Blog

Seventy years ago, right after the end of the war in 1945, the Dresdner electrical engineer Heinz Hummel launched his own small business. Using stock material of the German Armed Forces, other suitable material and his improvisation skills, he created initially a flashlight out of a hand dynamo-drive and later a record player under the brand name “Dynamos”. People started to enjoy listening to music again. In the first year of the GDR the disc production (at the beginning mainly shellac discs) increased speedly, and especially the demand of portable music players in “suitcase” boomed. Read more

Researching online after interesting pages or institutions for foreign-speaking people regarding the GDR I found an interesting essay about the early history of the GDR. Read more

During the first year after the war, the governance had to undertake special strategies in order to increase the industrial production and economy. The dammages caused by the war casted industrial zones into poverty. Many workers, especially men, were still in war captivity. In the East, a large number of infrastructure´s investements of Soviet occuping force were unthinkable. Therefore it was important to make the most out of the available resources.  Read more

A few weeks ago I presented here the book “Beyond the Wall. Art and Artifacts from the GDR”. The book was published by the Wende Museum in LA and so I started some research. I want to know what a museum this is that so far away from Germany and the Eastern bloc deals with the artifacts and the history of these countries. Read more

To increase the productivity of industry and the economy in the early years of the GDR, the Soviet Stakhanov movement from the 1930s served as a model for the GDR’s activist movement. Here are some thematic objects from the collection of the DDR Museum. Read more

As Lothar Schubert in December 1984 wrote the rules of a new game, he didn’t guess yet, that his work would be published first 30 years later. Now everybody can play it on his smartphone or in the DDR Museum. Read more

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. Read more

In this article we tell you five suprising facts about the end of the German Democratic Republic. Read more

Transistorisation! Magic Word of the 60s in the GDR. Also fixed in the radio and television industry of Central Germany under the state scheme. Read more

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. Read more

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. Read more

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. Read more

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. Read more

Fondly arranged and neatly registered in the index the colorful covers of the GDR-records of a record-bag laugh against us. But the diversity of the gaudily jackets deceive; each of them comes from the pressing plant "VEB Deutsche Schallplatten Berlin”, the single record company of the GDR. Read more

The P 605  is a shapely and easy to service pendant lamp. It is made of lacquered aluminum and became one of the true classics of East German Design. Exactly 50 years ago, it came to the GDR market. A good reason to tell you more about it! Read more

When one of the most important East German photographers, Gundula Schulze Endowy, looks through the lens of her camera, she looks contemporaneous not only in the life of her counterpart, but also seemingly in his soul. She sensitively shows the life in the GDR, how it was, unvarnished and beautiful at the same time, the life and the people in all its facets. Read more

Since the founding of the DDR, the state has exerted influence on its artists and cultural workers. One important photographer who felt the effects of this state control on several occasions was Sibylle Bergemann, who nevertheless managed to find her own artistic path, especially in the DDR, and to go beyond all boundaries. Her photographs tell stories, stories of people from East Berlin, from their everyday lives, deep and melancholic, genuine and sometimes critical, but always unadulterated and beautiful – the story of a city. Read more

Once in a month we present you places, which deal with commemorating and remembering the GDR. These places were yet above all institutions like museums or memorials, which emphasize several themes of the GDR past. This time we want to present you a place of remembrance of a special kind: the Berlin Wall Trail. Read more

Now he is finally here, our Simson KR (KleinRoller=small scooter) 51/1 “Schwalbe” (“Swallow”), Year 1979. Actually he is a “she”: the “Schwalbe” (“Swallow”), because nobody used the designation Simson KR 51/1. For a long time she stands with a structurally identical sister in our museum depot in order to make her way in the exhibition in the Christmas season. Read more

In this article, the academic director of the DDR Museum, Dr Stefan Wolle, recalls his time in the National People’s Army, particularly his sergeant major, whom he still thinks of when sorting through his books. Read more