Two new things in the area of material history of the GDR. First, the DDR Museum Berlin, which plans to open in late spring of this year. From their front page:
Vor 16 Jahren hörte die DDR auf zu existieren. Seitdem haben zahlreiche Ausstellungen zur Berliner Mauer, zur innerdeutschen Grenze oder zur Stasi-Überwachung eröffnet - keine einzige dagegen zeigt das Leben und Aufwachsen in diesem Staat in allen Facetten.
Trotz allem ist das Interesse an diesem Leben ungebrochen: Ostalgie-Shows auf RTL, Ampelmännchen-Gerichtsverfahren oder Kinofilme wie NVA machen dies deutlich. Objektiv und beschreibend wird diese Nachfrage nach Information allerdings nicht befriedigt.
Diese Lücke schließt das DDR Museum Berlin: Alltagsleben eines vergangenen Staates zum Anfassen, egal ob Trabant, Fernseher oder MuFuTi!
Well, of course there's the Dokumentationszentrum Alltagskultur der DDR in Eisenhüttenstadt, but maybe they mean in Berlin. Anyway, we'll have to wait to see whether they can really conjure up an "objective and descriptive" approach. In the meantime, the picture gallery is pretty. "Nostalgie pur" indeed.
Second, and more compelling to me at the moment, there's Alltagsspuren. People seek out evidence of the GDR, take snaps, and send it in to the project organizer, who catalogs them and puts them online. I just found this and haven't had time to really look through it all yet: public painting, stained glass, and sculpture; slogans and other signs on buildings; ads (including the restored VEB Feinkost sign and the Milchbar Pinguin in Leipzig); and other remainders. Pretty neat. The cooperative aspect of it makes it especially interesting to me. I suppose it's not so different from setting up a DDR-group in Flickr, but Rene Zimmer, the organizer, does write a brief essay for the Alltagsspur of the month, which I'll take as an indication that he wants to provide some context for the stuff he's gathering. Hope he can keep up with it; already there are so many images I'd like to know the story behind. Hey, maybe he needs some writers...
Posted by Heather at March 5, 2006 08:31 AM
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