Preserving the GDR

Outside the GDR museum in PIrna. Photo: Iwona Reichardt

Clearly, for many the post-war period of German history, even though not that remote, is already abstract. In the line I see British teenagers, Asian tourists, a middle-aged French couple and two Polish ladies who were probably in their late 50s. But there were also many German visitors, of all ages.

Hands-on experience

The permanent exhibit of the Berlin GDR Museum caters to all tastes. Its creators have built an institution that, as they claim, provides visitors a “hands-on experience of history” (Geshichte zum Anfassen). The museum goers are able to experience everyday life in the non-existent East German state. They can take a ride through a socialist district in an authentic Trabant – clearly the biggest hit of the exhibit. There are also old TV sets with East German programmes, such as Der Augenzeuge, which were short film chronicles produced by the state-owned film studio DEFA. One can see newspapers and magazines of the time, including the popular fashion journal Sybille. The hands-on experience continues when visitors peek into numerous East German interiors, including a preschool, or enter different rooms in a typical socialist-style flat. In addition, the museum displays some artefacts from German shops, both the popular retail chain Konsum and the hard currency Intershops which sold imported cigarettes, liquor and appliances, but also quality East German products that were exported and then re-imported.

Indicatively, the guide book that I purchase together with the ticket, describes how the hands-on experience of history “does not just refer to the unique level of interaction, but indicates the direction by it”. Therefore, the institution is aimed at provoking questions among the visitors of how they would have acted if they lived under, as the guidebook states, “a constant bombardment of propaganda and the shadow of coercion and servility. Would you have done what was expected? What if things are different between then and now?”

Clearly, these are very difficult questions, especially if asked to someone who has never been put in a situation of limited freedom nor has ever experienced life in a socialist state. My assumption is that this could be said about the majority of the visitors. For that reason their responses, even after a very careful walk through the exhibit, can be merely hypothetical. The exhibit does not provide clear answers. Its goal is to help visitors trace the popular perceptions of the GDR and understand people’s responses to the repressive political system. Fair enough.

Based on this approach the exhibit depicts the story of a regime through the prism of how it affected the life of individuals and the society at large. The first room gives the impression that the narrative will be built around the chronology presenting GDR’s political development that eventually led to its end and the unification of the two German states in 1991. The tour indeed illustrates the path from oppression to freedom. After finishing one knows which side to choose. And to help with this decision are, among others, such items as the WTSCHE Line Telephone. It was a high frequency, supposedly untappable, telephone line used for communication between GDR’s leader Erich Honecker and the General Secretary of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union – Leonid Brezhnev. In the museum you can listen to both leaders talk. The recording is real and gives a foretaste of the geopolitical context of the GDR, which clearly was under Moscow’s supervision and control. Coupled with information on Stasi’s hideous role in the surveillance of the society, it can give you goose bumps. But will it help you trace the popular perceptions of the GDR? Surely there are elements in the exhibit that are aimed at that. They are to be found in the sections that focus on everyday life; working, leisure, sports etc.

Appreciating what I experience here, I still leave the museum with a sense of incompleteness. My intuition tells me that I need to see more to get the full picture of the memory of the GDR, which was more nuanced also in terms of popular perception. For this, I chose to visit two other museums which I found through a Facebook group called “DDR-kennst Du das noch….” (GDR – do you still remember it…) which is administered by Conny Kaden, the founder of a GDR Museum in Pirna. I make arrangements to meet with him first.

Pirna

The train arrives at the station in Pirna, a small town around 30 kilometres south-east of Dresden. As planned Conny was waiting there in an old Lada, which he also uses as a roving advertisement for the museum. It also features a picture of Conny’s daughter on the back window. She is dressed in a pioneer uniform and invites visitors to the Pirna GDR Museum. The vehicle is one of many that Conny has collected over the years and has on display in front of the museum. Together with an old tram, they mark the external elements of the GDR.

In a conversation that we have in a small garden café where we drink an old style mineral water, Conny tells me that the vanishing of such elements, like cars and buildings, from the public space was one of the reasons why he opened the museum. Here parked under a small roof, these old cars are all well-preserved and maintained. The same cannot be said about the Palace of the Republic, which was the building of the East German parliament – it was shut down to the public in 1990 due to a high level of asbestos discovered in the structure.

