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via Vintage Ads.
The SED-Staat research group at the Free University of Berlin is currently attempting to estimate the total number of people killed while attempting to cross the inner-German border before it opened in 1989. Although such statistics have been available for a long time, they originate from different institutions and have been subject to dispute. The new research project is financed by the German government and by the governments of the German states the former border ran through.
Remembering inner-German border victims | Germany | DW.DE | 12.08.2012
According to Germany’s minister for culture and media, Bernd Neumann, the project’s focus is the people behind the statistics. Research into individuals’ stories will give the victims names and faces, thereby restoring their dignity.
“Their biographies will remind us of people of Germany were affected by the brutal SED dictatorship and the inhumane border regime,” said Neumann at a presentation on the project at the Berlin Wall Memorial.
The research should be finalized by 2015, producing a book of short biographies of the victims. It is based on the research into the victims of the Berlin Wall, which has largely been completed. The Berlin Wall Memorial includes the “Window of Remembrance” with names and photos of the dead, located in the middle of the former border zone.
Border Evacuation - East German Army Trucks Line Up to Move Furniture Out of Houses Along Bernauer Strasse in Berlin, 05/14/1905
I’m going to guess this is 1965, not 1905.
The early stages of the wall are visible here. Homes along the wall were evacuated in years following 1961 so that the windows weren’t used as escape routes for desperate East Berliners.
(via collectivehistory)
(via Wende Gelände | Sarah Schoenfeld)
SPIEGEL ONLINE: Kindergarten, school — these are places, that most people associate with their childhood. But you also photographed the Palace of the Republic, the GDR’s parliament building. How does that fit in?
Schönfeld: Many cultural events used to take place there. I was always there for children’s concerts. At the time, I thought it was chic. With all the lamps and the carpets, it was something special. That’s not the only reason why I feature the building in my series though. I wanted to establish a link between the personal and the “official” histories.
Emphasis mine, via an interview in Der Spiegel.
SPIEGEL ONLINE: Kindergarten, school — these are places, that most people associate with their childhood. But you also photographed the Palace of the Republic, the GDR’s parliament building. How does that fit in?
Schönfeld: Many cultural events used to take place there. I was always there for children’s concerts. At the time, I thought it was chic. With all the lamps and the carpets, it was something special. That’s not the only reason why I feature the building in my series though. I wanted to establish a link between the personal and the “official” histories.
Schönfeld: Many cultural events used to take place there. I was always there for children’s concerts. At the time, I thought it was chic. With all the lamps and the carpets, it was something special. That’s not the only reason why I feature the building in my series though. I wanted to establish a link between the personal and the “official” histories.
Artists Photographs Disappearing Sites of Her Childhood in Eastern Germany - SPIEGEL ONLINE
“They didn’t have anyone telling them how to skate so they just skated the way they think is right. Maybe they saw it in some sort of photo from a friend that got a magazine smuggled over,” Persiel said. (via New documentary looks at development of skateboarding culture in East Germany | PRI.ORG)
When the Berlin Wall collapsed and Germany became one again, women in the former Communist East seemed to be the big losers. They lost their jobs and their maternity and child-care benefits. And they lost the form of equality that Communism had brought: Raised in a culture where women drove cranes and studied physics, they were reduced to clichés depicting them as oversexed.
The Female Factor - 20 Years After Fall of Wall, Women of Former East Germany Thrive - NYTimes.com
