Photos depicting life in the German Democratic Republic.

[Omsk]

Hello comrades,im not sure weather you saw this web-site before,or this is your first time,anyhow,it has a great number of photographs from the GDR,and all its periods,many of the photos are of East Berlin,and some of the other big cities of the GDR.
You can find a lot of information,and photos there.Enjoy!

http://www.ddr-fotos.de/gdr_photos.htm

[Red Future]

The photographs of people enjoying themselves at the seaside and the excellent public infrastructure in are an excellent resource when arguing against the propaganda that the GDR was not brutal and punitive to its workforce.

[The Vegan Marxist]

Here's a great article written by Stephen Gowans on the GDR:

http://gowans.wordpress.com/2009/10/25/democracy-east-germany-and-the-berlin-wall/

[caramelpence]

The photographs of people enjoying themselves at the seaside and the excellent public infrastructure in are an excellent resource when arguing against the propaganda that the GDR was not brutal and punitive to its workforce.

I don't think so somehow. Excuse the violation of Godwin's law, but I don't think it would be that difficult to find pictures of workers in Nazi Germany having fun in mass exercises or at any of the other leisure activities (like gliding, for example) which were organized by the regime. This is especially true of people having fun at seaside resorts, which were made available in Nazi Germany, and were obviously present in other countries after the war as well - France witnessed a boom in resorts like Club Med which were made accessible for middle-income workers for the first time. If La Chinoise is anything to go by, they were organized according to the layout of the death camps, but maybe that's another thread. The fact is that smiling is a natural human reaction, especially when people know that they're being filmed or photographed. That you can get pictures of people smiling is not indicative of whether a government is good or bad, it cannot be used as a basis for political or historical judgements.

[Omsk]

but I don't think it would be that difficult to find pictures of workers in Nazi Germany having fun in mass exercises or at any of the other leisure activities (like gliding, for example) which were organized by the regime.

Well,i don't like the fact that you brought up Nazi Germany,but,you at least excused yourself,still,any comparison of the GDR and Nazi Germany is a grave mistake and an insult to a East German.


The fact is that smiling is a natural human reaction, especially when people know that they're being filmed or photographed.

Some of these people don't know they are being photographed,not all pictures were done by cameras,so some of the people were actually un-aware that they were photographed.


That you can get pictures of people smiling is not indicative of whether a government is good or bad, it cannot be used as a basis for political or historical judgements.

You missed the entire point,these people were not tortured or kept under slave-like control,they are having fun,they are enjoying themselves along their little kids,living normal lives and working for a decent living.

[A Revolutionary Tool]

Well,i don't like the fact that you brought up Nazi Germany,but,you at least excused yourself,still,any comparison of the GDR and Nazi Germany is a grave mistake and an insult to a East German.You missed the entire point of what he said.




Some of these people don't know they are being photographed,not all pictures were done by cameras,so some of the people were actually un-aware that they were photographed.
And what he said was people will smile, that it's a natural reaction. He didn't say that people only smiled because they were on camera, but nice try at a straw man. I bet that once in a while a person in a Nazi concentration camp smiled, we wouldn't say it's a grand place though because you caught someone in a Nazi concentration camp on camera smiling.



You missed the entire point,these people were not tortured or kept under slave-like control,they are having fun,they are enjoying themselves along their little kids,living normal lives and working for a decent living.I think you missed the entire point here of what he was saying. Which is you can't just take pictures of people having fun and of buildings and then say "see everything is alright". It's called propaganda man, you should feel dumb for feeding into it.

[caramelpence]

Well,i don't like the fact that you brought up Nazi Germany,but,you at least excused yourself,still,any comparison of the GDR and Nazi Germany is a grave mistake and an insult to a East German.

No-one is suggesting that the DDR and Nazi Germany were alike in their political institutions or historical circumstances; nonetheless, the point is that people smiling in photographs does not tell us much about the kind of society in which they live, and that is shown by the fact that people smiled (on camera, whether they were aware of cameras being there or not) in Nazi Germany as well as in the DDR and that it would probably be possible to find evidence of people smiling and enjoying themselves under any recent government, archive materials permitting. I don't know of any historian who actually thinks that the DDR was a case of the whole population being subject to permanent duress and coercion, and, if anything, commentators seem more willing to recognize the extent of contemporary nostalgia for the DDR than for other Eastern European countries during their respective periods of Communist Party government - I am sure you will find that the vast majority of newspapers or current affairs magazines have run features on "ostalgie" in the recent past whereas this is not likely to be the case for countries like Romania, for example.

