The Oscar winning film “The Lives of Others” from 2006 (“Das Leben der Anderen” in German) is another film about the days of the former German Democratic Republic, very different in ambience from the film Goodbye Lenin!.
Click on the picture to buy the DVD.
The film Goodbye Lenin!, from 2003, was the most prominent example of Ostalgie to the world outside Germany. The film is basically about a son who, for his mother’s health, tries to create a make-believe world, in which the Wall didn’t come done and the GDR didn’t disappear from the face of the earth.
Click on the picture to buy the DVD.
My personal favorite Ostalgie item, as I mentioned before, is the Ampelmann, the man in the traffic lights of East Germany (“Ampel” is “traffic-light” in German).
My first encounter with the Ampelmann was actually in a traffic-light. I immediately liked that cute darling. And then I found out about his oh so naïve and sweet history, but also about its outrageous commercialization. I mean, I really wanted an Ampelmann bag, but not at these prices. So I settled for a woolen hat and shirt, and a little green man for my key chain. I also got a small book elaborating on the history of the man, the brand and the various products.
The Ampelmann was created by the traffic psychologist (what a weird profession, I’d say) Karl Peglau, in 1961. The rationale was to combat the danger of road accidents by using appealing symbols, since “road users react more quickly to appealing symbols” (well, maybe. I don’t believe it would have worked here). Read the rest of this entry »
The official Berlin tourism site offers a program for East Berlin nostalgia tours, which you can find here. They claim that “The recent history in Berlin has many aspects and different ways of handling. On one hand there is the difficult historical discussion, on the other hand is the (n)ostalgic mood… Our tour shows both sides”.
Another option is taking the “Trabi-safari” tour, which costs between 25 to 35 euros, depending on the number of participants. Information about the “Trabi-safari” can be found in their website.
After dealing with the commemoration of the darker side of the communist regime in East Germany, I turn now to deal with the phenomenon of Ostalgie, also mentioned here before, in relation to the current situation of the German Unification.
Ostalgie is like it sounds – the German word for nostalgia for life in the former German Democratic Republic (Ost is east in German). Everybody knows, most of all people who actually lived there, that the tearing down of the Wall was not a spontaneous whimsical act that happened with no reason. So I think it’s pretty obvious that Ostalgie does not mean wanting to live again under a totalitarian dictatorship and the unbound reign of the secret police.
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In the website of the city of Berlin you can find a lot of very useful information about sites and museums, dedicated to the commemoration of the wall, its victims, and the GDR (German Democratic Republic, as East Germany called itself) period and works.
Among the memorial sites for the victims of the Berlin Wall you can find the Memorial for Günter Litfin, the first person to be shot and killed attempting to flee to West Berlin. The memorial is located on Kieler str. 2, and you can get there by taking the U6 to Reinickendorfer Strasse station, or by bus line 147.
There is also a memorial for Peter Fechter, an East German teenager who was shot at the crossing and left there to bleed to death. The place was marked with a wooden cross, which was replaced in 1999 by a stele created by Karl Biedermann and donated by Axel-Springer-Verlag. The spot where Peter Fechter died is marked on the ground by basalt rock.
Other memorials include the Parliament of Trees against War and Violence, and the White Crosses memorial site. For further information, including a map, look here.
The communist era is heavily commemorated in Berlin, with memorials, museums, special tours and more, scattered all over the city. We have already mentioned and elaborated about the Berlin Wall, and mentioned the sweet and sour issue of German Unification, but there still remains a lot to be said.
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About a fifth of the German people would like to have the Berlin Wall back. 74% of the former residents of East-Germany say they feel like second-class citizens.
The 17th German Unification Day was celebrated all over Germany yesterday, but the above mentioned figures may have clouded the celebration..
The survey, conducted by the German independent opinion research firm Emnid, was commissioned by private broadcaster N24, and published just before the Unification Day.
Behind the headlines, there is actually a sad story. 73% of the westerners believe easterners are not at any disadvantage. 74% of the easterners, though, say they are second-class citizens. And technically they are.
Unemployment rates in the east are as high as 15 percent, about twice more than in the west. Salaries are 25 percent lower (according to the German Institute for Labour Market and Career Research).
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The TV Tower (Fernsehturm) on Alexanderplatz is, as mentioned before, enormous. It can be seen from virtually everywhere in Berlin, and actually, it’s a very good navigation mark. It was built in 1969, and is 365 meters high (so every schoolboy could remember its height, you see…). Apart from fulfilling the former GDR’s technical need for a separate broadcasting system, it became an architectural and political symbol.
Alexanderplatz (Alexander square) was once called Ochsenmarkt (ox market), but was named Alexanderplatz after a visit by the Russian Tsar Alexander in the beginning of the 19th century. Most of the buildings on the square were destroyed in WW2, and being in the center of East Berlin, the place was used as a showcase of Communist architecture. That means plain bulky buildings, and an enormous Television tower.
