THE ongoing fascination with East Germany is demonstrated on a daily basis by the steady flow of visitors to the DDR Museum in the heart of Berlin. 

In December 2022 the museum was badly damaged when a large aquarium above it collapsed, flooding much of the exhibition space.

It has since undergone a complete refurbishment and is now open again to visitors and is much more interactive, with many more original artifacts and recreated elements of daily life in the GDR. 

It promises visitors “a real sense of what it was like to live in the GDR.” This interest in all things East German is also demonstrated by the surprising success of Katja Hoyer’s recent best-selling history, Beyond the Wall.

Despite the GDR having ceased to exist as a separate state more than 30 years ago, there is, in this reunited country, still a strong sense of disunity, widespread discrimination and denigration of all things East German.
 
In Dirk Oschmann’s new best-selling book in Germany, The East is a Fabrication of the West Germans, he describes the Federal Republic as a nation unwilling to confront its past in a meaningful way. The Nazi period has been successfully exorcised only to be replaced by the “east” as the cancer in the body politic.

In Germany today, the perception of a separate East German mentality and culture is a daily reality despite the lapse of time.

East Germans are still stigmatised by the mainstream press in a multitude of ways as “ideologically tainted,” lazy, culturally and politically backward, having no democratic instincts, and so on.

And they are still treated as second-class citizens in their own country; wages are considerably lower than in West Germany, as are pensions, and East Germans are excluded from almost all higher positions in politics, industry, academia, the judiciary etc.

They are also being blamed for the rise of right-wing ideology in the form of the new Alternative for Germany (AfD) party, even though the party was set up in West Germany and led by West Germans. 

After unification, West German officials working in the East were given a special bonus, which was colloquially called a “Bush allowance,” echoing the colonial past of imperial Germany when those working in the African colonies were given such allowances. 

In his book, Oschmann demonstrates how the treatment of former GDR citizens is highly discriminatory and a hangover of Germany’s colonial past.

“Everyday life — the Wall — the Stasi: all under one roof,” the DDR Museum proclaims. 

While the exhibition does indeed attempt to provide a comprehensive overview and offers much factual background information, it nevertheless feeds into the mainstream Western narrative of the GDR as an anomaly, an aberration in the otherwise logical development of the German nation. 

“East German citizens,” the museum explains, “were cut off from the outside world by a wall and barbed wire; the Ministry for State Security exercised blanket surveillance.” That is the contextual frame and sets the tone. 

“So what was everyday life like in the GDR?” the museum asks rhetorically, and responds: “Our exhibition answers this question with more than 45 topic areas spread out over an exhibition space of over 1,000 square metres. This makes the GDR Museum the largest, most interactive and diverse exhibition focusing on the GDR in Berlin.”

The museum is divided into three themed areas: Public Life; State and Ideology; and Life in a Tower Block.
 
It is of course almost impossible to provide a comprehensive picture in one small museum of a country undergoing rapid change over the almost 40 years of its existence. The museum avoids this dilemma by freezing the GDR in a 1950s/60s time-warp. 

Of course, it’s fun to experience the so-called “highlights”: sitting in the driving seat of an original Trabant P601 and going for a simulated drive, or relaxing on the sofa in a five-room (yes, five room!) GDR flat in one of those much-vilified prefabricated “tower” blocks, as well as enjoying numerous interactive games, designed for adults and children. 

In actual fact the GDR had very few tower blocks. The majority of blocks were only five or seven storeys high and conceived with spacious green public spaces between the blocks, with communal areas and shopping facilities located in the ground floors.

One exhibit shows the cover (from 1951) of a GDR magazine, In Word and Picture, portraying a poor family in the US. This, the museum text explains, is an example of how the GDR indoctrinated its citizens with an image of the “capitalist enemy” when surely it was about generating a sense of solidarity with victims of the capitalist system — a very different concept.

There is also a reconstruction of a Stasi prison cell, which looks little different from a model prison cell anywhere else. 

Life in the GDR’s kindergartens and schools is also covered, but again emphasis is placed on so-called indoctrination and the inculcation of conformity, rather than the positive aspect of socialisation and collectivity.

Gratifyingly, the museum does not hide its exhibits behind glass but instead encourages visitors to touch, hold and interact with a range of objects and installations.

In this way, it provides a unique visitor experience, where you aren’t required to just read texts: you can see, touch and hear, engage all your senses, even listen to recordings of “propaganda” material and laugh at old jokes. 

The exhibition is certainly well presented and does provide a considerable amount of information and insight, but it has to be seen as a snapshot rather than as a comprehensive overview, and shaped by a cold war perspective of the GDR as an oppressive dictatorship. 

While it is certainly worth visiting and you will be entertained, don’t believe that it encapsulates what living and working in the GDR was really like.  

At the heart of the ongoing stigmatisation of East Germany and its inhabitants is the unspoken fear of the bogeyman of socialism. 

The DDR Museum very much reflects that mindset.