The DDR Museum, Berlin, Germany

Berlin’s DDR Museum is unique, and it chronicles the lifestyle of half of the German city of Berlin between the years 1946 and 1989. During that time, in the early 1960s, Berlin was divided by a huge concrete wall. A small area of capitalism, West Berlin, was on one side of the towering structure. On the Eastern side of the Berlin Wall, the Communists ruled everything for hundreds of miles around, in a police state known as the DDR.

Daily Life

Berlin is still in many ways a divided city, and interest in the DDR is growing year by year, so this unusual museum is gaining the status of a must-see for visitors. It’s situated just across the River Spree from Berlin Cathedral, and is tucked away below a flight of riverside steps. As its stated aim is to give a hands-on experience of how daily life was in the DDR, so there are no expensive exhibits in glass cases. Rather, there are homely things to examine – clothes, school books, furniture, ornaments. They’re stored in labelled drawers or in cupboards which visitors are encouraged to open and explore.

Good Ideas that Didn't Work

One of the museum’s main aims is to explain the ideas that drove the DDR. Many of these ideas – recycling, fitness, housing for all and community involvement – were very good ones. There’s a largesection on the Young Pioneers, a children’s organisation rather like the Scouts which offered exciting activities, companionship and gifts to children who progressed through its ranks.

There are also unexpectedly interesting movies about building and humanising the endless acres of “Plattenbauten” or concrete worker’s flats. Ugly they may have been but the museum shows that these flats abolished the shortage of housing that afflicted postwar Berlin. one of the largest exhibits is a mock-up of the interior of a typical flat, complete with books, ornaments and TV programmes. East German children were well and rigorously educated. Everyone had a job. Everyone had a place.

The Darker Side

If only it had been possible to make the utopian ideals work without bullying or coercing people to conform to them. But the museum also shows how the state’s efforts to make everyone a passive participant ultimately backfired. The choice of consumer goods was limited, and when people began wanting the kind of items they learned were in the West, the authorities tried to stop them finding out about the West.

The museum does not flinch from detailing the activities of the STASI secret police, who tried to enforce obedience by enlisting brother to spy on brother, neighbour on neighbour. It explains in detail about the Berlin wall, which was the scenes of many deaths of East Germans who were prepared to risk their lives for freedom.

The Famous "Trabi"

Perhaps the most popular exhibit in the museum is a “virtual ride” in a Trabant car. The “Trabi” was almost the only car which ordinary East German people could own. Waiting lists for it were long, often running to many years, and when it finally arrived, it was slow, ugly and inconvenient. But it was easy to maintain and many owners apparently became very attached to them – though not attached enough, apparently, to refrain from trading them in for Western cars at the first opportunity

The Trabi virtual ride takes place in a real car, complete with uncomfortable seats and primitive dashboard. The "driver" doesn't really move: he or she “steers” through a bleak concrete landscape shown on a screen in front of the car. Wouldn't those who originally designed the Trabi be surprised to find that one day Berliners would queue for the chance to ride in one, in order to view a vanished world?

DDR Museum

Karl-Liebknecht-Str. 1

right on the river Spree,

directly opposite the Berlin Cathedral

10178 Berlin

Opening hours

Monday - Sunday 10am till 8pm

Saturday 10 am till 10 pm

For a very different aspect of German tourism, check out The Christmas Fairy of Nuremberg

Trabi

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