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Das DDR Handbuch / The East German Handbook
Life behind the Iron Curtain
The East German collection of the Wende Museum
For 40 years, the Cold War dominated the world stage. East and West Germany stood at the frontlines of the global confrontation, symbolized by the infamous Berlin Wall, which separated lovers, friends, families, coworkers, and compatriots.
The Wende Museum in Los Angeles, California, is named after the period of change immediately following the wall's destruction. It was established in 2002 to study the visual and material culture of the former Eastern Bloc, and, with physical and psychic distance, to foster multiple perspectives on this multilayered history that continues to shape our world.
This encyclopedic volume features around 2000 items from its extraordinary collections. Based on our XL-sized volume, this edition includes a full spectrum of art, archives, and artifacts from socialist East Germany official symbols and dissident expressions, the spectacular and the routine, the mass-produced and the handmade, the funny and the tragic.
Accompanying these remnants of a now-vanished world are texts from scholars and specialists from across Europe, Canada, and the United States, with themes ranging from the secret police to sexuality, from monuments to mental-mapping.
More than 800 pages, featuring around 2000 objects. A smaller, more accessible version of our XL-sized volume, the most comprehensive overview of GDR visual and material culture to date. Several dozen images of everyday life and public events from the most famous GDR photographers.
From November 18, 2017, visit the Wende Musem at its expanded campus in Culver City's Armory Building, a site originally created in preparation for World War III but re-designed by Michael Boyd, Christian Kienapfel, and Benedikt Taschen to welcome its 100,000+ collection of artifacts.
"It's as mundane and kitsch a view of history as you could imagine, yet captures the daily reality of life behind the Iron Curtain in delightful and sometimes heart-breaking details."
-- The Daily Telegraph, London
Text in English and German
The East German collection of the Wende Museum
For 40 years, the Cold War dominated the world stage. East and West Germany stood at the frontlines of the global confrontation, symbolized by the infamous Berlin Wall, which separated lovers, friends, families, coworkers, and compatriots.
The Wende Museum in Los Angeles, California, is named after the period of change immediately following the wall's destruction. It was established in 2002 to study the visual and material culture of the former Eastern Bloc, and, with physical and psychic distance, to foster multiple perspectives on this multilayered history that continues to shape our world.
This encyclopedic volume features around 2000 items from its extraordinary collections. Based on our XL-sized volume, this edition includes a full spectrum of art, archives, and artifacts from socialist East Germany official symbols and dissident expressions, the spectacular and the routine, the mass-produced and the handmade, the funny and the tragic.
Accompanying these remnants of a now-vanished world are texts from scholars and specialists from across Europe, Canada, and the United States, with themes ranging from the secret police to sexuality, from monuments to mental-mapping.
More than 800 pages, featuring around 2000 objects. A smaller, more accessible version of our XL-sized volume, the most comprehensive overview of GDR visual and material culture to date. Several dozen images of everyday life and public events from the most famous GDR photographers.
From November 18, 2017, visit the Wende Musem at its expanded campus in Culver City's Armory Building, a site originally created in preparation for World War III but re-designed by Michael Boyd, Christian Kienapfel, and Benedikt Taschen to welcome its 100,000+ collection of artifacts.
"It's as mundane and kitsch a view of history as you could imagine, yet captures the daily reality of life behind the Iron Curtain in delightful and sometimes heart-breaking details."
-- The Daily Telegraph, London
Text in English and German
816 pages, Hardcover
First published December 1, 2017
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207 people want to read
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Displaying 1 - 9 of 9 reviews
April 24, 2018
A fantastic addition to anyone’s coffee table, this 800-page book is stuffed with pictures from the Deutschen Demokratischen Republik. The contents are organized by theme: everything from food to erotika, to cars (the centerfold is a Trabi, not a half-naked women), to politics, to the Stasi. Captions are in English and German.
The (two-language) essays at the start are perhaps the book’s greatest surprise: the works come from the DDR Museum established in Los Angeles, to preserve the Ossi “junk” that likely would have been bagged or sent to junkyards.
The (two-language) essays at the start are perhaps the book’s greatest surprise: the works come from the DDR Museum established in Los Angeles, to preserve the Ossi “junk” that likely would have been bagged or sent to junkyards.
August 30, 2018
from the chapter called PLASTIK Plastics:
Aversion to the plastic lifestyle raised a flag of suspicion with the authorities, who believed that such rejection signified other subversive tendencies.
Aversion to the plastic lifestyle raised a flag of suspicion with the authorities, who believed that such rejection signified other subversive tendencies.
January 20, 2018
+ Book about the Wende Museum (the German Reintegration Museum) in... L. A., California, USA.
+++ Excellent source material for that day when I will make a game about the horrors of communism.
+ The usual assortment of goods, objects, (East-German) Communist paraphenalia, all of which would be well known to the former Eastern Bloc resident. They will also see familiar to, but their meaning could easily be lost on, the Western visitor to Vommunist-themed musea in current Berlin. How can you understand the meaning of a life in plastic? (Hint: there were too few natural resources in East Germany, so the manufacturing industry had to make due with plastics, which thus acquired Party backing and became a preferred material in public discourse.)
++ Some of the better material, covering the movement of people inside East Germany and, for the chief-informants and Stachanovist-workers (uber-workers, Employee of the Year type) in the Eastern Bloc, including to (the now defunct) USSR, (the now defunct) Czechoslovakia, Hungary, Bulgaria, and Romania. (For the Romanian in me: there was even room for a Cotnari ad!)
