Perhaps because this was the very week of the fall of the Berlin Wall twenty years ago, attendance at the one year old Museum of the DDR (German Democratic Republic- the official name of the East German Communist government) was way above average. Virtually every space was packed this afternoon with German college students, older German adults, families with young children, and some foreign tourists. The museum sits by the River Spree in what was once a block from the People’s Palace, the now torn down entertainment and government complex where the parliamentarians of the old regime met and grandiose Communist events were staged. It is to be found on the appropriate Karl Liebknecht Street, a block named after the martyred Red leader of the 1918 attempt at a Bolshevik style revolution led by the Spartacists in the post World War I years.
The museum catalog sets out its purpose: “The DDR Museum is the only museum which concentrates on everyday life in the GDR. We don’t only show the crimes of the State Security or the border defences at the Berlin Wall but we display the life of the people in the dictatorship: Maybe you know the spreewald pickles, nudism beaches and the Trabi – the rest of the life in this socialist state is unfamiliar to most of the people in the world.”
Going through its space is a rather surreal experience. A major success after one year in operation, the museum combines what Germans call “ostalgie” or nostalgia for the old Communist state that divided the capital of Germany with a somewhat critical perspective revealing the failure of the socialist dream.
For example, one exhibit shows a Stasi operation- in which the secret police regularly took photos of attendees at rock concerts, whom they scrupulously sought to identify, assuming that at some future time they could emerge as regime critics:
Another exhibit covers the well known insistence of beachcombers to swim in the nude. The text explains that the nude beach movement was a form of rebellion against prudish Communist protocol, a way of asserting individuality for those who lived in a regime that sought to control most aspects of life, in order to break down any independent civil society and create as thorough a totalitarian regime as was possible.
Strangely, though, the museum curators do not seem to realize that nudism was to some extent favored by Marxist ideologues, who building on the attempt of Wilhelm Reich to fuse Marxism and Freudianism into a coherent ideology, believed that nudism was one mechanism for advancing the cause of socialist revolution. Indeed, in the 1960s in this country, the late Lee Baxandall created a Nude Beach Movement in which he asserted just such an argument, and sought to translate the East German reality into protests in Cape Cod and elsewhere that he thought would easily move its adherents towards revolutionary socialism.
One of the most interesting exhibits takes place in a replica of an East German cinema, in which one gets to watch an official propaganda film made in the late 1970s that details the plans for future apartments and other dwellings prepared by State employed architects. The film emphasizes, as the narrator says in its closing moments, that socialism means “fulfillment of one’s dreams,” in which the Party plans massive and humane dwellings for the citizens of the future socialist Germany. By the year 2000, those who saw the film when it was made were told, the DDR would have built great new apartment dwellings in areas that were then vacant land, nicely landscaped centers that included ample space for greenery and children’s playgrounds.
In truth, those who have seen Brezhnev era worker’s homes in Moscow can see immediately that both the interior and exterior of the DDR homes and apartments were so far superior to that built by Stalin’s successors, that Russians who worked in East Germany must have been shocked at the disparity.
The apartment shown above is supposedly typical of what the interior of the cement block apartments were like in areas like Stalin-Allee, the massive complex of worker’s homes provided by the regime for its citizens who worked in factories. Of course, the museum does not show us the mansions lived in by Erich Honecker and the top Party cadre, who lived in luxury in leafy suburbs like the Pankow area, or along Lake Wansee, where celebrity artists like the American born defector and country-folk singer, the late Dean Reed, lived.
“Strangely, though, the museum curators do not seem to realize that nudism was to some extent favored by Marxist ideologues, who building on the attempt of Wilhelm Reich to fuse Marxism and Freudianism into a coherent ideology…”
There is perhaps an inherent connection between sexual promiscuity and radical politics—of both the international and nationalist varieties. I am utterly convinced that Communists have been more successful in promoting their agenda in the United States via the advocacy of uninhibited sex than economic theory. How many people, though, know that the Nazis were also committed to sexual libertinism? Only Aryan wives were supposed to behave themselves. Their husbands and single youths of both sexes were essentially encouraged to bring as many illegitimate children into the world as possible. Martin Bormann bluntly informed his wife regarding the intimate sexual acts he performed with other women. She apparently was supposed to accept his randy behavior as totally acceptable and proof of his loyal adherence to Nazi ideology. Marc Hillel and Clarissa Henry’s, Of Pure Blood: The never before told story behind Hitler’s secret program to breed “The Master Race” is highly recommended. And let’s not forget the Italian Fascists. Mussolini’s own daughter lived in an open marriage with Galeazzo Ciano.
