The Dung House and Nostalgia for Oppression

Like many a Western observer, I was long puzzled—even annoyed—by the fact that so many in the former Soviet bloc still harbour a certain nostalgia for the bygone days of totalitarian control. Why have they forgotten the fear of an ominous knock on the door at five o’clock in the morning? Why are young Russians and Czechs, who were not even born when the Berlin Wall was torn down, again singing the International? Why are so many East Germans nostalgic for the shoddy consumer goods and petty controls of their daily lives, that a word had to be coined to describe the phenomenon: Ostalgie (“Eastalgia”)?

Since I came upon an amusing and instructive story—that of the Misthaus (“Dung House”) in northern Bohemia—I have been able to understand these attitudes a lot better. The story revolves around a remote timber house in a high valley in the Jiserka (“Iser” in German) Mountains in Bohemia, close to where the borders of the German Democratic Republic, Poland and Czechoslovakia met. Even more so, the story revolves around a bright, resourceful Sudeten German by the name of Gustav Ginzel, the long-term owner of the Dung House. He and his abode became famous as a furtive meeting place of dissidents from the CSSR (Czechoslovak Socialist Republic), Poland and East Germany—such as Václav Havel, destined to become Czech President, Lothar de Maziere, destined to hand the decrepit GDR to Helmut Kohl, and Karol Wojtyla, destined to become Pope.

Gustav was born in 1932 into an affluent German family in Reichenberg, an affluent former Free Imperial City (now Liberec). The Reichenbergers had long been loyal, liberal-minded subjects of the Austrian-Hungarian King and Emperor, but were, at the time of Gustav’s birth, becoming known as “Sudeten Germans”, the second-biggest minority in multi-national Czechoslovakia. After the Sudeten Germans were “liberated” by Hitler’s Germany in 1938, their elation lasted a few months, till they discovered that the oppression by the bureaucrats from Berlin and the Nazi party was worse than the many previous, discriminatory controls emanating from Prague. In 1945, the Bohemian Germans discovered a much harsher reality. For example, all but 6000 of the 100,000 Reichenberg Germans were forcibly removed. However, Gustav Ginzel’s father, a textile manufacturer, was kept in the CSSR because of his technical expertise. Like the children of all “retained Germans”, Gustav was barred from attending school. Free from the menace of a school education, he roamed the nearby mountains, acquiring outdoor skills. Years later, he was admitted to school, where he excelled, and was even permitted to train as a hand weaver. After Stalin’s demise, the authorities allowed him to study geology at university and travel to the Soviet Union. In later years, he made a name with scientific publications on geology.

In the 1960s, it became possible for Czechoslovak citizens to acquire houses, not least because the huge amount of real estate that had been emptied of the 3.5 million Sudeten Germans in 1945 remained unused, useless and in decay. The Ginzel family bought a two-storey timber ruin in the picturesque Jiserka Valley. The house had served as a winter stable for cattle; cubic metres of cow dung had been piled up in the former kitchen and living rooms. Thus, the new acquisition was promptly baptised the “Dung House”. Gustav and his brothers soon sold the well-matured dung as fertiliser, telling the world: “We are realising mankind’s age-old dream of turning shit into money!” Then they channelled a nearby brook through the house for a thorough scrub-down before the walls and floors could be repaired. The place became Gustav’s permanent home. Like so many whom the regime denied a democratic say (voice), opportunities in free markets (choice) and freedom to move elsewhere (exit), he went into “internal emigration”. As the German-American economist Albert O. Hirschman famously demonstrated, the denial of voice, choice and exit inevitably leads to a loss of loyalty with the community at large and consequently a gross waste of talent.

As they had before the war, the Jiserka Mountains again attracted hikers in summer and skiers during the long, sub-Arctic winters. In the 1960s and 1970s, visitors came from nearby Saxony, Silesia and Bohemia. Many stopped by the Dung House to admire Gustav’s bizarre curio collections and listen to his amusing confabulations. More and more stayed overnight. Since he was denied a government permit to accommodate paying guests, all comers were declared personal friends—too bad if they left a small donation on the kitchen table when departing. Soon, more than thirty people crammed into the timber house on weekends. Gustav built multi-storey bunk beds, in one room up to five beds on top of each other, which left only narrow shelf space for the sleepers. In typical Dung House fashion, the room soon became known as the “Intercourse Prevention Room”. The outside drop toilet was also legendary. It provided for seats side by side and was called the “Stereo Loo”. The seats were kept on hooks by the kitchen hearth. Thus, everyone knew whether the amenity was occupied, and in winter users had the benefit of pre-heated seats. The place became so famous with skiers and hikers that Pravda ran an article about it.

