The museum sells a very appealing postcard of Nepomuck, a home-made stuffed toy of indeterminate species. He seems to serve as a kitsch mascot, helping the museum to make a challenging subject palatable.
In his display context, however, Nepomuck joins with other toys to make a serious point about escape from communism. Unbeknown to Nepomuck’s owner, her mother cut him open and hid money inside him, to smuggle it out during their escape. Nepomuck is displayed in this pose to show the ‘scar’.
Nearby, a treasured doll is displayed because its child owner left it behind in the GDR, not understanding that a trip to West Berlin was a bid for freedom. On the accompanying audio recording the owner recalls her bafflement at being made to wear most of her clothes at once.
A teddy and a stuffed deer in the next case served, like a flower in a buttonhole or a copy of the Times, to identify two girls and their father to strangers. Smugglers picked them up at a motorway service station and stowed them in a car boot to cross the border. The children’s mother had escaped earlier and paid the smugglers 50,000 Deutschmarks to get her husband and children out.
Even if aspects of these accounts appeal to our love of sensational escape stories, taken together they give us an insight into what it is to be a child when adults make life-changing decisions for them and even put them at risk to give them a better future.
German History Museums 