2@David Thomson:
I take it you’re not a player
“The Lives of Others” is an extraordinary movie about the DDR in the years just prior to the collapse of the Soviet bloc and the fall of the Berlin Wall. The plot revolves around the relationship between two men – a Stasi officer and a playwright – who never meet but nevertheless have a marked effect on each other’s lives.
The director of the film (Florian Henckel von Donnersmarck) said in an interview that he was inspired by Lenin’s statement to Maxim Gorky that he’d stopped listening to Beethoven because he realized that if he didn’t, he’d never be able to finish the revolution. Donnersmarck said he set out to write a story in which Lenin was forced to listen to Beethoven in spite of himself. It’s an amazing movie – it gets under your skin and stays with you for a long time. The final moments are as unexpected and moving as anything I’ve ever seen on film.
Tis a pity the museum seems to be feeding nostalgia of a utopian dream instead of exposing the actual limits on freedoms.
My neice now lives in Germany, her husband is Ukrainian – he *misses* the communist system. It can only be attributed to he’s too young to really remember what it was like.
Where’s the troll brigade, to tell us the DDR was a wonderful place us redneck cretins were too stoopid to appreciate?
Damn that Ronnie Raygun!
Marc Hillel and Clarissa Henry are not very famous. Well, how about the name of William L. Shirer, author of the incredibly well known, The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich: A History of Nazi Germany? On page 253 we find the following:
“Parents found guilty of trying to keep their children from joining the (Hitler Youth) organization were subject to heavy prison sentences even though, as in some cases, they merely objected to having their daughter enter some of the services where cases of pregnancy had reached scandalous proportions.”
On page 251, Shirer offers this opinion:
“By 1932 the majority of students appeared to be enthusiastic for Hitler.”
It is said that youths are often liberal during their earlier years. They arguably become more conservative as they get older. That’s not quite accurate. The reality is that these immature individuals are inclined toward radical politics of whatever extreme. They desire is to find some sort of warped meaning in their lives by losing themselves in a “true believer” cause—and indulging in a lot of uninhibited sex! Many Nazis were originally dedicated sex-crazed Communists. They made the transition almost without a second thought. Hitler or Stalin? What the heck, they may not have merely flipped a coin—but often it didn’t seem like it was much more than that. Both totalitarian thugs provided rationalizations to reject the traditional Judeo-Christian sexual code. There were also estimates that perhaps as many as 25,000 Jewish members belonged to Mussolini’s Fascist movement. This leads one to believe that Hitler would have gained similar numbers had he not indulged in anti-Semitism. As it was, Hannah Arendt went to her death making one excuse after another on behalf of Nazi philosopher Martin Heidegger. The number one reason why Hitler probably lost was because he restricted the benefits of his regime to ethnic Germans. The odds would have been on his side had the Nazi movement been a bit more inclusive of other races and ethnic groups.
It may just be too soon for such a museum to really tackle the full spectrum of its subject matter very well.
As a college student studying German, I spent a week in Berlin in the summer of 1989, just months before the fall of the wall. I remember distinctly the feeling of going into East Berlin for a day– it was almost as if someone changed the film in the camera from color to black and white, so striking was the change as I merely passed through a wall. I remember eagerly looking for a suitable souvenir to bring home, some lovely household object that would serve as a reminder of my visit. There was nothing to buy. I’ve never seen a “market” so empty. I’d never seen so many eyes so void of spark. I’ve never been literally barked at so severely as by a museum guard who thought, from across a gymnasium-sized hall, that I just might get wild and touch an exhibit. Never so intimidated as by the border guard there, who did not like my photo. Yeah, warm vibes, good times. A lot to be nostalgic about. And that was just one day.
