Seeing what it was like to live in a communist dictatorship is one of the attractions of a visit to Berlin, where two museums - one commercial, one state-managed - offer a hands-on look at a world that withered away 25 years ago.
The commercial one, the DDR Museum, located below street level near the main city museums, has been a big success with tourists.
The German government venture, at the Kulturbrauerei, opened last year. It is more sober and less central, but has one lure: it's free.
The Kulturbrauerei facility shows how eastern Germans lived their everyday lives, between the collectivism of the communist system and individual attempts to carve out a tiny niche of personal privacy.
With 800 exhibits, 200 documents, films and sound recordings and biographical reports, the exhibition shows the often tense co-existence between the demands of the political system and the individual life of the average citizen.
Communism imposed its ideology, control and coercion on the entire population.
The exhibition shows how many citizens of East Germany, or the DDR, sought to maintain privacy via "internal emigration".
This frame of mind is reflected in some of the display items, including an original dacha, or small countryside garden house.
There's also a tiny communist Trabant car modified with a tent annex for camping.
These items helped people gain some free breathing space, because in the schools and factories of the DDR, even recreational activities were often supervised by "mass organisations" and workers' collectives.
As the museum placards note, these organisations were meant to foster a feeling of togetherness and cohesion - but at the same time they exerted social control."
That world as East Germans knew it came to an end on November 9, 1989 when the Berlin Wall came down, taking communism with it.
Share
