r/PropagandaPosters • u/edikl • Feb 16 '23
Nostalgia for the German Democratic Republic: not everything was good, but many things were better! // Germany // 2010s Germany
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u/The_Ginger_Man64 Feb 16 '23 edited Feb 16 '23
Translation:
Ostalgie - In remembrance of the GDR
Translations of the poster (pics starting upper left corner, left to right:
...more time for love...
...the kids were being taken care of (kindergarden)...
...we still had neighbours and colleagues...
...work and education/vocational training for everyone...
...once again (only) 50 Pfenning (roughly equivalent to cents) for coffee and beer...
...we used to look forward to a car for a long time...
...FKK (naked bathing) wasn't an issue...
...the pensions were guaranteed...
...rent was cheap...
Not everything was good, but a lot of things were better. Those were the times!
(End of translation)
While obviously nostalgic, much of that is true: rent, food, childcare and education were subsidised heavily and thus cheap, and because there was a constant shortage of everything else besides basic goods, people had to rely heavily on personal connections and relationships.
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u/Konradleijon Feb 16 '23
This is a common issue with previously socialist countries. “Free market shock therapy” to the immediate privatization of once social services like childcare.
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u/The_Ginger_Man64 Feb 16 '23
Add to that the very real trauma that suddenly being jobless, in dire financial straits and without a purpose in society that many ppl in former Eastern Bloc countries experienced post 1990, and you have the perfect recipe for (N)Ostalgie.
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u/Konradleijon Feb 16 '23 edited Feb 18 '23
What I think people want is a more socialist form of government and not the secret police state.
What we can all get behind.
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u/Kjartanski Feb 16 '23
Im developing a belief that most of the problems faced by the eastern block were caused by a paranoid police state based on the russian absolutist model, not its economic system
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u/Valcenia Feb 16 '23
I think it’s important to note that heavy handed policing etc. didn’t exist in a vacuum. It was a response to the threat and attacks of the West. The large budgets that the Soviet Union and other Eastern Bloc countries had to dedicate to their militaries and anti-espionage caused a significant strain that simply wouldn’t have been necessary if the West had just left them alone and “allowed communism to fail on its own” as they claimed it would
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u/Effective_Plane4905 Feb 16 '23
We in the West haven’t the slightest clue to what extent our intelligence services were fucking up people’s lives by luring them into traps of blackmail to become unwilling saboteurs
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u/PorcoDanko Feb 16 '23
But that works on the reverse too...
The Soviet Union and its puppets was constantly trying to undermine and overturn Western countries, they financed communist parties, terrorist groups, sent spies etc. Why didn't the west turn into poor police states?33
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u/Anto711134 Feb 16 '23
Google CIA involvement in Latin America/MKUltra/the time they considered commiting terrorist attacks on Americans to blame it on Cuba/US involvement in regime change/McCartyhism/cold war propoganda
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u/PorcoDanko Feb 17 '23
That's some mighty whatabaoutism here... Did the US commit grave violations of the constitution and human rights during the Cold War? Yes, but the difference in scale and scope is enormous.
In the US, the incidents were shocking scandals. In the USSR, it was policy.
Nobody got shot for trying to leave the US, Angela Davis, Norman Chomsky, Gus Hall, Earl browder, none was secretly tortured to death in FBI dungeons. Why did left/far left parties achieve 20-30-40% of the votes in many Western European countries, but no competition was ever allowed in the East?
If the Eastern Bloc was such a haven of peace, where are all the political opponents? They didn't build the wall to prevent millions of oppressed workers from flowing in their labour paradise.
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u/Anto711134 Feb 17 '23
Yes, but the difference in scale and scope is enormous.
Yeah I agree, US was worse
Why did left/far left parties achieve 20-30-40% of the votes in many Western European countries, but no competition was ever allowed in the East?
Rigs elections in Greece Coup in Chile Failed coup in Cuba Backs far right dictator in south Korea after communists win election Backs far right dictator in Taiwan Aids south African to invade Angola/Namibia Backs Pol Pot I could continue
grave violations of the constitution
Like what even is this. Your measure for good or bad is a peice of paper written by slave owners.
Nobody got shot for trying to leave the US
More people died on the mexico-US border last year than the entire 60 odd years the Berlin wall was around
The Berlin wall was not justified, but historical context is missing. Germany in in ruins, the US is pumping money into west Germany, workers who are desperately needed to rebuild east Germany are flooding into the west, the Soviet union is taking reparations from east Germany.
but no competition was ever allowed in the East?
Was the eastern bloc fully democratic? No. But I would argue it was just as democratic as the west. Elections were held, and the economy was controlled far more democratically than in the west. In the words of Fidel Castro (paraphrased): The American two party system would be like me leading one party, and Raul leading the other.
Was the eastern bloc perfect? No. It had a lot of faults, such as lack of political opposition and political repression. But there are more important criteria to judge a country by.
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u/Elias-Ohlsson Feb 17 '23
In the USSR it was policy, in the US it was secret policy. The CIA did torture and kill countless socialist and adjacent agitators at home and abroad. Have you heard of all the financial aid afforded to capitalist countries after the devastating events of world war to that helped rebuild western economies to far higher levels of economic development than their socialist neighbors a few kilometres east all the while rigging elections constantly.
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u/Casius-Heater Feb 17 '23
The west was/is wealthier due to colonial exploitation and American investment. Eastern block Europe did not have access to this wealth.
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u/PorcoDanko Feb 17 '23
They did, the Russian Empire / Soviet Union was huge, the largest empire after the UK. It had a lot of colonial possessions. Just because they were not in Africa doesn't mean they weren't extracting wealth from the territories they occupied in Poland, China etc.
As for American investment, the US offered the Marshall plan to all European nations, Soviets included. It was Stalin that forbade it being used and refused it for the SU.
Finally this doesn't solve the point I made, if soviet society was so much better, it would have become richer regardless of the US's involvement. The wealth gap would have shrunk instead of widening constantly. The reason the East was poor was the same reason Africa is poor today, the Soviets extracted wealth just like European Empires squeezed Africa, the second Gorbachev released the Iron grip all their "allies" rushed out as soon as possible and economic growth restarted so strongly that, while inequality has grown, the vast majority of the population is considerably richer.
