Bananas and the Berlin Wall - Vikram Doctor

If you were in India 20 years ago you probably saw the fall of the Berlin Wall like I did — with Prannoy Roy on The World This Week. And like me you may have also been struck by one thing — all those bananas.

I remember the programme ending with shots of ecstatic East Germans kids holding perhaps the first bananas they had seen in their lives. I can’t have been the only one in India wondering rather bemusedly how our humble kelascould cause such happiness.

There was more to the fall of the Wall than bananas, of course, the fruit — and food in general — played a fairly large role. For those stuck behind the Wall few reminders of the harshness of their lives were as constant as the continual queuing for food, and the miserable monotony of what was there.

Meanwhile, they couldn’t help but learn from radio and TV broadcasts from across the wall, or the rare presents that came their way from West German friends, how far their neighbours were progressing.

Especially with bananas. As an article by John Rodden in Commonweal points out, the fruit became a fetish for West Germans in their Wirtschaftwunder (economic miracle) years of the ‘50s and ‘60s. The tropical fruit became a symbol of the new, working Germany , with mothers feeding their kids banana rich meals, and the country even winning a major concession on bananas with the nascent European Union. Other EU countries like France and Spain have territories like Guadeloupe, Martinique and the Canary Islands which grew bananas, so could import them as a legitimate ‘EU’ fruit.

These countries have always wanted heavy tariffs slapped on non-EU bananas, but Germany, with no convenient colonies, has always indignantly objected. The signing of the Treaty of Rome, which formed the original European Community, was delayed over a banana brawl, with West Germany signing only after winning a concession on this. When Konrad Adenauer, the first West German Chancellor returned home, he brandished a banana in the Bundestag as a sign of his success. Bananas for West Germany were not just a desired food, but a sign of their commitment to making Europe work on their terms.

So it’s not surprising then that when the Wall fell, bananas were a sign of victory. Rodden says that a popular bumper sticker of the time had two bananas forming a D for a united Deutschland. On a more practical note, I guess that bananas were among the few things that impoverished East Germans could afford on the other side. They did get a 100 marks welcome present, but as they soon discovered, consumer freedom went with higher consumer prices, and there wasn’t much they could afford.

Fruit at least was one thing they could buy, and that’s probably why so many bananas were bought in those first days. East Germans were soon eating double the amount of bananas than West Germans – whose consumption was already the highest in the EU. But bananas would also feature as the realities of reunification sunk in. West Germans patronisingly called East Germans ‘Bananen’ , while Easterners accused the Westerners of practicing patronising banana politics – one former Communist leader accused West German parties of handing out free bananas to lure voters in the 1990 elections.

In time many Easterners soured on reunification, leading to what’s called Ostalgie – nostalgia for the old East (Ost) Germany. This is wonderfully shown in the film Goodbye Lenin, where the young hero struggles to find the old East German products – Spreewald pickles, Globus peas, MokkaFix coffee – for which his sick, East Germany obsessed mother yearns. The EU was another sticking point, as the banana battles continued, with the banana producing countries insisting on trying to impose tariffs on non-EU bananas – something that would hit the banana obsessed East Germans the most.

If bananas were particular to Germany, food in general had a vital role in the end of the Cold War. For Westerners the superstocked supermarket was the most tangible symbol of their success over the Soviets. A common trope of those times was of Russians breaking down at their first sight of Western retailing.

In Moscow on the Hudson Robin Williams’ Russian character defects in Bloomingdale’s . One of the key confrontations was Nixon and Khrushchev’s ‘kitchen debate’ in 1959 where they debated the success of their countries models in a mock-up of an American kitchen at an exhibition in Moscow. Original plans were for it to have been a full scale replica of a supermarket.

This is something Indians can relate to. Middle-class Indians may not have suffered the worst shortages of the Soviet Union, but in the ‘70s and ‘80s we certainly felt the lack – and the lure – of the Western consumer paradise.

A friend recalls how his family would gather around when an uncle from abroad came home and opened his bags; as much as the actual presents, he says, “it was just the smell of the West that seemed so special.” When my father came back from one trip abroad, I remember being entranced by some cheese in a tube – what an unimaginably cool product!


The other day I found cheese in a tube in one of the new ‘gourmet’ stores here. I cringed at having ever found this processed food product cool.

That these shops are trying to pass off supermarket products as ‘gourmet’ is perhaps a sign we still haven’t got over our Western hang-ups . These days I tend to avoid supermarkets, too aware of the costs, environmental, social, cultural, of their standardising power.

If our local bananas are harder to find now, its because of the way supermarkets insist on promoting just the standard Cavendish that are grown across the world –a fruit designed for the retail trade, but not consumers. The risks of this banana monoculture are now being seen, as diseases wipe out Cavendish, yet the loss of banana diversity has made developing new varieties hard.

And yet supermarkets (and the cheap bananas of mass production ) helped end the Cold War. For ardent communists this is confirmation of their evil, but for those who aren’t , like me, it’s a reminder that life is complicated. The promise of abundance that supermarkets represent was a hugely potent force, and if it was used to a constructive purpose then, perhaps it could be again.

Much as I like the kirana shops, the local hawkers, the municipal fish market I now shop from, I realise that not everyone has the time or interest to do as I do. If only the power of supermarkets could be used to promote the local foods and diversity I get from the other shops, it could lead to many more people buying them. That would be another revolution worth having.

http://blogs.economictimes.indiatimes.com/onmyplate/entry/bananas-and-the-berlin-wall