Appendix A: Methodological Notes

APPENDIX A: METHODOLOGICAL NOTES Given the naturalistic—as opposed to controlled experimental—character of ethnographic research, it is necessary to rely on in situ, not a priori, judgments about data collection methods and techniques. Ethnography has a range of data collection techniques and methods available, which include secondary data analysis, general fieldwork observations, and observations and description of specific activities; participant observation; types of interviewing, ranging from formal structured to open-ended conversational; analyses of personal and public documents; self-reflection by the ethnographer, which can be considered data necessary for analysis and refining lines of inquiry; and life histories of the subjects under study. Any of these may be suitable or inappropriate given the contingencies and constraints of the social context under study. The primary data collection methods used in this study are fieldwork observations, participant observation, and open-ended and semi-structured interviews. There is an extensive literature about these central considerations for doing ethnography (Pelto and Pelto 1970; Atkinson 1990; DeVita and Armstrong 1991; Fine 1993; Stocking 1992). Following is a description and discussion of salient issues I faced while conducting this study. They are: (1) establishing trust, rapport, and access; (2) identifying key informants; (3) the separation of emic description and etic analysis; (4) styles of interviewing; (5) the decision to forego the use of a © The Author(s) 2017 251 D. Bednarz, East German Intellectuals and the Unification of Germany, DOI 10.1007/978-3-319-42951-9 252 APPENDIX A: METHODOLOGICAL NOTES tape recorder; (6) sampling design; (7) anonymity; and (8) the strengths and weaknesses of the ethnographer as a stranger to the culture. ESTABLISHING TRUST AND RAPPORT When I arrived at Lilly’s class in late August 1990, it was as a last-minute fill- in guest speaker. Several months earlier she had invited her West Berlin colleague, David, with whom I was staying for a week until my apartment for the year was available at the beginning of September, to her class as a guest speaker. Due to a hectic schedule with an impending deadline, David had put off going to Lilly’s class and now the final meeting was pressed for time. The evening after I arrived in Berlin, David received a telephone call from one of Lilly’s students, Herr Grentz. He was calling to remind David of his promise to speak to Lilly’s class. David apologized to Herr Grentz and told him that he was behind schedule with a project and therefore would be unable to attend the class. Then David looked at me as his eyes lit up. “Herr Grentz,” he spoke into the telephone, “I have a solution. An American friend has just arrived in Berlin for the year and I know he would be delighted to fill-in for me. He’s a sociologist.” David then put me on the phone with Herr Grentz, saying, “It’s for you, Dan. I’ve volunteered you to fill-in for me at this English language class in East Berlin.” Entering the lives of East German intellectuals in this manner was serendipitous—a point discussed in the introduction to this book—and advantageous to gaining trust and establishing rapport. I learned later from Lilly that my unplanned appearance in her class was one of the reasons she did not think I had been sent by the United States or West Germans to gauge how GDR intellectuals were reacting to the impending unification, which was only six weeks away. In other words, she reasoned that since I was a last-minute stand-in for David, it was unlikely or impossible that I was sent to monitor the reactions of GDR intellectuals to the impending massive loss of jobs and careers East German intellectuals were beginning to experience. Lilly also informed me later that a few members of her classes had asked her how it was she came to know me and her opinion as to whether I was sent to spy on them. She had reassured them that I was a curious sociologist. Another coincidental factor that served to build trust and rapport was my last name. At Lilly’s class that day in late August, one of the students asked me if I was related to Klaus Bednarz, a well-known West German APPENDIX A: METHODOLOGICAL NOTES 253 correspondent and journalist. I told them I was not and then asked who he was. They explained that they held him in high regard. “He understands us East Germans ...He does not look down on us, like most West Germans,” they told me. One of the class members said that I bore a resemblance to Klaus Bednarz and even spoke in a similar manner. From this beginning in Lilly’s class, I was able to continuously widen the circle of people I was talking with and to receive many