Now in his 50s, Conny established the museum in 2002. Today, this institution can pride itself as having one of the largest collections of East German items in the world. Intrigued by the idea of a private collection on such a large scale, I ask where he got the idea in the first place. Conny’s answer is indicative and probably quite representative for a larger group of people who are trying to preserve the positive memory of the East German past.

In his youth, Conny served in the GDR army and later worked for a uranium plant which is located near Pirna. Naturally, under the GDR this was a state-owned enterprise, employing a large portion of the city’s population. With the change of the political and economic systems and the unification of the two German states, like many of people in this part of the country, Conny lost his job and started working for a private employer – a logistics company. There, while moving materials from one place to another, he saw how many East German items were still around. Thus, one day when asked to work on a Saturday, without any extra pay, Conny made a quick decision – he will open a GDR museum.

Without much help from the local authorities, at that time controlled by the Christian Democratic Union, Conny set up the first collection in a private flat. Once his landlady found out what was being display, she offered him another apartment free of charge. This expanded space had to suffice until 2005 when Conny got a 200-square-metre barn. He moved the collection there, which is located on the opposite side of the premises of the museum today. With time even the barn proved too small. People kept bringing more and more of their stuff to Conny, and the collection had to be moved once again.

Still under CDU rule, the city refused to help, even though Conny informed the authorities that interest in the museum was growing. Help finally came after the army, which had an old empty barracks of over 2,000 square meters available for rent. After taking this offer, Conny moved the exposition there. He managed to buy part of the building in 2009 where the museum now has its permanent location.

Main message

Today the museum is run by three people and hosts between 25,000-35,000 visitors a year. They come from all over Europe, mainly from Holland, but also Scandinavian countries, the United Kingdom, Russia and the nearby Czech Republic. But the majority are Germans of all ages. Conny says that you cannot tell if they come from the former East Germany or whether they are from the West. But it is to the latter that the museum has its main message: “Look our life in the GDR was not as grey and sad as you thought and were told. We had a happy childhood and a happy life.” This is what Conny stresses as we continue our talk.

When I ask how he built such a narrative, he explains that unlike the GDR Museum in Berlin which presents the lifestyle of the 1950s and 60s, hence making an impression of an outdated reality that was sad and rusty, his team decided to build the story by presenting mainly the design and interiors of the late East German period – the 1970s and 80s. This is most visible in the displays of well-equipped shops, crowded cafés and modern flats. In the exposition of the latter there are even such technologically advanced items as a dishwasher. Naturally, this was a luxury, available only to the very few.

When building this positive story, Conny also includes his own life and that of the local area. Behind the window of one of the cabinets, you can thus find his old work ID card, while his soldier uniform hangs in a closet of a replica of an army room. The very first room in the museum is a imitation of a police room, which was located in this building and where Conny’s brother worked. The local elements include a story of Pirna’s dam whose construction was started in 1871 and completed in 1975. It operates until today.

The most interesting room, and one that would be difficult to find elsewhere, is at the end of the hallway of the second level of the building. It is a room devoted to Hartmut Schorsch, the East German photographer of the authorities and celebrities (Der Fotograf der Mächtigen und Schönen), as the plaque to his tribute suggests. Indeed, Schrosch was a renowned East German photographer who captured the life of the state and its main figures, working for such magazines as FF-Dabei and Für Dich. He was not only the private photographer of Hoeneker’s wife, but also one documenting GDR’s infrastructure constructions in remote Siberia. After the change of the political system, Schrosch wanted to destroy all of his photographs. However, in 2010 he handed his collection over to the museum in Pirna, along with some of his equipment. On display are only some of his photographs, many more are in the warehouse, waiting their turn to be shown to the public.

I leave Pirna with a better understanding of the intentions of those who hold a fond memory of their life in East Germany. In many cases, they do it quietly in their private homes where they store old books, music, or Christmas and Easter decorations. Here, in Pirna, Conny gives them a chance to enjoy it in public. He does not hide that the goal is to build a positive story about the GDR. One of a happy life and prosperous state. For the moment he feels that he has succeeded, but looking into the future, Conny worries about who will continue his work and manage the museum for future generations.

Magdeburg

My next stop towards a greater understanding of the memory of the East German state is in Magdeburg, a town on the Elbe River, 160 kilometres west of Berlin. Here, on a small street in a residential neighbourhood in the city’s outskirts, I discover the Small GDR Museum (Das kleine DDR-Museum). The museum is run out of the home of Wolfgang Cleve – a man in his late 50s. He welcomes me in a t-shirt with the word “OST” written on it.