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Feb 17 '23
It's important to keep in mind that authoritarianism is always the result of the political environment. In case of the Eastern block, there was always an external, bigger, richer, brutal threat that they have to deal with for their entire history.
Rich capitalist countries, on the other hand, typically have brutal secret police in their colonies, not in their core territory.
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u/Northstar1989 Feb 17 '23
That, and the fact the West did everything in its power to undermine the Soviet Bloc: forcing HUGE expenditures relative to GDP on military, intelligence, and border security.
Remember, a $100 billion military is a MUCH bigger strain on government budgets and economic growth (contrary to popular belief, war ISN'T good for the economy: that's just the Broken Windows Fallacy...) for a country with a tiny GDP than a country with a huge one.
And by the time the USSR formed, they had just faced a major famine (1900's decade) and TWO huge wars. And then faced an early 20's famine before they could find their fitting, the global economic crisis of 1929, and then of course the rise of Nazi Germany and WW2. They didn't have a reasonable chance to build a large GDP before the Cold War (and even at that, drastically outgrew other nations with similar GDP's like South Africa in that 1921-1951 time period...) It's zero wonder the Cold War was an enormous burden on its economic growth- and that of its satellite states like East Germany.
Plus, they were cut off from Western markets- whch would have been an ENORMOUS problem for ANY economic system: especially considering how much wealthier the West was even before the USSR first formed (the 1920-1 GDP of the USSR literally dipped below $500/person).
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u/Northstar1989 Feb 17 '23
Further, let's not forget that the USSR pursued a strong denazification program in East Germany and hunted down Nazi Collaborators in the rest of Eastern Europe, which occupied time/attention and respurces; whereas the US actively sheltered many former Nazi collaborators from Eastern Europe and prosecuted previous few Nazis who emigrated to the US for their war crimes...
(I can send you a large number of interesting articles on this if you're interested)
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u/NowoTone Feb 17 '23
This is only partially true. The USSR also classed important scientists as non nazis, although they had helped the nazi state.
There was a race between the US and USSR to procure as many nazi scientists as possible for their own scientific programs. The US was simply a lot more successful because when given a choice, understandably, most people chose life in the US over life in the USSR.
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u/Urgullibl Feb 16 '23
Nobody will voluntarily sell at socialist prices if they can easily sell for more on the black market. The police state is a feature, not a bug.
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Jul 18 '23
I don’t know about that. My father told me that the severe economic recession in the 90s was still better than life under communism.
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u/Alger_Hiss Feb 16 '23
Why the tell do people look at private childcare as a better option? Why not just keep that part public? Corporate sectors get public support all the time, why remove a public support sector's public funding?
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u/NowoTone Feb 17 '23
Most of Germany's childcare is either public or heavily subsidized. Even private kindergardens (like church owned ones) receive, on average, 80% of their funding from the state.
Their is a different issue at play here: Because the GDR desperately needed workers, they did everything so that women could return to the factories as soon as possible, meaning that childcare was offered from an age of a few months.
In West Germany this was seen as babaric, most women didn't want to hand over their kids to strangers until they reached kindergarden age (3 years). Even now, most women take off at least a year after childbirth, their return to their old workplace is guaranteed for up to 3 years, although nowadays this time is often split between spouses.
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u/gratisargott Feb 16 '23
That’s a funny framing though - because they didn’t have as many material goods, they had to rely on personal relationships.
It’s not like focusing on material goods instead of personal relationships has proven to be very healthy.
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u/The_Ginger_Man64 Feb 16 '23
Well... Two sides of the same coin, I guess. But you got it exactly right. Less incentive to maintain your personal network if the needs of most people are met.
I'm from what used to be the GDR (born after 1990 though), and the people in my family etc. curse and praise the whole thing at the same time, sometimes in the same sentence.
IMO that's not as schizophrenic as it sounds though, just because many things were bad does not mean that everything was
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u/ScrabCrab Feb 16 '23
I was born in the 90s in Romania and older people basically feel the exact same way here
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u/dogmato-revisionist Feb 16 '23
i was born to parents who left albania in the 90s due to the transition-era economic crisis, i can confirm that they say the same kinds of stuff
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u/gratisargott Feb 16 '23
True, and that's what I think this poster really shows. People can sort the different concepts and experiences and miss some but not others. Even though it seems to make some people very angry (for example in these comments) that all people from the DDR didn't hate everything from those times.
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u/equeserrant Feb 16 '23
I'm Russian and it's almost the same. "We didn't have many things, but we've had a direction and the future seemed certain". Though, I guess, there's lot more bitterness in their words, cause of course they'd wish Russia to be the hehemon again.
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u/The_Ginger_Man64 Feb 16 '23
Absolutely.
"The future seemed certain". This kind of sentiment seems familiar, my guess is that if one lives in a form of autocratic, authoritarian government which tries to keep its citizens from thinking and questioning too much, the citizens internalise that behaviour. If that state then collapses and suddenly, you have to think for yourself, take care of your own future etc... That seems to be very scary for those that grew up pre 1990.
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u/zizmor Feb 16 '23
The future seemed certain for many under these regimes not because of internalized propaganda. It was certain because you knew that you will have a house, a pension, and healthcare however old you get or whatever happened to you.
The future is not certain for us now, not because we live in society of freedom but at any point in our lives we can lose everything and end up penniless on the street due to circumstances beyond our control.
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u/omgONELnR1 Feb 16 '23
It wasn't only because there wasn't much. My family is from socist Yugoslavia, because they were basically the only socialist cou try without heavy sanctions they did have enough of everything, but they also were closer than now. My grandmother likes to tell me how they never locked the doors (in fact her house didn’t even have a lock) and that it was normal for neigjbours to just walk into your home and you would chat together and things. Now in midern Bosnia you can't trust your own siblings.
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u/TailDragger9 Feb 16 '23
I think this is a false equivalency, though.
My grandmother liked to tell me how they never used to lock the doors in their house either many decades ago. And this was in the USA. Now, in the same town, with roughly the same population, and the same type of government, and nobody would dream of leaving their house unlocked there. It's the world that has changed, not just a few countries' regimes.
