Östtyskarna i Långedrag

Sammanfattning: The essay investigates the reality of the people who exectued socialist GDR’s (German Democratic Republic, or East Germany) foreign policy strategy of public diplomacy toward Western states, in the specific case of the GDR trade mission in Gothenburg, Sweden 1980-1989. As a non-aligned country, the GDR considered Sweden an important ‘buffer state’ between the Eastern and Western blocs. Public diplomacy efforts were meant to instrumentalise all unofficial contacts within trade, culture, etc. with non-socialist countries such as Sweden in order to normalise relations. Previous research has exclusively examined GDR’s public diplomacy toward Sweden and other comparable countries from above. The essay provides in-depth insight into everyday lives of ‘public diplomats’ and analyses them as historical agents and subjects rather than political objects through the use of qualitative research methods from Alltagsgeschichte (the historical study of everyday life). It concludes that regardless of profession, the ‘public diplomats’ were expected to represent East Germany at all times, while at the same time they were actively isolated from Swedish society inside a form of ‘mini GDR’. However, the study also shows that the correlation between normative rules and reality was fluctuating: the East Germans in Gothenburg often had some room for social and cultural maneuvering. This examination of the peculiarities of coming from one of Europe’s most isolated totalitarian societies and living a life exposed to capitalist society can provide a much needed perspective “from below” to Cold War social, cultural and diplomatic history.