“West Germans Don’t Even Know about it”: An Analysis of Narrations by East German COMECON Pipeline Workers after the Fall of the Wall

Abstract

The paper is concerned with communicative practices of former GDR contract workers who were involved in the construction of a trans-national pipeline in the former Soviet Union, in the 1970s and 1980s. This paper draws on the ethnography of communication to investigate the narratives of former GDR pipeline workers about perceived divisions between ‘East and West’. This idea of ‘East and West’ is elaborated in the text. In particular, the study will look at the workers’ heartfelt sense that their accomplishments have been neglected since Germany’s reunification. For this purpose, the article will focus on the contexts and linguistic devices by which former pipeline workers construct a narrative on divisions between ‘East and West’. It is assumed that the communicative practices are not a merely nostalgic or even revisionist appeal to the GDR; rather, former pipeline workers represent a critique of the transitional process informed by their unique biographical experience.