Blog

GDR History

A dream ship in the service of the FDGB – die MS »Völkerfreundschaft«

22 Jan 2015
The GDR cruise ship »Völkerfreundschaft« represented East German holidaymakers' dreams from 1960 to 1985. For the majority of the population, however, the GDR's dream ship remained just that – a dream.
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Review

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

14 Jan 2015 by Admin
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.  
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Retrospect

The year 2014

7 Jan 2015 by Melanie Alperstaedt
My first working day started with good news: The DDR Museum, and so all of us, beat the attendance record of 2013! 10.000 more people were in the exhibition, but, the year was beyond that really eventfully!
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History

Five suprising facts

19 Dec 2014 by Admin
In this article we tell you five suprising facts about the end of the German Democratic Republic.
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Review

„The Burning Wall. Dissent and revolt behind the Berlin Wall“

17 Dec 2014 by Admin
It is a documentary about the GDR, but not about the popular topics, it is a film about the opposition in the GDR, about the uprising behind the Berlin Wall. Explicitly and exciting Hava Kohav Beller portrays the development of the East German underground opposition.
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Happy cooking!

Tutti-frutti do-it-yourself

10 Dec 2014 by Janine Henschel
In Christmas time you spend a lot of time in the kitchen and you’re busy with the preparation and cooking of soups, starters, roast meat and dessert. In order that you save some time, I want to reveal our dessert tip. For the preparation of the sweet dish according to the typical GDR recipe you need no more than 15 minutes.
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Tip

Spiegel Online International

3 Dec 2014 by Admin
Sometimes I’m really surprised at the multiplicity of foreign language offers about the GDR history. You can find not only books, but also movies, homepages, museums and much more else for GDR interested people who don’t speak German.
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Guestbook

Greetings from Albania

12 Nov 2014 by Admin
In our category “Guests from all over the world” we want to share with you how international the audience of the DDR Museum is. From all four cardinal directions the visitors come to Berlin and to the DDR Museum. Many of them leave a greeting in our guestbook. Some of them we want to present you here and above all on our Visitor’s Book pin board at Pinterest. Maybe your greeting is soon present there?
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Review

„Mauerflug“

7 Nov 2014 by Admin
The Fall of the Berlin Wall is in these days on everyone’s lips. Everywhere you can watch films about it, see photos and join different events regarding the jubilee. You cannot avoid the topic in this week. I searched because of that in our library and found a DVD which looked really interesting. It is called “Mauerflug” and you can watch it in English, Italian, French, Spanish and German, so really interesting for foreign-language people.
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Design

The Staßfurter suitcase television K 67

29 Oct 2014 by Admin
Transistorisation! Magic Word of the 60s in the GDR. Also fixed in the radio and television industry of Central Germany under the state scheme.
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Music

East German Rock and Pop in the 1970s and 1980s

23 Oct 2014 by Admin
From time to time I give you here some hints where you can inform yourself about the GDR history in English or other foreign languages. I always try to find different offers for foreign language people and so I presented already websites, museums or events regarding the GDR. Today I searched about the topic music in the GDR and I found a really interesting online platform.
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Guestbook

Greetings from Malmö, Sweden

15 Oct 2014 by Admin
In our category “Guests from all over the world” we want to share with you how international the audience of the DDR Museum is. From all four cardinal directions the visitors come to Berlin and to the DDR Museum. Many of them leave a greeting in our guestbook. Some of them we want to present you here and above all on our Visitor’s Book pin board at Pinterest. Maybe your greeting is soon present there?
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Review

„Behind the Wall. ‚Perfectly Normal Lives‘ in the GDR?“

8 Oct 2014 by Admin
25 years after the Peaceful Revolution and the Fall of the Berlin Wall there are still discussions about the GDR, about the life there, about the feelings the people had of this state. Often there is a difference between those who say the GDR was an illegitimate state and those who think, not everything was badly in the GDR. It isn’t always easy to understand how can arise two so different opinions about same different state.
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Event

„The Decision“ – a series of events

2 Oct 2014 by Admin
The 9th of November is this year talked of. No surprise, because the Fall of the Wall celebrates this year its silver jubilee.
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Tip

Movie evening presented by “The EXBerliner”

25 Sep 2014 by Admin
We present here often book tips or other tips and hints for foreign language people who are interested in the GDR history. You can find in the English blog museums, internet platforms, films or books and today I want to present you something for really spontaneous persons.
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Music

The asylum of Tamara in paradise – the rock group Silly

18 Sep 2014 by Sören Marotz
Ok, Silly had ever since the middle of the 1980ies arrived in the upper league of the GDR rock music with the Amiga album “Bataillon d’Amour” (1986), but there they weren’t the only ones. Unique though was their sound, which differentiated for the first time from the mainstream in the GDR. The drawers were too small for them. At least since Werner Karma assumed the overall control, the writing, it was clear, that here wouldn’t sung about dying swans, but rather the trouble’s brewing of dying cities, how he framed it.
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From the collection

Advertising in the GDR

11 Sep 2014
From Minol-Pirol and Fewa-Johanna to Korbine-Früchtchen: Despite their comparatively short »period of use«, almost everyone who lived in the GDR knows them. With the help of numerous posters, figures and displays from the DDR Museum’s collection, we give an overview of the history of advertising in the GDR.
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Exhibition

The game „Twilight Struggle“

4 Sep 2014 by Michael Geithner
The Cold War functioned yet as a model for numerous games, which addressed the struggle of East and West and the danger in the form of the atomic bomb. Because of that we present two games with the same title, one of them you can find in the DDR Museum.
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Review

„My DDR T-Shirt“

28 Aug 2014 by Admin
In 2005 Ian Hawkins was in Berlin to visit the city. The Karl-Marx-Allee impressed him that much, that he bought a DDR T-Shirt. After that he had heavy pangs of conscience about wearing a T-Shirt with the insignias of the dictatorship GDR. These thoughts caused Ian to his project “The DDR T-Shirt”.
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Design

„Swords to Ploughshares“

21 Aug 2014 by Admin
When sixtynine years ago the pain of the humanity under the Second World War had an end, in Germany, whose Nazi rulers had caused the catastrophe, the people spoke from the year 1945 as the “Zero Hour”. Thus, as if you could begin to furnish the bombed out flat in the house Europe now from scratch, totally new and totally amicably as a refuge of peace. Just no look back.
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