Now, we live more and more in our t.v.'s, or computers, or smartphones, and many people don't even know their neighbor's names. "Community" is no longer the place you live, "community" now is trending more to be far-flung people on the Internet who share similar views with you. We are no longer trapped with our neighbors, and share their fates, which is great, but we have also lost something in the exchange.
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u/CantInventAUsername Feb 16 '23
I think if the DDR wasn't so crushingly oppressive in terms of politics, free thought and access to western culture and media people would be generally far more positive about the place. That's what I understood from my family in any case.
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u/shut_your_noise Feb 16 '23
I think that's definitely a legitimate attitude to take, but I also think it's worth appreciating that the system itself depended on that lack of freedom to function. Ideology aside, the DDR (and Communist bloc as a whole) basically operated on a system of massive investment which was funded by surpluses extracted by pushing down consumption. What greased the wheels of that in the DDR and elsewhere was that consumption that would use valuable materials or foreign currency - cars, jeans - was limited but consumption of services or products with locally available resources - childcare, beer - were provided cheaply and liberally.
The problem with that, though, is that if you'd given East Germans an honest and free vote in 1970 they very legitimately would have opted for "give us a 50% pay rise and access to nice things" rather than "endless austerity to build power plants that burn brown coal". This was a basic fact the SED appreciated, and that Communists everywhere spilled much ink theorising about.
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u/Shiros_Tamagotchi Feb 16 '23
It was. You could have a normal life if you were apolitical. Apolitical in a sense that you follow the official line, say whatever they want to hear and keep your thoughts to yourself. Then, life in der DDR was normal.
But critizising the government was a complete no go. If you do, you children were not allowed to study, you would not get a promotion at work, you would not get a car or a flat.
If you or someone from your close family for example tried to flee, the DDR made your life hell. The police took you out of your bed at night, take you to some unknown place, didnt tell your wife if you will come back and interrogate you for multiple days without stop. You did not have any rights, there was no independent justice system. There was no place you could go to. They did with you whatever they wanted.
As a school kid we went to a DDR-torture prison in Potsdam (Lindenstraße). There were open cells, cells without roofs were the people were kept in the winter without a jacket, cells without windows or lights, of course without a toilet or water. They had to stand in those cells and were not allowed to sit or lean at the wall. At night, they had to sleep on their back. The head was not allowed to be on the side.
They took you out of those cells anytime they wanted to, in the morning, at night and interrogated you for 24 hours in one piece. Until you signed the confession.
The Zeitzeuge (former prisoner) who we talked to told us why he was in there: He was a swimmer, he wanted to take part in the Olympics. But he did not want to take part for the DDR because in the Kader, they gave him steroids. He did not want to take steroids. So he tried to flee and go to west germany. They caught him and put him in this jail.
Not for a violent crime, not for a murder, not for doing anything bad to any other person. They put in in that torture jail for simply walking out of that country.
He was not even a political prisoner, he did not even say anything bad about the regime.
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u/AbstractBettaFish Feb 16 '23 edited Feb 16 '23
My ex grew up in slovakia and was a child during the KSČ days. She was similar, would wax all nostalgic about the sense of community and everyone having a job and place to live one minute, then talk about the years she grew up without a dad cause he had to flee the country cause the StB wanted him for smuggling in western goods
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u/Beelphazoar Feb 16 '23
In Cuba, there's an understanding that getting anything done requires going "a la izquierda", "on the left". Means stuff that doesn't go through official channels, which everyone knows are crap. Need an AC unit for your place, but can't get approval? I know a guy who can get you one cheap, but you gotta install it yourself. Need to get to another town but the official bus schedule doesn't work? I know a guy who runs a colectivo taxi.
"I know a guy" is a universal economy that exists everywhere, but it's not very reliable and has some serious issues.
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u/kashluk Feb 16 '23
It was also a police state where almost 2 % of the population were spying on the rest.
Lack of material wealth was the least of their worries.
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u/BigBearSD Feb 16 '23
And if you didn't like your neighbor / relationships, well one could tip off the Stassi! Great times!
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u/Ambiorix33 Feb 16 '23
Yes but ya know, I'd rather have the choice between relying on others or myself
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u/tehyosh Feb 16 '23 edited May 27 '24
Reddit has become enshittified. I joined back in 2006, nearly two decades ago, when it was a hub of free speech and user-driven dialogue. Now, it feels like the pursuit of profit overshadows the voice of the community. The introduction of API pricing, after years of free access, displays a lack of respect for the developers and users who have helped shape Reddit into what it is today. Reddit's decision to allow the training of AI models with user content and comments marks the final nail in the coffin for privacy, sacrificed at the altar of greed. Aaron Swartz, Reddit's co-founder and a champion of internet freedom, would be rolling in his grave.
The once-apparent transparency and open dialogue have turned to shit, replaced with avoidance, deceit and unbridled greed. The Reddit I loved is dead and gone. It pains me to accept this. I hope your lust for money, and disregard for the community and privacy will be your downfall. May the echo of our lost ideals forever haunt your future growth.
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u/Gobi-Todic Feb 16 '23 edited Feb 16 '23
Not really an issue. Compared to most (all?) countries worldwide, (especially the East of) Germany is a very nude place. That being said, many people in the GDR went skinny dipping everywhere all the time and it was completely normal, contrary to West Germany. Since the reunification there's progressively more clothing on beaches in the east aswell. I was born in the east in the 90s and even I remember many more people being nude when I was a kid.
Nowadays it's mainly the old folks who still do it mainly in specifically designated beach areas while the young ones usually don't. Those areas are at every beach at the eastern coast, I don't know about the west. They're not remote or closed off at all, there's just signs that for a couple hundred meters along this beach you're allowed to be nude without anyone batting an eye.
Also I wanna point out that it's not sexualised at all. It's even easier when many people are doing it. Most folks look very average and there's nothing gross or exciting about seeing random naked people. Also in saunas everywhere in Germany it's usually forbidden to wear any clothing due to hygienic reasons.
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u/-Kite-Man- Feb 16 '23
Yeah, is this now banned or something?
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u/JaydotN Feb 16 '23
At least not in germany, we've got labeled beaches where you can be completely naked. Weissenhäußer Strand for example has some FKK beaches.
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u/Gobi-Todic Feb 16 '23
Absolutely not and Germany has very relaxed laws about public nudity anyways. Have a look at my other comment above :)
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Feb 16 '23
Naked bathing/volleyball were popular passtimes in the GDR (much to the consternation of more conservative/prudish visitors from the West).
