‘Everyday Life in the GDR’ at the Museum in the Kulturbrauerei, Berlin
Some of you may be familiar with Goodbye, Lenin, one of Germany’s more successful film exports in recent years. Though Goodbye Lenin shouldn’t be confused with a historical documentary, it gives some sense of the mixed emotions with which East Germans looked back on their past under communist rule. Whilst this exhibition doesn’t attempt to resolve this tension, it provides evidence for why Germans could see the GDR in both a positive and negative light.
Why go there?
The Kulturbrauerei (‘culture brewery’) building complex functioned as a real brewery in the nineteenth century, and now brews up theatre, cinema, art and literature for Berliners. The complex is worth a look around in itself, with restaurants, bars, shops and a cinema now all occupying the old factory buildings. As a relatively new exhibition, ‘Alltag in der DDR’ has a professional, polished feel. You’ll find a general, balanced view of the GDR, so it will be perfect for those with little or no previous knowledge. With plenty of objects, pictures and documents, the exhibits are nicely varied, enough to keep visitors of all ages engaged. All the information boards are available in both German and English, with guided tours available in English, too.
Since it’s not obvious even to Germans, it’s worth explaining that ‘Museum in der Kulturbrauerei’ is the name of the building in which the exhibition is located, while ‘Alltag in der DDR’ is the name of the exhibition. Since it’s a long-term exhibition which fills the whole space, this dual name is a bit confusing, but if you find either name online rest assured that they refer to the same thing.
Once in Berlin, there are plenty of other ways to get your GDR fix. The DDR Museum on the banks of the river Spree is hugely popular: it indulges in a few more clichés than ‘Alltag in der DDR’, so expect lots of tourists and Trabis. The Tränenpalast or ‘Palace of Tears’, which you find elsewhere in this guide, is a sister site of ‘Alltag in der DDR’. Most of that exhibition is specific to its location in a train station at a border crossing between the East and West, so it provides a tangible sense of history without the commercialisation of the DDR Museum.
What’s inside?
Despite the ‘everyday’ label, it is made clear early on in ‘Alltag in der DDR’ that the narrative of the exhibition will be framed by an understanding of the political dictatorship. Work and leisure, the museum tells us, were not a private matter but politically organised from start to finish. While the museum has solid academic and political reasons for this interpretation it is not an unchallenged view in Germany and the exhibits themselves don’t always stick to the script: sometimes they imply more personal inclinations, character, and creativity than the museum intend want to suggest.
The entrance to the exhibition is striking: busts of communist icons are lined up in profile, the walls around them red. Yet any aura of authority this creates is undercut as we are also made aware that these are examples of the cult of personality. Some of the exhibits point in different directions at the same time. A worker’s desk, for example, is plastered with pamphlets and posters for extra-curricular activities organised through the worker’s company. On the one hand, this could be a sign of genuine enjoyment and involvement with the workplace community. On the other hand, the museum highlights the extent to which a worker was obliged to outwardly demonstrate such ‘commitment’ to collective activities. Preconceptions of the GDR are challenged as well. Mass-produced fashions are displayed alongside homemade or ‘boutique’ clothes, which defy the lack of consumer choice in the GDR. The museum might want to suggest that this makes their makers politically rebellious, but they are also a show of personal ingenuity and creativity.
There are features common to other GDR museums here, which you may not find quite as interesting. The mock-up of a generic shop and a summerhouse, for instance, are standard fixtures in GDR museums, but don’t really tell us too much.
http://www.hdg.de/fileadmin/static/english/berlin/museum-in-der-kulturbrauerei/
German History Museums 