Out of Germany: Kindergartens crawl out from the shadows

BERLIN - When I moved to what was then East Berlin, exactly three years ago, the city was still in a frenzy of excitement over the opening of the Wall and the word on everybody's lips was 'reunification'.

What, I used to ask East Berliners, do you want to bring into the new united Germany? What is worth saving from the old Communist German Democratic Republic (GDR)?

At this point there would always be an embarrassing pause in the conversation, much scratching of heads, a few 'ums' and 'ahs' and then, finally, out it would come: 'Well, our kindergartens are not bad.'

Kindergartens? It always struck me as bizarre that this was what was singled out as the finest achievement of the first workers' and peasants' state on German soil. But, what the hell. It was a free country by then, wasn't it? Not long afterwards, serious questions began to be raised about the extensive kindergarten and creche system about which so many East Germans appeared to feel such pride.

Sure, unlike in richer Western countries, there were places for all. East German mothers faced few dilemmas about combining a career with children. For just a few pfennigs a day they could deposit their little ones (sometimes just a few weeks old) in state institutions all day, freeing them to return to work - as, indeed, they were encouraged to do.

The system was clearly popular. In 1989, the last full year of the GDR, an astonishing 700,000 East Germans between the ages of three and six (95 per cent of the total) were looked after in kindergartens, while a further 355,000 one- and two-year-olds had places in creches.

On the surface, the country boasted one of the best child- and baby-care provisions in the world. But there was a heavy price to pay. In addition to feeding, changing and playing games with their charges, East German kindergarten carers were also responsible for some heavy-handed indoctrination. In creches, pictures of Erich Honecker on the walls were intended to induce early recognition of the country's leader - 'Uncle Erich' - as the source of all well-being.

In the kindergartens, children were taught to repeat expressions such as 'the struggle of the working class' and 'international solidarity', and to be familiar with handy terms such as 'resistance fighters', 'exploitation' and 'oppression'. Their carers, who were obliged to follow instructions inscribed in a book handed down from Margot Honecker, then the education minister, were told to ensure that the 'love of the Socialist Fatherland' was deepened every day - as was the understanding of the need to defend it.

On top of socialist songs, such as 'Bau auf] Bau auf] (Build up] Build up]), there was also an obsession with cleanliness and orderliness. One-year-olds would be lined up in rows to be sat on their potties, and heaven help those who threw their food on the floor, gurgled at the wrong moment or failed to show the necessary respect for visitors.

Like everything else in the former GDR, its authoritarian kindergarten and creche system was soon reviled. And, although the overt political indoctrination has long since gone, it still is.

'You're doing what?' asked a (west Berlin) friend when my wife told her we were sending our 16- month-old daughter to an east Berlin creche. 'You can't be serious. They were all run by former Communists.' Another west Berliner was equally horrified. 'You can't send Charlotte (our daughter) there - she'll turn into an 'Ossi' (the derogatory term for east Berliner).'

The decision to opt for an east Berlin creche was based on the fact that in the western district of Kreuzberg, where we now live, there is a waiting-list of three to four years for a place, while in the eastern district of Mitte, just a few minutes' drive away, we could get in immediately.

Not being Berliners ourselves, we do not have all these hang-ups about 'Wessis' and 'Ossis' or, for that matter, about the perhaps somewhat tarnished backgrounds of some of the east Berlin kindergarten child-minders.

That said, on Monday, Charlotte's first day at the creche, we both had a careful look around - checking out some of those rather stern-looking carers and the pictures on the walls. Not an Erich Honecker in sight. But she had better not come home one day singing 'Bau auf] Bau auf]'