of the fall of the Berlin Wall on November 9, 1989 – and the country’s reunification less than a year later on October 3, 1990 – many in Germany are reflecting on how women’s lives that have diverged so starkly under communism and capitalism have become much more similar again – though some differences remain even today.

“In West Germany, women – not all, but many – had to fight for their right to have a career,” said Clara Marz, the curator of an exhibition about women in divided Germany for the Federal Foundation for the Study of the Communist Dictatorship in Germany.

Women in East Germany, meanwhile, often had jobs – though that was something that “they had been ordered from above to do”, she added.

Built in 1961, the Wall stood for 28 years at the front line of the Cold War between the Americans and the Soviets. It was built by the communist regime to cut off East Germany from the supposed ideological contamination of the West and to stem the tide of people fleeing East Germany.