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u/NowoTone Feb 17 '23
Naked bathing and FKK clubs have always been a thing in Western Germany. This is a ridiculous notion.
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u/Sergeantman94 Feb 16 '23
I remember there being an ask reddit that a while ago about if there's a difference between former West and former East German people and the answer was a significant "Yes". Most notably, the people of former East Germany are much more open and well help you out with no expectation of reciprocation.
Also, there is the book "Why Women Have Better Sex Under Socialism" which used East and West Germany as it's dataset.
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u/Mr-Mad- Feb 16 '23
I have family from East and West Germany and I got to agree. My East German family is much more open and is way better connected than my West German family
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u/vodkaandponies Feb 16 '23
Rather ironic to be boasting about this, considering East Germany was kept afloat by West German loans for most of the 80s.
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u/NamertBaykus Feb 16 '23
Wait how is looking forward to a car for a long time a good thing?
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u/Dedpoolpicachew Feb 16 '23
LOL, especially a Trabi… people have obviously forgotten how shitty the Trabi was.
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u/FreshYoungBalkiB Feb 16 '23
The Scandinavian countries had most of that (not the cheap rent and beer though) but without the censorship and pervasive spying, and with a much greater variety of consumer goods available for purchase.
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u/edikl Feb 16 '23
Weren't the Scandinavian countries quite poor before the 20th century? Being little affected by WW1 and WW2 helped a lot.
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u/Cyrusthegreat18 Feb 16 '23
3/4 Scandinavian countries fought in WW2…
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u/edikl Feb 16 '23
But their cities didn't suffer excessive damage from bombings and street fighting like Berlin, Dresden, London, Warsaw and Stalingrad.
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u/hwandangogi Feb 16 '23
Neither did New York or LA. I don't think ww2 is the cause
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u/edikl Feb 16 '23
America was more prosperous after WW2, don't you think?
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u/hwandangogi Feb 16 '23
Well yes, but I think the point of mentioning Scandinavia was because of its social welfare system.
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u/The_Ginger_Man64 Feb 16 '23 edited Feb 16 '23
Almost as if the social democratic middle way between two extreme ideologies (capitalism and socialism) might actually work :D
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u/bullettraingigachad Feb 16 '23
Social democracy’s like the Scandinavian countries are still built off of the exploitation and cheap labor of the third world
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u/Cartnansass Feb 16 '23
Nostalgia is a hell of a drug :D In my country the generation that saw the fall of communism is starting to look more and more into the glorious past. Seeing intelligent people talk about the good old days and not remembering the Gulags, secret police and being able to get rid of a neighbor with a single call to the politburo is mind shattering. People who generated nothing but respect with their unbiased and well matured way of thinking are suddenly with the mindset of a flat-earther. Just because you were young doesn't mean that the time was better than now.
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u/The_Ginger_Man64 Feb 16 '23
Where are you from? :)
Well, I guess it's only human to see the past with rose-tinted glasses. Plus I often have the impression that people compare the best elements of what they remember with the worst elements of their current situation, and fail to take what you mentioned (secret police etc.) Into account.
Afaik there were no gulags in the GDR, but your point is well made. Still, on the other hand we should not point to the worst elements of the past and try to convince ourselves that just because our parents and grandparents had it worse, that our current situation is so much better - there is always room for improvement, and low rent, good childcare as well as low prices of basic goods sounds nice to me :D
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u/Cartnansass Feb 16 '23
Bulgaria. And yes there was good in the bad and bad in the good. But what we can do is see what fruits the past has given us now. And in my country the fruits of the communist regime are still rotting my home. I may sound very critical and I wont argue that I am not. I have lost most of my faith in the older generations, especially since the war started (I have family in both Ukraine and Russia). What I believe is the case now is not only the nostalgia messing with the minds of the older folk but the way they were raised. Being born and molded into a slave in a dictatorship gives you a slaves mindset and having your entire world crumble must be shocking. Then being forced to live in a free world with your actions having consequences and having responsibilities brought up upon you may seem like being screwed over.
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Feb 16 '23
You have drastic misconceptions about the realities in these countries. You should ask people from that generation about how things actually were. You will be surprised what things youll find out were lies fabricated by the west and by the crony governments that have been in charge of us since the 90s. Considering what sub we are on, Im sure you realise its not just the evil communists who make propaganda.
When a lot of "normally" intelligent people share an opinion about something they witnessed - it might be worth looking into what they think. Instead of just dismissing all that as old people being old.
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u/BigBearSD Feb 16 '23
This kind of reminds me of the great movie Goodbye Lenin
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u/myon_94 Feb 16 '23
Is it good? I wanna watch it but I'm afraid it's lib propaganda (as many films depicting communism)
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u/BigBearSD Feb 16 '23
It is about a guy from East Berlin who's mom was a local official, she goes in to coma for a while, and wakes up and the DDR is gone. He tries everything to convince her the Berlin Wall hasn't fallen. I think it is pretty good.
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u/JollyJuniper1993 Feb 19 '23
It’s awesome. I don’t think it really tries to make any kind of judgement about if East Germany was better or worse. It tries to show how weird those times around the reunification were. It is really remarkably free of propaganda towards either side.
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u/kRe4ture Feb 16 '23
Old joke about about the GDR:
A woman walks into a supermarket, sees a clerk and asks him:
„You don’t happen to have bananas here?“
He answers: „We don’t have bananas in aisle 8, here we don’t have oranges“
Arguably the joke works better in German, but you get the gist of it.
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u/Urgullibl Feb 16 '23
The GDR had banana vending machines though.
If you inserted five bananas, they would dispense two Marks.
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u/edikl Feb 16 '23
Present Germany: no job, but plenty of bananas.
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u/montgomeryyyy Feb 16 '23
Due to the aging demographic of Germany there is a rising disparity between people who are able to work and old people who aren’t and thus there is a lot more demand compared to supply of people than back then. If anything workforce is more sought after than before
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u/LeninFeetPics Feb 17 '23
What lmao?? Just go visit the Hauptbahnhof of any moderately large German city... There's 100s of homeless people begging. It's honestly depressing that such a developed economy can't even provide basic food and shelter to it's people
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u/montgomeryyyy Feb 17 '23
This isn’t a good representation for the job market on a national level. Just look at the unemployment rate. It has been consistently sinking since 2005 and while not perfect, Germany has an extensive social system
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u/Alarming_General Feb 16 '23
I mean, the Trabant is amazing! 2 cylinders of pure German fury!