Nudist Beach = People you would NEVER want to see in a bathing suit and most certainly NOT naked.
Back in 1997-ish there was this whole debate about ‘thongs’ and if wearing them should be banned for public beaches and then they showed a clip of a 600+ pound woman in a ‘thong’ that she must have made herself out of lord-only-knows what (a sheet?). That image is still seared into my brain to this day.
BLECH!
The idea of living without really working but being ‘taken care of’ if not ‘very well’ is obviously a fantasy that still hasn’t abandoned the minds of many Leftist idiots who would rather sit on their butts and smoke pot, watch the boob tube eating munchies, play with their belly lint and spread their multitude of stds with random access sexual partners that they will later turn in to big Bro for saying or doing something ‘fishy’.
Sounds dreamy.
For a good film about Communist E. Germany, rent “The Lives of Others”.
Visit this site:
http://www.maedlerpassage.de/eng/
Then try to imagine it in early 1990, totally run down with one of the large show windows displaying about a dozen dusty gray-brown boxes of screws. Only the famous restaurant, Auerbach’s Keller, was alive. And remember, Leipzig is the home of many trade fairs, including the Leipzig Book Fair. It was a place were communism showed its stuff.
Mr. Radosh,
Nudism has/had nothing to do with Marxism in East Germany. The reason it was so “appreciated” by citizens is actually quite simple: FKK was the only movement/association/club free of state control.
In East Germany, the most mundane groups such as local chess or sports club had to be registered with state authorities and were thus immediately submitted to political control. The FKK was, as far as I know, the only such group event or activity which was at least nominally free, in the sense that there was no official state oversight. Furthermore, the East German govt tried to forbid nude bathing, but mass popular support made it change its mind. A symbol, if you will, of people power.
Concerning “Ostalgie”, although there are elements of ignorance in this (actually outdated trend), I remember speaking to some East German friends on this topic a few years ago. I asked them how they felt about it, and they were mad at the “West’s” extreme criticism of this sentiment.
My friends told me that Ostalgie is simply the old being nostalgic of their youth, which happened to be spent in a dictatorship. But even in the worst dictatorships people are people, and they will grow up, make friends, fall in love, have families, etc… If anything, this is a triumph of the human spirit: we will remain human in the worst of situations. As a corollary, there is nothing wrong with being nostalgic of your youth, even if it was spent in an unforgiving place.
styx
9. Delia.
“Nudist Beach = People you would NEVER want to see in a bathing suit and most certainly NOT naked.”
Not even Obama? Mmm, mmm, mmm? In a bathing suit, that is.
“Back in 1997-ish there was this whole debate about ‘thongs’ and if wearing them should be banned for public beaches and then they showed a clip of a 600+ pound woman in a ‘thong’ that she must have made herself out of lord-only-knows what (a sheet?). That image is still seared into my brain to this day.”
They won the debate. A metaphor is here somewhere. The government as the 600lb woman and the thong as the people?
The communist states were never bastions of sexual liberty or license, except perhaps behind closed doors in brothels and such which are found globally. While the early periods of both the Wiemar Republlic and Kerensky Russian state removed a lot of laws which kept women in a subservient condition, those conditions did not last. The communists were exceedingly sex-repressive, as were the Nazis. In Russia up through Gorbachev, parental controls over the marriage choices of children remained strong, and young unmarried couples had to “sneak” about, risking having their names posted to workplace public bulletin boards as “immoral counter-revolutionaries” by some comrade babushka. Heterosexual kissing and hand-holding in communist China is taboo, and can lead to arrest in some areas — heterosexual expression is “counter-revolutionary” as per the state oppression of “decadent” Western rock music. Homoeroticism was OK, however, and this is something one sees in multiple expressions in fascist nations of either left or right-wing.
The confusion of nudism with promiscuity is just that, a confusion. Nazi germany and the Soviet communist state and satellite vassal states were prudish heterosexually, but promiscuous in a homoerotic manner. The SA under Rohm is the well-known example, but it would be an error to think this license also extended into the heterosexual realm. Girls were still supposed to be chaste and boys could experiment sexually, as per the Nazi motto for women: “Kinder, Kircher, Kucher” (children, church, kitchen).