referrals to other GDR intellectuals. This is the “snowball” sampling technique. As the project developed, I set out to meet intellectuals in a range of fields, such as the natural sciences, theater, and media. IDENTIFYING KEY INFORMANTS Key informants are those who possess and are willing to share with the ethnographer detailed and insightful knowledge, either specific or general, about their culture. They provide guidance, leads, insight, and interpreta- tions, especially in the early stages of research when the ethnographer is very much an “outsider” in need of contextual and, at times, esoteric historical knowledge, clues, and direction. The key informants I developed relationships with were, first, Gunther Kohl (he asked that his real name be used). He was a recently retired chemical anthropologist at the Academy of Sciences. He was sixty-one when we met in one of Lilly’s fall 1990 English classes. His entire adult life spanned the rise and demise of the GDR. We met numerous times during my year in Germany. Renate Tanscher, a psychologist at the Academy of Sciences, was thirty- nine when we met in Lilly’s class in August 1990. Although she began our relationship by telling me she would offer me “honest and truthful infor- mation” about the workings of the Party, the organization of science in the GDR, and the culture of the GDR, she did not trust me until her mother— she invited me to dinner with her and her mother—told her I was trust- worthy. Her mother had been a social worker, and Renate called her an excellent judge of character and integrity—“a ‘sharp cookie,’ as you Amer- icans say.” We met regularly throughout my time in Germany. Marie Schultz, a librarian at the Academy building where Lilly’s classes were held, was in her early fifties when we met in the fall of 1990. She— loosely—fit the description of the “marginal man” concept developed by sociologists Robert E. Park (1950) and Everett Stonequist (1937).1 Unlike most East Germans, Marie had lived in West Berlin until she was a teenager, 254 APPENDIX A: METHODOLOGICAL NOTES when she and her mother decided to move to East Berlin to “help build a socialist world.” Although she was a committed communist, she found the Party’s rule of the GDR oppressive and a perversion of Marxism. She was proud to have her West Berlin experiences to use as a comparative frame- work. We spoke regularly on the telephone and met occasionally at the Academy building in the Otto Nushke Straße. Lilly turned fifty in the fall of 1990, just as the GDR was swallowed by the FRG. She introduced me to many people, in and out of her classes, and always answered my many questions in detail. She was apolitical yet knowl- edgeable about the Academy and GDR intellectuals’ folkways. During the fall of 1990, while she ran her final two classes at the Academy, we would meet after class frequently and also one morning a week before class for long discussions. Thereafter, our contacts were about once a month after she had taken a job as a book representative with a West German publishing house. Lothar, the “Marxist weatherman,” was a twenty-eight-year-old PhD student at Humboldt when we met in January of 1991. We met regularly until his departure for a job in another country in April of that year. Christa Fuchs was in one of the English classes at the Academy, and from November 1990 to the summer of 1991, she answered many of my questions and took me on tours of what she called “hidden and disappearing East Berlin.” Professor Lothar Sprung (his real name) was a fifty-four-year-old psychologist at Humboldt University when an American professor spending a year in Berlin introduced us. We met regularly for long discussions from the spring of 1991 until my departure in August 1991. EMIC DESCRIPTION AND ETIC ANALYSIS Anthropologist Marvin Harris (1964) adapted “emic” and “etic” from linguist Kenneth Pike (1967), who coined these terms. Harris and Pike went on to have a debate about the precise definitions and proper usage of these concepts. Harris suggests an emic approach is focused upon description from the point of view of members of the culture under study. His understanding of this concept parallels the goal of ethnography as stated by Malinowski almost a century ago, “to grasp the native’s point of view ...to realize his vision of the world” (1922: 25). An etic approach involves the assessment of the culture in terms of theoretical perspectives from outside the culture. APPENDIX A: METHODOLOGICAL NOTES 255 Overall, the use of emic and etic here follows the distinctions made by Pelto and Pelto (1970), where emic refers to describing the members’ social construction of reality from “the native’s” perspective.

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