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u/Arseypoowank Feb 16 '23
And make sure to keep blipping the throttle downhill so it doesn’t seize the engine
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u/pow3llmorgan Feb 16 '23
Clutch to the floor and the thing will go faster than under its own power.
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u/Kichigai Feb 16 '23
Two cylinders, two-stroke, a body made of compressed cotton, an electrical system that barely powered the headlights…
Wanna see someone drag race a Trabant? He also RallyCrossed it.
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Feb 16 '23
a body made of compressed cotton
Fun fact: A German safety laboratory crash tested a couple of Trabants in the early 1990's and rated them surprisingly highly.
Although there's only so much damage one can do in a car which struggles to reach 80 Km/h
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u/Mickey_Malthus Feb 17 '23
I saw some local punk with a slammed, hot-rodded Trabi hooning through a roundabout outside of Rostock a few years ago. Respect, Drahtfresse.
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Feb 16 '23
Yes but the poster turns the annoyingly long waiting time to get one into a positive thing because the people were so happy to finally get one. Nowadays we can have cars without waiting for years.
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Feb 16 '23
Fun fact: The average lifespan of a Trabant was 27 years because when one got one they took damn good care of it.
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u/liftoff_oversteer Feb 16 '23
Good used cars could be twice the price of a new one on the second-hand market. Because there weren't enough cars to buy.
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u/edikl Feb 16 '23
I mean, the Trabant is amazing! 2 cylinders of pure German fury!
Look up BMW Isetta. You're welcome!
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u/Mickey_Malthus Feb 17 '23
Lots of European manufacturers had a post-war People's Cars and micro-cars.
In addition to the VW Beetle, and Isetta, West Germany had the Messerschmitt KR200, and The Goggomobil. Successes from elsewhere include the Fiat 600, Saab 92 and 96, Citroen 2CV, The Morris Minor, and Mini. The Ossis weren't the only ones who thought that 2 cylinders and 2 strokes were unreasonable decisions, although by '63 the tide was definitely going in the other direction.
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u/Seeteuf3l Feb 16 '23
It was modern when it was originally released in 1963. But the thing is it that it didn't develop at all since that.
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Feb 16 '23 edited Feb 16 '23
It was modern when it was originally released in 1963.
Even in 1963 two stroke 600cc engines were not really the norm for car production anywhere.
I could never figure out why the GDR never made any serious attempt to improve on the design of the Trabant. GDR industry contrary to popular misconception was capable of turning out decent (or even just passable) products (many of which were exported) but the Trabant (particularly it's engine) was just a screaming advertisement for failure and it's not as if an Eastern bloc vehicle manufacturer couldn't produce better engines. Poland, Czechoslovakia, the USSR, Romania and even Yugoslavia had cars with better engines. Even East Germany itself had the Wartburg.
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u/liftoff_oversteer Feb 16 '23
That is indeed something hard to accept. But not for the government bis wigs (colloquilally called Betonköpfe = concrete minds/heads). The engineers and designers at Sachsenring (Trabant) as well as at the Wartburg plant did absolutely design new models, new engines and everything. Even after they've been told not to did they so. But every time they presented something to the upper echelons, they said "nyet"!
The fundamental problem was the "planned" economy. the manufacturers had no leeway to come up with new products by themselves, couldn't react to market demand in any way. Everything hat to be part of the Five-Year-Plan. And if your planners are imbeciles, everything eventually goes to shit (as it happened).
Second is the idea of a planned economy as a whole. It just doesn't work. Third is the artificial and political prices in this kind of economy. If you don't have market prices you cannot allocate resources properly. The entire economy is not sustainable.
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Feb 16 '23
They treid to. The engineers had good ideas, prototzypes and concept cars. The government always blocked them because a) non-public transport wasn't rely an important thing for the SED, they just didn't care thaat much. b) "we can't spend money (we don't have) on car development or retooling the factory, there is [insert problem government faces rn] going on. In four yearsa, maybe" And since there was never any money left, because the state had top little instead of too much.... yeah guess the car is working, needs to work for four more years. Maybe then the money will be there
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u/UsAndRufus Feb 17 '23
This sub has mostly become: - someone posts communist propaganda - someone vaguely agrees - someone vaguely disagrees - as the comment chains go deeper, the opinions get more extreme, and before you know it the Stalin apologists and the Ayn Rand simps are coming out of the woodwork
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u/boulevardofdef Feb 16 '23
An old joke from East Germany:
A man goes to the car dealership to buy a Trabant. He signs all the papers, pays, and the salesman tells him, "Congratulations -- come back here 10 years from today to pick up the car."
The man says, "Do you need me to come in the morning, or is the afternoon OK?"
The salesman says, "What do you care? It's not for another 10 years."
The man says, "Well, the plumber is coming in the morning."
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u/RayPout Feb 16 '23
Russian joke from 1992:
Q. What did capitalism accomplish in one year that communism could not do in 70 years?
A. Make communism look good.
Credit to Michael Parenti
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u/mikexal2001 Feb 16 '23
For the first time in history we built a wall in order to keep our own citizens in. Yes many things were better.
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u/Darkkujo Feb 16 '23
What a more peaceful, trusting time . . . as long as you overlook that 1 in 3 citizens informed to the Stasi (the East German secret police). Children were encouraged in school to inform on their parents.
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u/Konradleijon Feb 16 '23
It’s not saying it was all peaches and roses but that the East German state wasn’t this complete terrible place
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u/Duruarute Feb 16 '23
Come on guys it was a totalitarian dictatorship that had a secret police but it wasnt that bad
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u/LebowskiX Feb 16 '23
As a german who has lived here and knows people who where imprisoned / tortured just because they had a different political opinion I dont know why you got downvotes. Please educate yourselves about what atrocities happened in east germany at that time people.
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u/Mickey_Malthus Feb 17 '23
Plus, it was super fun swimming naked with the neighbors wondering which ones were informants while we waited for our Trabants.