On a more scholarly note, I actually find it ironic that you object so strongly to comparisons between the DDR and Nazi Germany, because a large part of the DDR's official conception of nationhood (which remained official insofar as the vast majority of the DDR's citizens continued to identify as Germans rather than as a members of a specifically East German nation, which was promoted by state actors from the 1970s onwards) was based on an envisaged anti-fascist heritage, such that it was deeply rooted in recent history and, one might argue, involved an implicit comparison with Nazi Germany.

[Gorilla]

I've got several positive things to say about the DDR, but I gotta say these pictures look pretty bleak to me.

[StalinFanboy]

I can go to a ghetto in the US and take a bunch of pictures all over and point out how the US is actually a third world country. Then I can go to the Oakland hills or Hollywood or somewhere and take pictures and point out how the US is actually a paradise where everyone owns mansions and drives like 11 cars.

[Born in the USSR]

In the 1970's the GDR (a tiny country ) Olympic team won the second place team (the first had the USSR). The GDR specialized in gymnastics, athletics, winter sports. Excellent sports schools proveded those victories,nearly everyone in the GDR were going in for sport .In the GDR in each school was a pool.

There was a compulsory military service in the GDR. The service begins after the school. They served one (1) year. After the service a young man were handed the keys to a new apartment and the doors of universities and colleges were opened for him.

Citizens of the GDR had 2 month of vacation, they could travel around the socialist camp and the developing countries. It was difficult to travel to West Germany, that's true.

As for political freedom, I will say that Honecker, when he came to power, declared that socialism must prove his appeal. Therefore, the GDR under Honecker really was the freest country of the socialist camp. There was no religious persecution,there was a multiparty system, rock music floureshed there, they had even erotic magazines,only drugs were persecuted.

I already wrote that it was difficult to go from East Germany to West Germany. Yes, it was so, but for the common man. But if you have been part of rock bands, sport delegation or other organizations - no problems. Too many GDR citizens came in such way to W.Germany and stayed there;this facts greatly distressed the GDR leadership. And me as Soviet, too.:thumbdown:

It was easy for GDR citizens to travel to Latin American and African countries, the so-called third world countries. For example, in the personal command of Che Guevara were Young Communists of East Germany. And they did it very simply: they came to the Komsomol Committee and said that they want to fight against the world imperialism,and after the necessary training they drove off.

[Red Commissar]

Eh, I know if I could call much of these propaganda shots. There are a few shots of rallies here and there with banners, but there are other shots of some empty streets and dull architecture, or people eating rather bland food. Like so

http://www.ddr-fotos.de/ddr/2_2_7_5.jpg
http://www.ddr-fotos.de/ddr/ddr_136.jpg
http://www.ddr-fotos.de/ddr/ddr_293.jpg

And for "propaganda", the last thing you'd want to do is to take a picture of someone trying to leave the country.

http://www.ddr-fotos.de/ddr/ddr_042.jpg

I think they are pretty normal pictures. The only ones I really found smacking of "propaganda" or staged shots were those that involved the children.

One I found interesting is this one:

http://www.ddr-fotos.de/ddr/ddr_166.jpg

They look like apartment blocks to me, but they have flags of nations including Uruguay, Brazil, the US (!), and some others I can't see towards the back.

This little rally of some sort of "Colonial Conference", if I read the description right.

http://www.ddr-fotos.de/ddr/3_3_29_1.jpg

I can't read the banner though.

[Rusty Shackleford]

because no governments besides despotic "communist" ones take self-benefiting photos.

[Red Future]

The argument I was trying to put forward was that the GDR didn't bundle its workforce into inferior housing and slave them away in the interests of the Socialist Unity Party they did concern themselves with the working classes welfare ..more than the insulting "bread and circuses" attempts by the Nazis in KDF

[Delenda Carthago]

because no governments besides despotic "communist" ones take self-benefiting photos.
no.only them is who we care about.because we expect better.

[Gorilla]

Damn, I was reading about the West German left in the 60's last night and inter alia the just freaking vast extent of Nazi holdovers in the Federal Republic. Gave me a whole new appreciation for the GDR and what they were trying to achieve. I know the East weren't exactly spotless of former NSDAP personnel either, but the extent of it wasn't nearly comparable.