Wolfgang inherited the house after his grandfather passed away in 2005. When cleaning its basement, Wolfgang and his wife found numerous objects from the early GDR period, including food tins and household items. This discovery inspired him to start a collection. Once people in the neighbourhood had heard that Wolfgang was opening a GDR collection, many brought him stuff from their own basements and attics. In an act of solidarity, Conny Kaden from Pirna also sent him many items. To complete his collection, Wolfgang began buying objects off of Ebay. He has become quite an expert in verifying GDR authenticity.

We start our visit with the garden house built by Wolfgang’s grandpa which now serves as a mini ice-cream parlour. This exhibit is meant to show the leisure activities of the GDR. Again something that Wolfgang and others of his generation remember fondly. We then move to his grandfather’s workshop in which old tools and unopened seed packages are displayed. While showing them to me Wolfgang explains that in the GDR, just like in other states of the socialist bloc, people would do a great amount of DIY activities. His grandfather was no different, he was a jack of all trades.

After the garden tour we enter the house, which clearly has not lost his grandfather’s presence. His paintings of local landscapes hang in the front porch which takes us up the stairs to the life in the GDR. On the first floor we enter a grocery shop. Wolfgang’s favourite place in the museum, as I quickly learn. Its shelves are stocked with meat tins, oil containers, puddings, and fake cheese and bread. It is a true travel in time.

As we tour the shop, East German music is played in the background making the experience more pleasurable and authentic. We take the stairs to the attic where along the wall are more products. Among them are household cleaning supplies, but also posters and displays of stamps and East German marks. In the attic we pass a “pharmacy” where you can find old pills, cough syrups and band-aides but also cotton wool and basic medical equipment.

Since Wolfgang was a trained electrician, his museum could not exist without an electric room. Its main item is a TV set that is permanently showing old East German programmes, accompanied again by the sounds of East German music. Here, Wolfgang tells me that many of the products are his personal items, which he kept even after unification. He did not want to throw anything away, especially the things he had when he was in Freie Deutsche Jugend, which was an East German youth organisation, or when he started school. Hoarding was an East German characteristic, Conny told me back in Pirna. Wolfgang confirms that as we go from room to room in this private museum/house.

The Magdeburg collection is surely smaller than what I saw in Pirna, but it is still made of at least a few thousand objects. When asked if he has a record of them, Wolfgang throws up his arms, asking as how to count everything? Indeed, the museum is full of tiny objects such as small cars or matchboxes.

Since its opening, around 4,000 have visited this side-street museum. Among the visitors are groups of elderly who suffer from dementia. They come here as part of their therapy, to retrieve the positive memory of the past. But there are also regular visitors and tourists from such countries as Switzerland and Austria. To all of them the museum is free of charge, which is indicated at the entrance to the house. And yet, Wolfgang complains that the local tax office makes his life difficult. Its controllers did not believe that the museum generates no income and considered donations and in-kind contributions as taxable. The problems disappeared once an article was published in the local newspaper stating that the museum is a private collection.

When asked about the future, Wolfgang appears more optimistic than Conny. He plans to pass over his collection to other institutions. He knows of many that would be interested and mentions that he has heard of some plans for the opening of another GDR museum in Magdeburg. He probably won’t visit them, though, as his disability does not allow him to leave the house.

I return to Berlin with a new appreciation for the memory of East Germany. Despite the fact the unification in 1990 erased the GDR from the map, it did not erase it from the memory of the people who lived and experienced it. While to some, the opening of the GDR’s dark past came as a terrible shock, leading to suicide in extreme cases, others abandoned their early life and moved west. Yet, some stayed and never forgot or questioned what took place in the past. Even with the knowledge of a less than perfect state, they cannot deny their happy East German times. “I really loved our GDR,” a waitress tells me in a small restaurant near Friedrichstraße when I mention the purpose of my trip.

The collections of material goods which Conny and Wolfgang gathered over time also show the bright colours of the GDR. More than anything else, the museums are their own personal stories of a happy life.

The author would like to thank Dagmar Kriebel for her assistance with translation and invaluable knowledge of life in the GDR.

Iwona Reichardt is the deputy editor-in-chief of New Eastern Europe.

Material for this text was collected in three cities Berlin-Pirna-Magdeburg – thanks to a grant received from the Foundation for Polish-German Co-operation.

East German heritage, GDR Museum