Kairos

The history of East Germany plays a crucial role in driving the political ideas that underlie Hans and Katharina’s romance in Kairos. One of the results of World War II was the abolition of Nazi Germany, the occupation of whose territory was divided among four countries through the Potsdam Agreement—the Soviet Union, the United States, France, and the United Kingdom. From 1946 to 1949, the occupied zones reorganized according to their allegiances in the ensuing Cold War. The British, American, and French zones merged to establish the state of West Germany in May 1949. Five months later, the Soviet-occupied zone was reorganized into the German Democratic Republic, informally known as East Germany.

Inspired by the Soviet Union’s socialist ideals, East Germany effectively functioned as a communist state with a centrally planned economy. To meet the obligations of paying war reparations and reconstructing its devastated cities, the East German government focused on aggressively developing its industrial and agricultural assets with the intention of reaching high production targets and standardizing the prices of goods. While this enabled East German citizens to enjoy a higher standard of living compared to those in other Soviet nations, the economy struggled to compete against higher-quality imported goods from its Western counterpart.