History-GDR Museum in Berlin-Marzahn: Fascinating legacy

The legacy of some faded people fits into a shoe box. Which does not say anything about the lived life. It can have been fulfilled, rich, happy and/or botched up by adverse time circumstances. The legacies of the GDR are enormous, material and ideally. The ideals live among the East Germans in the second and third generation, cannot be banished in boxes or drawers, whether positive or negative experiences, memories or stories. The pleasant, with increasing distance to the departure of the “first workers’ and peasant state on German soil”, seem to predominate from the geopolitical stage. What is natural. Unpleasant experiences displace people faster, especially when later losses and injuries are perceived as serious.

But also the material legacies of the lost or 35 years ago by the majority of the population not dust out on the shelves of museum institutions. They enjoy almost cult veneration, not just among East Germans. GDR design and products made in GDR also have some fans among West German citizens and even abroad. There is rummaging on flea markets for Amiga panels with recordings of east rock bands or the typical colorful plastic egg cups. Hellerau furniture are en Vogue. Young people of East and West German origin, not only because of the lower rents, prefer to live in the “record” than in a new building in the gentrified centers of the big cities. Ifa vehicles from Zwickau, Eisenach and Suhl are lovingly cherished and cared for by their owners and the Trabi Safaris by Berlin and elsewhere not only booked by tourists.

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In this respect, it is not surprising that one of the most visited museums in Berlin is the GDR museum on the banks of the Spree, opposite Dom and Humboldt Forum. Founded in 2006, it can enjoy over five million visitors from home and abroad. The secret of this proud balance is, as his director Gordon Freiherr von Godin again emphasized on Thursday at a press conference that one not only reports on Stasi, Wall and Injustice, but also focus on everyday life in the GDR in the museum as well as the extensive accompanying program for successively expanded and updated permanent exhibition. With which this privately guided institution can certainly be awarded a kind of pioneering role, dominated and still dominates the repression narrative in retrospect of the mainstream to the second German state.

The collection of the GDR Museum has grown enormously over the years. A new deposit was searched and found-in Berlin-Marzahn. What the district mayor of Marzahn-Hellersdorf, Nadja Zivkovic, and her city council for school, sports and further education, Stefan Bley, are happy about what the district mayor invited to open. According to Godin and his team, the new place fits perfectly. In two ways: On the one hand, because GDR history is still everywhere in this district and many citizens in the GDR live, and on the other hand, the path is shorter to the museum than from Spandau, where the stocks have so far stored and the spatial capacity has long since been sufficient.

The speed with which construction and move to the new halls was surprising is astonishing. On April 24, 2024 (interesting for number fetishists), the foundation stone was laid, from September 16 to December 19, the treasures that are worthy of donations were relocated: a total of over 360,000 objects, from posters, newspapers and magazines, books and paintings to kitchen appliances, lamps, vacuum cleaners, lawn mowers, to Wartburg and state base Volvo. The exhibits in the two air-conditioned modern halls over a thousand square meter halls are waiting for their display in future special exhibitions, but are to be revealed in advance by guided tours, as collection manager Eric Strohmeier-Wimmer announces.

As far as the eye looks, objects from the GDR.

Some shelves are still empty. You will certainly fill yourself quickly. Unfortunately, some donations from private households or discounts have to be rejected, Strohmeier-Wimmer regrets on »ND« demand: »Mosaic booklets,› ND ‹editions and textbooks are enough.« His great pride is the stately vehicle flotilla. As far as the eye can see, close to two floors Simson, Schwalbe, Mz, Trabi, Mifa and Diamant bicycles. “Anyone who drives Mifa never drives upside down because Mifa doesn’t drive at all,” the GDR people wrongly joked over the rapidly foldable bikes. Strohmeier-Wimmer also got a multicar. He is no less proud of the porcelain, the lamps and the stem from the Palace of the Republic, along with two glass doors. Several meters long shelves are equipped with television devices of various vintages and types alone. The chief collector of the Berlin GDR Museum, which leads to the aisle with shining eyes, is convinced that a visit to the depot is profitable, especially for school classes, an adventure in which history is taught alive. In any case, his son is enthusiastic every time he can accompany dad on his inspection.

In the “club of the officials”, which is equipped with cozy armchairs from the 60s/70s, how the humorous museum team nobs its reception and session room, there are to discover the doors, a brand, school, leisure and vacation in push fans of an opulent cabinet wall. To the Gaudi of some first visitors who feel back into their GDR years. A blind hand grenade, on the other hand, triggers rather unpleasant memories of military history lessons and paramilitary sport.

Even the scientific advisors of the GDR Museum, the long-time spiritus rector Stefan Wolle and Ilko-Sascha Kowalczuk, from 1st January this year at the GDR Museum in wages and bread, have a delicacy during the tour of the new depot, for example when reading a sheet about order at the workplace and the responsibility of the out-of-thing workers. While Kowalczuk, the author of a two-volume Ulbricht biography, then browses into index cards, wool (“Departure to Utopia”, “The Heal World of Dictatorship”, “Leseland GDR”) on the different preferences of officials and employees of the ZK of the SED in the equipment of their offices with works of work. Preferred some propaganda images of socialist realism, for example, in the study of his father on Werderschen Markt in Berlin, a reprint of the painting of Eugène Delacroix “Freedom leads the people”. Incidentally, Helmut Wolle was the author of a small but fine column in the former central organ “New Germany” with the title “noted by the historian” and the author of the volume “gods, mummies and Hetären, which is popular in the GDR. Cultural -historical miniatures «, which was able to measure himself out with the world bestseller” Götter, Graves and Scholars “by CW Ceram, which was published 75 years ago in West Germany, with a bourgeois name Kurt Wilhelm Marek.

Last but not least, reference is made to the original decoration of the facade of the new depot of the GDR Museum: a disassembled shelter. A work of art that may not only be interpreted as a tribute to the peaceful change in autumn ’89 in the GDR, but also as an antimilitarian confession.

First public tour of the DDR Museum depot on Sunday, March 16, between 11 a.m. and 4 p.m. and on Tuesdays from 11 a.m. to 3 p.m. and Thursdays from 2 p.m. to 7 p.m., Pyramidenring 10, 12681 Berlin-Marzahn; Ticket sale via www.ddr-museum.de