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You are here: Home Leisure Arts & Culture Celebrating communist kitsch

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29/07/2003Celebrating communist kitsch

The former East German parliament is
scheduled to be demolished
Anyone hankering after bad food, off-hand restaurant service and surly border guards along with the chance to sit in a communist kitsch designed living room could soon have their wishes fulfilled. More than 13 years after the fall of the Berlin Wall, a German company has decided to capitalise on the region's yearning for its communist past by creating an East German theme park. Nostalgia is a sure sign of economic stress. In Germany's former communist east so-called 'Ostalgie' (blending nostalgia with the German word for east) has been on the rise for years as unemployment has grown and the economy has stalled. One in five east Germans are without work, with the unemployment rate in the east soaring during the cold winter months to stand at 19.9 percent — almost double the rate in Germany’s west. In some small towns in the economically hard-press eastern part of the nation, unemployment is much higher with companies that shut down after the fall of communism have never been replaced, consequently leaving most of the town’s workforce living off welfare. It is also a far cry from the “blooming landscapes” that former Chancellor Helmut Kohl promised the east in the days following the implosion of communism. This is despite the vast millions of public funds that have been thrown at the east with economists worried that large sections of the region could turn into a sort of German mezzogiorno. Relations between the eastern and western parts of the nation have never been good with signs now emerging that many in the more prosperous part of the nation in the west are no longer prepared to address the problems of the east. The theme park “We don’t want to poke fun at what it used to be like – we want to provide a truly historical experience,” said Susanne Reich, spokeswoman for Massine Productions GmbH, the company which is planning the theme park. Koepenick in Berlin’s south east has been named as a possible site for the theme park, which will also give visitors the chance to sample life “over there” as westerners once called the east. There is talk that the theme park will include an East German-style cinema showing East German films. Few east Germans want to return to the totalitarian days, but a wave of products from the former communist east has been finding their way onto shop shelves. At the same time, a string of so-called “Heimat” museums have sprung up across the eastern part of the country with exhibitions of everyday life during in the now somewhat brief of the German Democratic Republic (DDR). Other remnants of communist East German life have largely disappeared from the unified German landscape with the plans well underway to replace one of the last prominent DDR buildings, the East German parliament in central Berlin, with a replica of the Kaiser’s palace. Trendy communism In the meantime, however, communism has become cool among younger Germans with communist youth shirts now very fashionable and communist-style buildings converted into trendy night spots. Once known as Stalinallee, the long stretch of road where the journey from east Berlin to Warsaw begins and which was built in 50 years ago in honour of Stalin, is now a trendy address, housing several chic apartments. Even the Trabant, the spluttering foul-smelling car that became a symbol of life in communist East Germany has become a collector’s item. At the same time, Rotkaeppchen, a sweet East German champagne and Sandman, an East German stuffed animal that was beloved on both sides of the Wall have become enormously popular in unified Germany. But it has taken the enormous success of a new film, Goodbye, Lenin, which is essentially about the lost world of the DDR to force business to realise that there might be money to be made from Ostalgie. Currently topping the German film charts, Goodbye, Lenin, tells the story of young man who shortly after the popular uprising that swept away more than four decades of communism brings the east back to life in his small flat for the sake of his sick mother, who doctors say should not suffer from any shocks. One question remains open about the theme park – what currency will be accepted? Will be the old East German Ostmarks, the euro and D-Marks? After all it was the hope of replacing the worthless Ostmarks with D-Marks, which seemed to be a major driving force for many of those intent on abandoning the DDR. March 2003


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