BERLIN DDR MUSEUM
Remembering Those Good Old Socialist Days
The term Socialism has been tossed about a whole lot, lately. I’m
sure like most people, you often find yourself sitting in your office
cubical, worrying about car payments and the mortgage crisis,
do you really need HBO on your cable bill, is there such a thing as
debtor’s prison?... and your mind wonders wistfully, what was
life really like under socialism in East Germany. Well, aside from
watching dvds of “The Spy Who Came In From The Cold” you
can now visit the DDR Museum in the heart of Berlin. Located on the
bank of the Spree River where it flows under the main avenue of Karl-Liebkneecht
Str. just across from where the cruise boats pass the Berliner Dom
Cathedral and a few blocks from the Museum Insel art museums (see Pergamon
Museum and Neues
Museum).
Cold War Berlin
Created as a “hands on” experience the Berlin DDR Museum is a somewhat playful journey through the days of the grand communist/social experiment which lasted from the end of WWII to the fall of the wall in 1989, the days of the Berlin airlift, John F. Kennedy's famed Berliner visit (see Kennedys Museum) and testosterone pumped women Olympic competitors. Here you will find an intact living room from a GDR apartment, look into the tiny back yard “dacha” that served as a vacation spots. Take a virtual drive in a notorious "Trabi" Trabant car, and take a ride with the kids through a concrete block apartment complex (see Holloren Chocolate Trabi).
Watch East German television programs and propaganda
newsreels. Drawers and nooks
hide
the secrets
of East German life under the DDR. (Okay, to avoid confusion DDR/GDR
are the same thing. Deutsche Demokratische Republik, German Democratic
Republic = Communist/Socialist East Germany). Be wiretapped by Stasi
secret police bugging equipment, where every whisper of discontent
was listened to by spies (see Berlin Stasi Museum).
Exhibits at DDR Museum
What
is perhaps most fascinating about the exhibits and artifacts on display
are how the socialist east in the latter days, struggled desperately
to keep up with western capitalism products, services and styles
that more and more where sought by the citizens behind the wall and
barbed
wire. Advertising and modern marketing techniques, design and innovation
attempted to prove that life under the socialist state was good,
but the practical never kept pace with the promises. On the other
hand,
as long as you didn’t bad mouth the state where the Stasi was
within earshot, you didn’t have to worry about the rent, in
your state provided shoebox apartment with paper thin concrete walls
(see Ostel Berlin DDR Hostel).
Visiting DDR Museum Berlin
The Berlin DDR Museum is open from 10 to 8 weekdays and until 10 pm on Saturdays. The nearest Bahn stop is the Hackescher Markt or bus stops at Spandauer Straße. On busy summer days you may even get to experience what the common East German socialism custom of standing in line was like as the DDR Museum, can be quite popular and easy to get to. Next door is the giant fish aquarium of the Aquadom (see Sea Life Berlin), and just across the river is the Berliner Dom (see Berliner Dom Cathedral. © Bargain Travel Europe
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DDR Museum
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