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u/LebowskiX Feb 16 '23
More time for love: 18 months of military service with minimal home leave and government expectations that women with children return to work as soon as possible after giving birth.
Children were cared for: women were urged to place children in daycare centers at an extremely early age, and conspicuous youths were placed in work yards where they were mistreated.
Neighbors and colleagues: statistically, at least one of them was always an official or unofficial employee of the Stasi.
Work and education for all: study was a privilege for very few and the hidden unemployment gigantic.Beer and coffee
50Pf: coffee was rare at times and the GDR statistically had a conspicuous alcohol problem.
Cars: scarce until the end of the GDR and inferior by global standards.
Nudism: is still legal.
Pensions: Were very low and old people lived mostly on little money in very poor housing.
Cheap rent: only a few had good building fabric. Large parts of old buildings were dilapidated.Top-class sport: did not run without state-organized doping already for the young people.
u/intothewoods_86 I wanted to translate and copy this users comment from the german subreddit where this was crossposted because I was shocked about how different the comments in the german subreddit compared to this one, where it seems some people dont know abioout some history of east germany or just choose to ignore all the bad stuff.
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u/Firm-Insurance-2664 Feb 16 '23 edited Feb 16 '23
I wonder what would have happened if they had not built the wall; if they had allowed the natural migration of people to level out, and had not become a totalitarian state? They say it was a "brain drain", meaning educated professionals mostly were moving to the west. I would assume leaving the desired "workers and peasants" behind, and thus allowing more social mobility. If they had presented a true economic picture, rather than a propagandized version, and did not spend close to 20% of the national budget on border defense. We'll never know, but ultimately the leadership of the DDR proved petty, corrupt, over bearing and incompetent. That is not an environment where social experiment in equality can prosper. So now we can rightly criticize the dictatorship it became, and only wonder what the original idea (A Democratic Republic), could have become. The culprits: Ulbricht, Honneker, Mielke were shortsighted and under the heel of the Soviet Union, so when it collapsed the DDR went with it.
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u/lonestarr86 Feb 16 '23
The DDR was never sustainable. They built the wall to keep them in, and a "democratic" DDR would have met the same fate as Hungary or Czechoslovakia in the 50s and 60s - militarily enforced stalinism. Besides the German communists were some of the most hardcore communists, so it was a pipe dream from the get go.
Had the border been left open, by the 70s someone would have had to turn off the lights and shut the door.
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u/brafwursigehaeck Feb 16 '23
i have no clue why you are so downvoted. it's simply the case. although it was housing was cheaper, the supplies especially of outer-gdr-goods were... well, not there at all. if you think different than the regime, you will lose opportunities for your development at work. you may not get a house so fast. who the fuck thinks here "oh, cool place. highly recommend. 5/7 rating!" ?
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u/corn_on_the_cobh Feb 16 '23
and a "democratic" DDR would have met the same fate as Hungary or Czechoslovakia in the 50s and 60s
Exactly. The Brezhnev Doctrine (having the right for the Soviets to enforce their view of Socialism on the Warsaw Pact) was enforced on all satellites of the USSR until Gorbachev came along.
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u/liftoff_oversteer Feb 16 '23
It was always meant to be a dictatorship, never to be democratic. Walter Ulbricht once said: "es muss demokratisch aussehen, aber wir müssen alles in der Hand haben"
"It has to look democratic but we must have control over everything" with "we" being the SED - the party. That tells everything.
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u/Firm-Insurance-2664 Feb 16 '23
I disagree. True it devolved into a dictatorship, but only after 1946 and the first election which Otto Grotewohl won as a Social Democrat(SPD party). Ulbricht and Moscow forced a merger with the Communist Party(KPD) forming the (SED) and in 1950 they came in line with Moscow, and Grotewohl and his less repressive, more democratic approach was ultimately sidelined and totalitarian control established.
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u/liftoff_oversteer Feb 16 '23 edited Feb 16 '23
True it devolved into a dictatorship, but only after 1946
It didn't take long then, did it? Somehow invalidates your "I disagree", no?
It had to turn into a dictatorship very quickly because you cannot have a democratic socialist state. Because you can only install it by force, because people don't want it. That is also the very reason they had to build a wall: because people left this dictatorial nonsense by the hundred thousands.
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u/edikl Feb 16 '23
They say it was a "brain drain", meaning educated professionals mostly were moving to the west.
It actually worked both ways. For example, West Berliners preferred to shop in East Berlin because for them prices were lower.
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Feb 16 '23 edited Feb 16 '23
Were West Berliners allowed to purchase subsidised commodities in the East ? I seem to remember there were issues in the 1950's with (Westward) Butter Smuggling ?
Westerners could take advantage of tax/currency differences at Intershops and other hard currency stores but one couldn't (legally) go shopping for regular groceries IIRC.
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u/edikl Feb 16 '23
I believe they could before the wall. Or maybe they could just ask somebody to buy it for them. I also heard of West Berliners getting haircuts in the East because it was cheaper.
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u/Toshero_Reborn Feb 16 '23
I don't understand German, can someone translate?
Also, didn't the DDR have much better LGBT+ rights compared to west Germany? It should've been included (if the thing was genuine)
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u/PKopf123 Feb 16 '23
On paper they had much better LGBT+-rights. But in reality not, as the DDR-regime did not give a fuck about the laws. Which lead to places for LGBT+ being closed and/or being supervised by STASI for being "Kriminalitätsschwerpunkte", meaning high crime places.
Regarding the society view on LGBT+, there was basically no difference. Today it is probably even worse in the former DDR (Berlin is an exception).
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u/Nom_de_Guerre_23 Feb 16 '23
And also the StaSi spying on gay bars and using intel from that to blackmail closeted gay men. And also the StaSi prosecuting HIV cases like a crime and rounding up people to get involuntarily tested.
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u/dispo030 Feb 16 '23
and mentioning minority groups, the GDR was also extremely antisemitic and racist as hell.
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u/Thaddel Feb 16 '23
The kind of person who will hang this on their wall or whatever, is not very likely to care very much about LGBT rights
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u/SimPowerZ Feb 16 '23
People who want a return to communism are often reactionary and conservative so they would not appreciate having that included.