I'm with sister Angela Davis on this one:

http://1.bp.blogspot.com/_tqISUN7OIsY/TG3vTQBww4I/AAAAAAAABz8/0jfB0577uw4/s1600/Bundesarchiv_Bild_183-L0911-029__Berlin__Erich_Honecker_empfangt_Angela_Davis. jpg

[Dragovich]

I'm pretty sure the many Germans who tried fleeing to West Berlin would say otherwise on how East Germany was a supposed socialist paradise. It was a repressive state and a stooge of the Soviets.

[SacRedMan]

Thanks for posting this! I searched many times for film and photo archieves of the former DDR.

[Omsk]

I'm pretty sure the many Germans who tried fleeing to West Berlin would say otherwise on how East Germany was a supposed socialist paradise.
Where did i mention it was a 'socialist paradise'?


stooge of the Soviets.

"Stooge" is a harsh word,and plus,this 'argument' has little value,as West Germany was a 'stooge' of the Imperialists.

[Dragovich]

Where did i mention it was a 'socialist paradise'?

"Stooge" is a harsh word,and plus,this 'argument' has little value,as West Germany was a 'stooge' of the Imperialists.

It wasn't Heaven on earth by any means.

I do mean East Germany being a vassal state of the Soviet Union. And as for West Germany, it was an ally. Unless you mean the hundreds of thousands of British, French and American troops in West Berlin and the rest of West Germany, it was a deterrent for a possible Soviet invasion.

[Omsk]

I do mean East Germany being a vassal state of the Soviet Union. And as for West Germany, it was an ally.
So,communist states were 'vassals' to the Soviet Union,and West Germany was an ally? Nice standards,comrade..


Unless you mean the hundreds of thousands of British, French and American troops in West Berlin and the rest of West Germany, it was a deterrent for a possible Soviet invasion.



In 1954 West Germany was included in NATO - Bonn thereby converted the state frontier into the front-line between two pact systems.

The decision on the atomic armament of the West German Bundeswehr was made in 1958 - thus, Bonn continues to aggravate the situation in Germany and Berlin. Repeatedly the annexation of the GDR is proclaimed as the official aim of Bonn policy, most recently in a statement of the Adenauer Christian Democratic Union (CDU), on 11 July 1961.

Thus did the anti-national, aggressive NATO policy create the wall which today separates the two German states and also goes through the middle of Berlin. The Bonn government and the West Berlin Senate have systematically converted West Berlin into a centre of provocation from where 90 espionage organizations, the RIAS American broadcasting station in West Berlin (Radio in American Sector) and revanchist associations organize acts of sabotage against the GDR and the other socialist countries. Through our protective measures of 13 August 1961 we have only safeguarded and strengthened that frontier which was already drawn years ago and made into a dangerous front-line by the people in Bonn and West Berlin. How high and how strongly fortified a frontier must be, depends, as is common knowledge, on the kind of relations existing between the states of each side of the frontier.


But,as always,the communist side is portrayed as the 'evil menace that wanted to consume the entire world'

[Dragovich]

Did I say all Communist states? I note that China and the former Yugoslavia did eventually break away in terms of diplomatic relations with the Soviet Union, the former turning closer to the US in terms of trade.

But yes the Communist states in eastern Europe tended to be states strictly looked over by the Soviets. After all, the Soviets did intervene in Hungary and Czechoslovakia and in Poland as well towards the end of the Cold War.

And please don't quote for Wikipedia - use actual sources.

[Omsk]

Did I say all Communist states? I note that China and the former Yugoslavia did eventually break away in terms of diplomatic relations with the Soviet Union, the former turning closer to the US in terms of trade.
Yugoslavia was against the Stalin led Soviet Union.Later,the relations got better.

But yes the Communist states in eastern Europe tended to be states strictly looked over by the Soviets.
The US did the same.

And please don't quote for Wikipedia - use actual sources.
Its not wikipedia...

[Dragovich]

Yugoslavia was against the Stalin led Soviet Union.Later,the relations got better.

The US did the same.

Its not wikipedia...

Not really. I do remember that there was a purge of Titoists - basically Communists who had a half a brain not to take much shit from the Soviet Union in the remainder of the Warsaw Pact countries. Relations didn't improve much at all.

And you forgot China.

Just because the United States did it, does that mean it's okay to do it too? Holy crap, get real. And CIA operations are nowhere near as devastating as mass invasions.