How I spent my Christmas vacation

Looking for ways to spend time with my family this Christmas season, I decided to try my hand at the medium of felt buildings. My partner and daughter were working on seasonally-themed structures, but I figured GDR modern structures might benefit from the felt treatment . . .

First up, was a recreation of the “Maple Leaf” canteen in central East Berlin. The building’s distinctive roof was the trademark design of the iconic GDR architect Ulrich Müther and its shape gave the building its name. The canteen opened in 1973 and could seat up to 880 diners at once with its clientele coming from local schools and workplaces. Sadly, the “Maple Leaf” fell to the wrecking ball in 2000.

Field Trip: Berlin / Friedrichshain

This past May, I was able to visit Berlin and spent part of my time there exploring the area around People’s Park Friedrichshain and what was Lenin Square. This GDR-era still resonates strongly in this part of the former East Berlin, so join me as I go in search of these sites.

Field Trip: Wilhelm-Pieck-Stadt Guben

Earlier this year, I was able to travel to the German-Polish border region southeast of Berlin to the town of Guben. In GDR times, Guben was an important centre for textile production and known as “Wilhelm-Pieck-Stadt Guben”, an honorific paying tribute to the GDR’s first, and only, president who was born there. These days, the town is perhaps best known, if at all, as one of Germany’s “oldest” municipalities, a result of the collapse of the region’s industry and relocation of many from its younger generations. Not surprisingly, perhaps, there is a still considerable GDR-era imprint on the town and that’s what I went to find on this field trip.

Field Trip: Frankfurt / Oder

Join the GDR Objectified on a field trip to Frankfurt / Oder, a city one-hour east of Berlin on the German-Polish border. The East German era has left considerable traces in the city and we’ll seek some of them out here.

Field Trip: Berlin / Marzahn

The GDR Objectified visits Marzahn, a socialist-era housing project on the eastern edge of Berlin, to seek out GDR-era public art scattered throughout the estate.

Field Trip: Neues Deutschland (Berlin/Friedrichshain)

 

In May 2019, The GDR Objectified ventured to Berlin’s Friedrichshain district to seek out the building housing Neues Deutschland (New Germany), a left-wing daily newspaper founded as the official organ of the GDR’s ruling Socialist Unity Party (SED). Join us as we seek out remnants of the East German past on site and explore the paper’s history.

Field Trip: Chemnitz / Karl-Marx-Stadt

Happy New Year! I’ve managed to get a new GDR Objectified Field Trip together and this time it’s to Chemnitz / Karl-Marx-Stadt. Check it out at: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3xj2Dwjz5go 

Field Trip: Halle an der Saale, Pt. I

Join GDR Objectified for this Field Trip to Halle an der Saale where we look for remnants of East Germany in the cityscape. In this the first of two parts, we’ll explore the city centre before heading out to the town’s western end to begin exploring Neustadt, the GDR’s fourth “socialist city”.

 

Walter Womacka and East Berlin’s Socialist Face

One could argue that no one defined the face of “Berlin – Capital of the German Democratic Republic” more than visual artist Walter Womacka (1925 – 2010). A favourite of GDR leader Walter Ulbricht during the mid- to late-1960s during which East Berlin received much of its socialist makeover, Womacka was a key protagonist in the GDR’s “Kunst am Bau” (literally “art on building”) movement. This  sought to ideologically mark East German cityscapes through large-scale, agit-prop artworks and Womacka’s creations graced a number of prominent buildings in the East German capital.

Eastern side of Walter Womacka’s 1964 mosaic “Our Life” on Berlin’s House of Teachers building (photo: M. Bomke).

Interestingly, more 28 years after the fall of the Wall, many of Womacka’s works remain intact and have even found a place in the iconography of present day Berlin. Given the ideologically charged debates around the legacy of much GDR-commissioned public art in the years following German unification in 1990, this was by no means a certainty. I think the reason for this lies in the way Womacka combined the aesthetic language of socialist realism with elements of folk art, an approach which allows many viewers to overlook the overtly propagandistic of much of his public art.

State of the Art and the Art of the State – Panorama Museum, Bad Frankenhausen

First-day issue postcard from Deutsche Post in honour of Reformation-era revolutionary “Thomas Müntzer” with an excerpt from Werner Tübke’s masterpiece, Early Bourgeois Revolution in Germany, as found in the Panorama Museum, Bad Frankenhausen.

From the outside, it looks like nothing so much an 80s-era sports arena that has been placed quixotically atop a small mountain in the Thuringian countryside. However, the Panorama Museum in Bad Frankenhausen is in fact one of the few manifestations of GDR cultural policy to have survived the transition to a unified Germany essentially intact. The museum houses one item, a massive panorama-style painting by East German painter Werner Tübke which bears the name Early Bourgeois Revolution in Germany (Frühbürgerliche Revolution in Deutschland). Measuring 123 m in length by 14 m high, this monumental work includes scenes from the German Peasants’ War, a series of uprisings that took place across German-speaking Central Europe between 1524 and 1526 and which leaders of the Socialist Unity Party (SED) were eager to present as an historical antecedent to their “Workers and Peasants’ State”. Indeed the clear ideological intent with which the Panorama Museum was created makes its continued existence all the more remarkable.

Panorama Museum above Bad Frankenhausen (Goertz Verlag, 1985).