In the 1980s, the historic cog railway line up the Jiserka Mountains was partially rebuilt, after the Soviets had dismantled it after 1945 as war reparation—at the expense of the socialist brother nations of Poland and Czechoslovakia. Travel among Eastern Bloc countries was also becoming a little less restricted. When the West Europeans installed international long-distance hiking trails, such as the St Jacob’s pilgrims’ route from Burgundy to Santiago de Compostela, the East Europeans imitated them, never mind visa complications that still made it virtually impossible to cross national borders when hiking along those trails. One such trail went from Eisenach (GDR) to Budapest, passing through the Jiserka Valley. Soon some anonymous malfaisant altered the sign-posting along the way from “Eisenach–Budapest” to “Eisenach–Dung House–Budapest”, and Gustav put up a sign declaring: “Anyone who has not seen the Dung House has lived in vain.”

In the evenings, talk flowed freely among the house guests. Many Czechs, Poles and East Germans returned again and again and became friends. As is invariably the case in totalitarian regimes, free speech attracts police spies and state surveillance agents. Gustav would cordially welcome visiting spooks from the Prague state security bureau or the German Stasi, when they arrived poorly disguised as outdoor enthusiasts. He would introduce them all around. One day, he interrupted a boisterous multi-national group enjoying après ski beers, discussing the meaning of life: “Hey, folks, Herr Schmidt here is from the ‘People’s Kombinat Watch and Listen’ (code for Stasi). He has to report on what’s going on here, but his Czech and Polish is poor. Out of consideration, please stick to German!”

Such antics did not endear him to the authorities, who harassed him with numerous vexatious investigations and detentions. At one stage, when more eminent dissidents from Czechoslovakia, Poland and East Germany were coming to breathe a bit of fresh mountain air and exchange views, he was even remanded in custody for ten months, under investigation for some unspecified crime of which he had never been formally accused. At other times, the state authorities allowed him to travel abroad on government-sponsored geological and mountaineering expeditions. That did not stop the visitors and their get-togethers. One weekend, they found a note on his front door, “Just gone to South America. Back soon”, and were directed to the hidden key.

The authorities accused him of withholding income taxes, subjected him to protracted investigations, and then absolved him. There were complaints to the police about loud singing in the night—never mind that the house stood lonely in the wilderness. The door to a small room with just one narrow bed bore the inscription: “Bird Testing Chamber”. That got Ginzel into trouble again with the authorities, this time over allegations of procuring. At other times, the police would arrive at six o’clock in the morning and—weapons drawn, vodka on their breath—conduct identity checks of house guests. Gustav obstinately resisted intimidation by the communist “oppression knaves” (his term). Obviously he was richly endowed with two character traits of which Sudeten Germans have been proud: resourcefulness and an exemplary lack of respect for overbearing authority. 

When the Iron Curtain collapsed, dissidents could meet openly elsewhere; many of the old regular guests were now exploring Italy and France and skiing in Austria or Canada. Somehow, it was no longer fun to cram into the Dung House and suffer its discomforts. In 1995, while Gustav Ginzel was fulfilling his lifelong dream of a trip to Australia, the Dung House burnt down, probably due to arson. What his adversaries had not anticipated was that fund-raising committees started immediately, so that a new Dung House could be built. It was inaugurated in 1997. New memorabilia and new furniture were brought in, but it was not the same. Gustav’s motto no longer applied: “Although we cannot live in freedom, we can at least have fun!” An ill man, he died in 2008. The following year, the “Dung House Community” held a memorial service in Gustav’s honour, attended by a huge crowd, among them foreign ambassadors to Prague and the first post-communist Czechoslovak foreign minister, Jiři Dienstbier, who was a fan.

If one speaks to habitués of the communist-era Dung House, reads the websites about it or leafs through the small book dedicated to Gustav Ginzel’s memory, one begins to understand just how much the people behind the Iron Curtain enjoyed small, precious snippets of freedom of speech, association and exchange. The warm fellow-feeling among those who kept meeting in small, closed groups of conspiratorial confidants must have appealed to deep-seated tribal instincts. Irritating the authorities spiced their dreary daily lives. One went to cabarets to savour clever snippets of disobedience and insubordination. Such satisfying feelings were lost once freedom and democracy could be taken for granted and life’s comforts came easily.

After the fall of the Wall, creating little niches of freedom no longer gave meaning to life. Before, the pursuit of happiness had amounted to simple joys, such as repairing old furniture and improvising kitchen renovations. The Ikea store a short drive away deprived people of such deep satisfactions. The anonymous, open society and the multiplication of choices for everyone were therefore not always regarded as undivided pleasures. Oppression had indeed offered a measure of fun. East Europeans who would never wish to return to communist serfdom and poverty thus still harbour nostalgic memories of those bygone days of oppression.

PS: My parents met, flirted and bonded when skiing, hiking and picnicking in the Iser Mountains in the early 1930s. There is a possibility that I was conceived in that playground of my forebears, before the calamities of the Hitler war and ethnic cleansing came upon them.