+++ Excellent, succint text explaining various aspects of life under the Communist regime in East Germany. Some of the text covers aspects little known to the outsider, such as the intra-culture revolution when coffee got rationed (1977, due to a drop of produce in the world coffee market), the personal and work-collective scrapbooks, the ubiquitous hope in lotto (state lottery), the maps carefully crafted to avoid the Western locations and names, the state fight for IP rights on the Lufthansa name, the surprisingly good technology and especially computer (Robotron) programmes (but the book does not acknowledge the level of intellectual theft this technology was built on), etc.
++ We also get the boad-strokes through which the Central Planning Bureau, more or less subservient to the Russian regime, was trying to control the small-world of East Germany: the internal police, the state-controlled arts and crafts, the (re)building program that brought everyone to the city (surprisingly, against Russian desire to make Germany a country of peasants, thus unable to start a new world war), the armed forces hidden behind the guise of peace, the depiction of American imperialism, the focus on sports (and, like the 2000s Russia, on state-sponsored doping), etc.
-- The murderous regime gets a bit of a free-ride, and the dark undertones appear only when the book addresses the ubiquitous alcoholism and personal hide-outs available to (pseudo-)intellectuals.
+++ Excellent source material for that day when I will make a game about the horrors of communism.
+ The usual assortment of goods, objects, (East-German) Communist paraphenalia, all of which would be well known to the former Eastern Bloc resident. They will also see familiar to, but their meaning could easily be lost on, the Western visitor to Vommunist-themed musea in current Berlin. How can you understand the meaning of a life in plastic? (Hint: there were too few natural resources in East Germany, so the manufacturing industry had to make due with plastics, which thus acquired Party backing and became a preferred material in public discourse.)
++ Some of the better material, covering the movement of people inside East Germany and, for the chief-informants and Stachanovist-workers (uber-workers, Employee of the Year type) in the Eastern Bloc, including to (the now defunct) USSR, (the now defunct) Czechoslovakia, Hungary, Bulgaria, and Romania. (For the Romanian in me: there was even room for a Cotnari ad!)
+++ Excellent, succint text explaining various aspects of life under the Communist regime in East Germany. Some of the text covers aspects little known to the outsider, such as the intra-culture revolution when coffee got rationed (1977, due to a drop of produce in the world coffee market), the personal and work-collective scrapbooks, the ubiquitous hope in lotto (state lottery), the maps carefully crafted to avoid the Western locations and names, the state fight for IP rights on the Lufthansa name, the surprisingly good technology and especially computer (Robotron) programmes (but the book does not acknowledge the level of intellectual theft this technology was built on), etc.
++ We also get the boad-strokes through which the Central Planning Bureau, more or less subservient to the Russian regime, was trying to control the small-world of East Germany: the internal police, the state-controlled arts and crafts, the (re)building program that brought everyone to the city (surprisingly, against Russian desire to make Germany a country of peasants, thus unable to start a new world war), the armed forces hidden behind the guise of peace, the depiction of American imperialism, the focus on sports (and, like the 2000s Russia, on state-sponsored doping), etc.
-- The murderous regime gets a bit of a free-ride, and the dark undertones appear only when the book addresses the ubiquitous alcoholism and personal hide-outs available to (pseudo-)intellectuals.
October 3, 2018
Taschen books make me happy.
As is usual, as an art book, Taschen is super generous with text, making it not only a pleasure to look at, but to actually read as well.
This book is basically a tour through the Wende Museum, which I now no longer need to see. There is an amazing amount of info and images stuffed in here.
Interested in the GDR? Like Art? Think it is neat to know how people lived in a country that only lasted 40 years? Get the book. I promise you will be impressed.
As is usual, as an art book, Taschen is super generous with text, making it not only a pleasure to look at, but to actually read as well.
This book is basically a tour through the Wende Museum, which I now no longer need to see. There is an amazing amount of info and images stuffed in here.
Interested in the GDR? Like Art? Think it is neat to know how people lived in a country that only lasted 40 years? Get the book. I promise you will be impressed.
May 5, 2020
A great book on the DDR, providing insight into how things worked in the former communist country. Filled with illustrations, the book really gives you an idea of the material culture of East Germany, as well as how day-to-day things worked. Chapters touch on everything from DEFA movies to Amiga Records, from Space fever to erotica, from Trabants to VoPos. Definitely a great study of this "small republic."
September 4, 2025
داس د.د.ر یا همون «جمهوری دمکراتیک آلمانی»، مجموعهی بقایای آثار مرتبط با آلمان شرقیه که از کلکسیون های شخصی و موزهها جمعآوری شده. کتاب به بخشهای مختلف آلمان شرقی و فرهنگ حاکم بر اون در سطوح مختلف میپردازه. تصاویر کمیاب از طرز پوشش، پوسترهای تبلیغاتی، طراحی وسایل بازی، کتابها، پروپاگاندای حکومتی، ابزار جاسوسی، محصولات تکنولوژیک مثل دوربین عکاسی و ساعت و خیلی چیزهای دیگه که اکثر بین سالهای دههی پنجاه تا ۱۹۸۹ و فروریختن دیوار برلین جمعآوری شده اند.
عناوین بعضی از فصلها:
روابط بینالملل، طراحی لباسهای ورزشی، غذا، پورنوگرافی، مجلات زنان، لوازم خانگی، جشنهای دولتی، موسیقی، سینما.
عناوین بعضی از فصلها:
روابط بینالملل، طراحی لباسهای ورزشی، غذا، پورنوگرافی، مجلات زنان، لوازم خانگی، جشنهای دولتی، موسیقی، سینما.
January 15, 2021
It was like a weird Argos catalogue from the uncanny valley
September 28, 2023
It’s just a bit of a photo encyclopedia with captions, but the information was solid and casted a good picture of day to day life in the GDR.
November 18, 2023
Voor Ossi nostalgici. Hoe eenvoudig leek het leven zonder keuzestress.
Displaying 1 - 9 of 9 reviews