As to Wilhelm Reich, his influence was aimed at eliminating neuroses due to the social conditions that led to such things as high levels of unwanted pregnancies and the abandoned women with children, the many homeless children and crushing economic situations, the depression and suicides, etc. That led him to become a champion for legalization of abortion and contraceptives, legalization of divorce, erasing of the stigma of “illegitimate children” which had legal consequences for such children. He also argued to decriminalize homosexuality, even while he considered it a neurosis, and his later exposure of the sexual psychopathology of both the Black Fascists of Nazism and the Red Fascists of communism earned him the enmity of both, who happily burned his books. His net influence upon European events and the later Kinsey-inspired “sexual revolution” in the USA was negligible. Free nations grant freedom to women also, and out of that comes a generally more fluid condition sexually, where people marry for love rather than out of parental dictates or financial motives, and the priests are confined to the church. Under totalitarian conditions, sexuality is crushed down and like all else, is made subservient to the goals of the State.
I visited East Berlin with a German friend of mine who had grown up in the DDR and escaped before the wall was built. It was a truly Marxist experience in a Marxist place – the Marxism of Groucho, Harpo, and the other Marx brothers. We could laugh at the absurdity of it all, the secret police everywhere, people avoiding us when we showed them an old map of Berlin to get directions, poor food in a cafeteria where the cashier tried to shortchange us, trying to meet with friends who still lived in the DDR. This generous Marxist regime also kindly let the mother of my friend leave the DDR when she retired – she could only travel with what she could carry and she lost all retirement benefits. (The mean free West Germany gave her a pension.)
Yes, we saw the wall – and memorials on the side of West Berlin to those who had died trying to escape the prison of the DDR, lovers of liberty.
well, if you want to get a good idea how the life was in eastern Germany, wtch the movie “good bye Lenin”, a very clever and poetical trip !
Now about “nudism”, this wasn’t a specific eastern Germans rebellion, but, globally, Germans like to exhibit themselves in nudism camps, lots are in France and built on germans customers habits !
Remember, Nazis promoted the boies cult too ! This is quite of the german Psyché
13. Mr Lucky:
“Not even Obama? Mmm, mmm, mmm? In a bathing suit, that is.”
LOL! ACK! Especially not glistening man-boobs himself!
13. Mr Lucky:
“They won the debate. A metaphor is here somewhere. The government as the 600lb woman and the thong as the people?”
EWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWW!
They won the debate. A metaphor is here somewhere. The government as the 600lb woman and the thong as the people?”
Actually the East German party bigshots lived in Wandlitz, not Wannsee…somehow Mr. Radosh confused the site on Lake Wannsee in Western Berlin where a notorious conference by top Nazis was held and it was decided to murder millions of Jews. Wandlitz was known to ordinary East Germans as “Volvograd”, because Honecker and his colleagues preferred the Swedish car to Soviet limousines. I’ve been to Wandlitz and although the houses were much grander than the prefabricated apartment buildings where most East Germans lived, they were scarcely mansions at all…more like modest suburban houses in Princeton NJ, for example. The nudist theory of Marxism holds no water whatsoever though – the Soviets and most of the other communists were just as prudish as most neo-cons and rightwingers are today. Only in East Germany was nudism tolerated. The state also published soft-core porn for the masses as well…
Best Movies (unmentioned so far) to portray life in the DDR:
1)”The Legends of Rita” – pay attention to the East Germans other than Stasi characters. They live, work, get frustrated and go on vacation just like normal folks. The DDR wasn’t all stasi and spying.
2) “Coming Out” by Heiner Carow shows Berlin in 1989.
3) “Traces of Stones” by Frank Beyer is another good piece and is critical of party ideology
4) “The Architects” 1989 by Peter Kahane is another film to come out right around the fall of the Wall and portrays the nuances of trying to live and succeed without sleeping with the SED. Very good.
5) “The Murders are Among Us” 1946 shows some of the emotional forces that led to a formation of a socialist, anti-fascist state.