MetaFilter posts tagged with eastgermany

Those barricades can only hold for so long

sister nunchaku of love and mercy — Thu, 03 Jul 2008 22:01:20 -0800

Twenty years ago this week, the biggest escape ever over the Berlin Wall took place, but the event went nearly unreported outside of the two Germanies. The 182 persons who jumped over the Wall in the early morning hours of 1 July 1988, instead of leaving East Germany, fled in the opposite direction (scroll down to "Wolfgang Ritter") to escape the West Berlin police. East German border guards waited with trucks on the other side of the Wall in the middle of the death strip to pick up the wall-hopping protesters; they were driven to another location, served breakfast, and then taken to the Friedrichsstrasse crossing to West Berlin with the admonition to "use the usual border crossing next time." The Lenné Triangle, where the wall jumpers lived in their tent village (including a "People's Kitchen") for the month before the police raid (slideshow here), was part of the bustling Potsdamer Platz before the Second World War. On the division of Berlin it turned into a no-man's land and an accidental nature preserve. After the reunification of Berlin it again became part of the center of commercial development. In 2007, $117 million in restitution was finally paid to the Wertheim family, who had owned the property and been stripped of it in the 1930s due to National Socialist anti-Jewish laws.

Commie Kids Telly

fearfulsymmetry — Thu, 13 Mar 2008 04:07:16 -0800

One rather strange minor cultural phenomena you experienced as a kid growing up in 60s and 70s Britain was a number of television programs that originated from beyond the Iron Curtain. Most infamous was the downright scary The Singing Ringing Tree from East Germany (Radio4 doc), later spoofed by the Fast Show but there were several others... including The Little Mermaid from Czechoslovakia, The White Horses from Yugoslavia (with its beautiful and much loved theme tune) and The Mole, also from Czechoslovakia, by acclaimed animator Zdeněk Miler … of which there are many many examples on Youtube. I doubt it the BBC at the time were really trying to further world revolution (MI5 put a stop to that) the documentary explains that is was just trying to fill up the schedule with cheap imports. And apparently The Singing Ringing tree was criticised by the powers that be in it’s own country for being too bourgeois with its princesses and princes and certainly The Mole was pretty subversive in its own way: "Mr. Miler said he steered clear of politics, but as Krtek became his life's work, the films did not shut out the real world, before or after the fall of Communism. Bureaucrats were poked fun at. He lamented the destruction of the environment. He showed a rabbit graphically giving birth. One film had Krtek travelling the world, stunned at an American mole's superior burrowing technology."

"That half-destroyed paperwork is a tantalizing secret."

amyms — Wed, 30 Jan 2008 07:42:54 -0800

"That half-destroyed paperwork is a tantalizing secret." The Stasi fostered a pervasive and justified paranoia. And it generated an almost inconceivable amount of paper, enough to fill more than 100 miles of shelves. The agency indexed and cross-referenced 5.6 million names in its central card catalog alone. Hundreds of thousands of "unofficial employees" snitched on friends, coworkers, and their own spouses, sometimes because they'd been extorted and sometimes in exchange for money, promotions, or permission to travel abroad. After the fall of the Berlin Wall, the Stasi tried to destroy its records. Now, with the help of computer science, the "billion-piece puzzle" is finally coming together. The article is an interesting update on the one featured in this 2003 Metafilter post . Related: The Stasi Museum in Berlin If It Had Not Been For 15 Minutes (an incredible defection story)

East German (DDR) RC cars

riffola — Mon, 07 Jan 2008 15:00:45 -0800

DDR-Modell Autos.info meticulously catalogs radio controlled and flywheel powered cars made by East German (DDR) toy makers such as Presu, Elmes, MSW, Anker, Piko, Gevo, Plasticart and Sommermeyer.

Is This Utopia? Are Ruins Beautiful?

salvia — Thu, 29 Nov 2007 22:56:46 -0800

Shrinking Cities (virtual and real): Analysis and Interventions. Don't miss the map of shrinking cities around the globe [PDF] or their description of urban decline in Second Life and a contest about what interventions to apply there (stay tuned). The title is from this quirky image in their press kit. Previously: 1, 2, 3.

Jamel, The Town Controlled by Neo-Nazis

jason's_planet — Tue, 25 Sep 2007 12:55:04 -0800

Right-Wing Rot: A Village In the Hands of Neo-Nazis Houses torched, pets killed and outsiders chased away: Such is life in the Eastern German town of Jamel. For years, it has been controlled by the neo-Nazis who live there. Even the mayor says he has given up. This story in Der Spiegel inspired a pretty enthusiastic response on StormFront.Org (neo-Nazi site in English; probably Not Safe For Work at most normal workplaces.) Neo-Nazi Party More Popular Than Social Democrats In Saxony

Worker and Parasite ( 01>G89 0@078B)

arse_hat — Sun, 05 Aug 2007 19:41:10 -0800

Recollecting a culture : photography and the evolution of a socialist aesthetic in East Germany.

"in contrast to Western histories built upon a foundation of works by modernist and early-modernist masters, the history of East German photography was built from a body of images by amateurs and artists, largely unknown outside Eastern Europe and the former Soviet Union, whose photographs depicted the world from the class perspective of the worker."

From a 1999 exhibition held at Boston University. 100 images, 10 essays. Sadly, a bad interface and small reproductions. Out of control : photography from East Germany. A 1993 project documenting "the uses of photography in Eastern Germany after the collapse of the German Democratic Republic (GDR)" also, with small pictures.

East German Commercials

jason's_planet — Sun, 06 May 2007 08:05:01 -0800

East Germany suffers from a posthumous image problem. People think that life in the former GDR was a dreary round of dodging the secret police and mandatory attendance at Boy-Loves-Tractor films. Nothing could be further from the truth. Life in the GDR was fun. You could take pictures with ORWO Film (mildly NSFW. Five seconds of toplessness at 1:15). You could zip through the countryside in your MZ. You could fit every soccer ball in the neighborhood in your Wartburg. And for the ultimate in class-conscious, revolutionary mackitude, there was the Trabant. If these little clips aren’t enough, if you want a whole bunch of East German commercials, here’s a long video called Flotter Osten (Again, mildly NSFW: Same topless shot for about five seconds at 8:07).

skallas — Sun, 12 May 2002 12:34:13 -0800

Katarina Witt's Stasi connection. SECRET police files on Katarina Witt have revealed that the most glamorous and popular sporting figure in the former East Germany was so close to the Stasi that she considered them a "partner".