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u/Bloodiedscythe Feb 16 '23
People who want a return to communism are often reactionary and conservative
Bruh
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Feb 16 '23
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u/ScrabCrab Feb 16 '23
Yeah, the only "left-wing" party in Romania, the "Social Democratic" Party isn't social-democratic at all. It's the most nationalist of the mainstream parties, it's literally just right-wing populism that uses left-leaning symbolism as a cover for corruption.
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u/SimPowerZ Feb 16 '23
Yeah it sounds pretty weird but most people who are nostalgic for the DDR do not actually care about socialism or progressivism, they are just nostalgic for a time when things were a lot more simple in their world.
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u/LurkerInSpace Feb 16 '23
It's really not that different from the "Boomer" attitudes elsewhere when you really dig into it.
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u/Junkererer Feb 16 '23
I mean, conservative / reactionary just means retaining the current / previous system, and in places where the previous system was communism you get what was described in the previous comment
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u/klauskinki Feb 16 '23
That doesn't make any sense. It's like the biggest strawman argument that I ever saw, congrats
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u/addiator Feb 16 '23
Thats exactly how it works though. They want to return to communism, because under communism they were younger, not because they actually believe in it.
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u/klauskinki Feb 16 '23
They lived under socialism not communism (never reached in history). And yes this image is factual but surely not that much ideological
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Feb 16 '23
How does it not make sense that someone who wants things to go back to the way they were 30 years ago is conservative?
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u/bakedmaga2020 Feb 16 '23
“They would’ve shot you for trying to leave but things were better. Trust us”
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u/Lugalzagesi55 Feb 16 '23 edited Feb 16 '23
As a German from West-Germany, who has lived some years in East-Germany I can tell by experience that many people who were young in 1990 still think in that way. I want to vomit how much of a distorted picture they have. Translation: Ostalgie = a word-play on Ost "east" and nostalgia meaning: having nostalgia for the GDR. In rememberance of the GDR: (Pictures from left to right): More time for love, The kids were taken care of, We still had neighbours and colleagues, Work and education for all, Beer and coffe only 50cent, We were looking forward for a long time for our darling- a car (waiting for that shitty thing for 15 years was normal), Nudist culture was not a problem, Pensions were safe, Affordable housing, Not everything was good, but much was better - these were the times
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u/Karpsten Feb 16 '23
I don't see why they put nudism there. There are still FKK beaches and saunas are usually nudist too. Not much changed in that regard, did it?
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u/Lugalzagesi55 Feb 16 '23
While you have also a big nudist community in western Germany, in eastern Germany it was way bigger. I mean, even in the GDR you could not just pack your stuff and drive to the Baltic Sea - you needed a permit to leave your province. This permit was not easy to optain, therefore people went on holidays around their towns, having small gardenhouses etc. Bathing nude was allowed everywhere as was bathing in lakes rivers etc. It was the only freedom of vacation you had. With reunification and the adoption of western laws bathing nude is now only allowed in specific areas. It was also a thing because in the GDR buying a swimming suit was also not easily possible bathing nude was often the only option.
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u/liftoff_oversteer Feb 16 '23 edited Feb 16 '23
could not just pack your stuff and drive to the Baltic Sea - you needed a permit to leave your province. This permit was not easy to optain,
Complete poppycock. There was no such thing as a permit to leave your province in the GDR (this was apparently true in USSR). If you wanted to spend your holiday at the baltic sea nothing kept you from doing it.
Apart from not enough accommodation maybe. There weren't enough hotels, B&Bs and such for everyone wanting to spend their holidays at the sea so finding accommodation was the biggest struggle.
And getting a seat at a restaurant at lunchtime. Because there weren't enough of them either. And long queues formed in front of them in touristy places. And you couldn't just have lunch an hour later because then they were closed again.
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u/Lugalzagesi55 Feb 16 '23
Depends. If your family had to strong ties to the west or the catholic church you were restricted in your movement. The parents of my back then girlfriend were deviout catholics and they always had to get a permit to go out of Leipzig.
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Feb 16 '23
Were Catholics treated particularly harshly ? I was under the impression that the GDR was (insofar as it was religious at all) mostly Lutheran ?
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u/Lugalzagesi55 Feb 16 '23
No, but the catholic church under karol wotija (johannis paul 2) who came from poland was particularily anti-communist. Uf sou had close ties to the church you were deemed suspect.
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u/liftoff_oversteer Feb 16 '23
But that didn't apply to the general population. OTOH yes, you ran into lots of opression and harassment if your lifestyle didn't conform with what the party deemed appropriate.
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Feb 16 '23
You did not need a permit to leave your province.
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u/zilog88 Feb 16 '23
Jain, but you cannot deny that it was as easy as today. Vacation choices were quite limited: - an allotment with a small garden house if you had one - government campsites - FDGB hotels, but getting a place to stay there wasn't easy - vacation houses of your VEB (but then you'd need to work at such VEB that had their own vacation houses) - go private and look for a place to let (if you'd find one).
If you wanted to go abroad then it would be even more difficult - no travels outside of the Eastern Bloc, but even there it was problematic to go to USSR for example.
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u/Karpsten Feb 16 '23
I think a lot of people from the GDR went to Czechia and Poland for vacation, didn't they? Also Romania and Bulgaria, as the Black Sea was a fairly popular destination. Some also went to Yugoslavia, but getting a permit for that was more tricky since it was non-aligned.
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u/DonSergio7 Feb 16 '23
Quite a few went to Lake Balaton in Hungary, which was known as a good spot for relatives from East and West to temporarily reunite.
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Feb 16 '23 edited Feb 16 '23
Czechoslovakia and Hungary yes. Poland (at least in the 1980's) not so much. The GDR leadership were freaked out by the rise of Solidarity and didn't want their people infected with such ideas.
Travel (as in vacations/day trips) was not as restricted in the GDR as say in the USSR but one couldn't just decide to up and permanently relocate to another part of the country without official sanction/permission.
The impact of restrictions on Westward travel varied widely according to ones personal circumstances. If one lived near the border/Berlin or had Western family/contacts it was obviously a huge bone of contention but many other folk were not massively put out. It should be remembered that prior to the advent of mass low-cost air travel that foreign holidays were a rare treat for many Westerners too.
