Review

“Beyond the Wall. Art and Artifacts from the GDR”

It’s once again time to present you here an English book about the GDR. Today it’s a very special one. Not only the content but also the size and the layout are something special. It is the biggest book out of our library and the one with the most pictures. And, I think, it’s one of the most expensive ones, too. On 904 pages you can see in this book 2500 artifacts, design pieces and everyday objects from the East German Collection of the “Wende Museum” in Los Angeles.  
by Admin (14 Jan 2015)

It’s once again time to present you here an English book about the GDR. Today it’s a very special one. Not only the content but also the size and the layout are something special. It is the biggest book out of our library and the one with the most pictures. And, I think, it’s one of the most expensive ones, too. On 904 pages you can see in this book 2500 artifacts, design pieces and everyday objects from the East German Collection of the “Wende Museum” in Los Angeles.  

Justinian Jampol, founder of the “Wende Museum”, edited the book “Beyond the Wall. Art and Artifacts from the GDR”, which was published by the “TASCHEN Verlag” in 2014. In eight chapters the book presents topics like eat, drink and smoke, home or political life. Every chapter is introduced by texts of historians. So you can sight the many objects with the compatible context and of course, you have the necessary historical background to understand them. Furthermore there are explanations to certain terms or facts. For example the term “Milchbar” is explained and contextualised.

Besides the images of the different objects you can find in the huge book a lot of photos of the everyday life in the GDR. So the objects become alive and you can see how and where the people used them. Very interesting is also the advertisement for the different artifacts. You can comprehend the manner of promotion on the basis of the images of advertising posters or photos.

In addition to the content in the book you can get enhanced content about some objects. With any smartphone or tablet you can view multimedia content with more than ten hours of original videos and audio recordings from the GDR.

So if you want to afford a great and unique book about GDR art and artifacts with so much information and so many images and photos and a lot of additional material I recommend you this book. It would be a good investment.  

 


 

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