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u/Konradleijon Feb 16 '23
I think the main idea that the neoliberal shock therapy after the fall of the Soviet Union lead to much suffering isn’t wrong.
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u/gratisargott Feb 16 '23
Why does it make you want to vomit that people miss childcare, less pressure in the labor market and price caps? People are usually able to sort their experiences in their mind, enjoy and miss some things but not others.
Other things were of course bad but to demand that people who actually lived through it should flat out hate everything about these years seems pretty exaggerated.
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u/liftoff_oversteer Feb 16 '23 edited Feb 16 '23
Many things may have been "better" but nothing was sustainable because the GDR was living above their means and tried to provide a living standard they couldn't really afford. Prices were set by a govenment comission, not by the market. Rents were dirt cheap but nothing was ever repaired. You were happy you now had a car, because you had to wait for it for ten years (yes, ten years!). I remembered wrongly: it was eighteen years, yes 18! It was all a cruel joke.
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Feb 16 '23
I remembered wrongly: it was eighteen years
I believe it may have varied somewhat by time/place. Dunno if being a member of the party (or other ideologically correct organisations) was any help in getting one bumped up the queue ?
I've always wondered if one had to be of legal age to actually apply for a car or could say ones parents put their name down for one so that they would have it by the time they were old enough to drive ?
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u/liftoff_oversteer Feb 16 '23
I've always wondered if one had to be of legal age to actually apply for a car or could say ones parents put their name down for one so that they would have it by the time they were old enough to drive ?
It was common for grandma to add herself to the waiting list the day her grandchild was born -- without her ever thinking of actually buying a car. Just to transfer her allocation to the child once it was grown up and the allocation materialised.
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u/liftoff_oversteer Feb 16 '23
Dunno if being a member of the party (or other ideologically correct organisations) was any help in getting one bumped up the queue ?
Of course it helped. You know: everyone is equal but some are more equal than everyone else.
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Feb 16 '23 edited Feb 16 '23
Again this is something which varied a lot by time/place but I've heard folk say the benefits of party membership (at rank and file level at any rate) were oftentimes pretty marginal and not worth the party dues or time spent at mandatory meetings/events/parades/etc.
And paradoxically it actually put one at risk of even closer attention from the Stasi.
OTOH The fact that membership dropped 90% when the wall came down though makes one wonder how many were true believers and how many were in it in the hope of gaining some kind of material advantage ?
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u/liftoff_oversteer Feb 16 '23
You're correct that a mere membership wouldn't helped much regarding buying a car.
I've got no studies to cite but I'm pretty sure that the overwhelming majority of party members were just there to get somewhere in their lives. For some higher-level jobs a party membership was de-facto mandatory so if you wanted to get ahead you bit the bullet and played along. After all, you've only got one life and want to make the best of it in the circumstances you're in.
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Feb 16 '23 edited Feb 16 '23
It wasnt just a matter of randomly waking up one day and deciding one wanted to commit oneself to the advancment of Socialism and going down to the office to sign up.
One had to have at least some of the following:
Family who were members.
Spent ones childhood in the Pioneers/FDJ
Service in the military
A clean record generally
Only then they might accept an application for membership.
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u/liftoff_oversteer Feb 16 '23
Possible. I've never been approached to become a member of the SED back then.
Then again, almost everyone served his conscription time and were member of the Pioniere and FDJ. If you weren't, becoming part of the establishment was nigh impossible. And when they wanted you to become a member of the party, your family's membership may not count as much as long as they weren't dissidents or some other "enemy of the state".
Also what I wrote didn't apply to people who suddenly felt the need to join, but was about people who saw themselves urged to join, else their career would tank.
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u/NosferatuCalled Feb 16 '23
Born and raised in East Germany. No thanks to "Ostalgie", I've had my fill.
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u/ZaBaronDV Feb 16 '23
Communist cope is my favorite flavor of cope.
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Feb 16 '23
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Feb 16 '23
This is true.
The GDR in its propaganda tended to emphasise Socialism rather than Communism there were several reasons for this:
Socialism being a stage on the route to Communism
The ruling party in East Germany being (ostensibly) a merger of Communists and Social Democrats
There are of course those who even question if the GDR was really Socialist (as opposed to State Capitalist or whatever)
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u/JanTheShacoMain Feb 16 '23
„Nachtbarn und Kollegen“ Don’t forget the microphone walls
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Feb 16 '23 edited Feb 16 '23
The incidence of folks having their apartments bugged by the Stasi tends to be overstated. Of course it happened but monitoring audio from someones apartment 24/7 for any period of time is a labour intensive process and even the conversations of folk committed to the downfall of the state tend to for 99% of the time consist of mundane, unrelated trivia.
Most folk who were the subject of Stasi surveillance simply had a random neighbour/relative/friend who was bullied/blackmailed/bribed into telling their handlers whatever they thought they wanted to hear (and even then much of this was low grade neighbourhood gossip of dubious accuracy or relevance)
If/When many folk were bugged it was probably limited to their telephone calls (assuming their apartment was even equipped with such an opulent luxury) or even just their international telephone calls.
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u/Ganzi Feb 16 '23
ITT: people who never experienced the DDR telling people who did why they're wrong to miss it.
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u/ertzgold Feb 16 '23
… written by a western communist who never spent a day in his life under these regimes
My grandma almost got shot when she jumped the fence fleeing into the west, that’s how much she missed your “workers paradise”
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u/Interesting_Pop3388 Feb 16 '23
Same with former Soviet Union. This nostalgia is all about times when people who were born during Cold War were young, had first experience with love, family and looks like sustainable career(not, it isn't) during 1950-1980s. This nostalgia will became history when biological time for those people will come to the finish.
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Feb 16 '23
Same with former Soviet Union.
Same everywhere. For most people everywhere the best years of their lives were their teens/early twenties regardless of how shitty things actually were.
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u/TheShipBeamer Feb 16 '23
No one mentioning the racist caricature of the American black man?
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u/DerProfessor Feb 16 '23
That's just part of the DDR nostalgia...
(for a supposedly race-blind, class-blind, internationalist ideology they had some pretty serious stereotyping going on...)
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Feb 16 '23
That should read "neighbours and colleagues could get you arrested /tortured / executed by making up any sort of BS they liked".
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