Digital home cinema: The GDR in the private film recordings

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Stasi, the wall and a car called “Trabant”. These terms many people, when they think of the Communist dictatorship in East Germany. The everyday life was a very different story. Often as in the West.

The project sounds bulky: “Open the Memory Box”. What kind of memories it remains open to debate. Also if you click on the same name Website. The home page is extremely designed to be economical: a flickering black Background in the middle of the English name of the archive in thick yellow letters. The Whole seems at first glance puzzling. If you are flying to, finally, the word “Info”, finally learns more:

  • “The largest digital collection of private GDR-narrow movies”
  • 415 hours, roles, overall length 2.283 film
  • Historical Period: 1947-1990
  • 149 families from 102 locations

These are the key statistics of 2013 a project was launched to “Open the Memory Box”. The idea comes from Alberto Herskovits and Laurence McFalls. A documentary filmmaker, the other a political scientist is. Both were born in the year of the Berlin wall in 1961, far away from each other – Herskovits in Argentina, McFalls in the United States. 50 years later, they met on a football field in Berlin. Their shared professional interest: the division of Germany and its consequences.

(East-)German life: vacation, wedding, child

Soon they came up with the idea of the more or less official representation and Interpretation of the DDR counter: “history from below” is the name film-makers Herskovits the approach in an interview with Deutsche Welle. Everyday life, as people experienced, especially in Private, that’s about it. Holiday, wedding, child, under such key words, the black-and-white and colored films call. What unites the original material: It is completely without sound.

Vacation somewhere on a beach by the Baltic sea in the GDR – the picture could also originate from the West

The older the recordings are, the harder they can be geographically assigned. Many movies could also come from the West. The beach holiday on the Baltic sea at the North sea as well. Children playing in the garden and there is everywhere. Alberto Herskovits was the long-standing Views of the material, getting back the experience, “the fact that we are much more like us than foreign.”

No trivialisation of the GDR, but appreciation of life

This seemingly banal insight of the division of Germany was the 45 years to 1990, but then it always seems to be forgotten. “Open the Memory Box” is not but the attempt to trivialize the GDR in retrospect, or even enhance, stresses Herskovits. “If anything, it is about the everyday life and the common ground upgrade.” On films from the West, you would have seen maybe status symbols, “more expensive cars and more elegant apartments”.

Laurence McFalls, Professor at the Université de Montréal in Canada, holds the narrow-films for the incentive, “again reflect on the past and to speak”. Unfortunately, there is in the West, still a great prejudice against the East, he says. And if there were no bias, it is ignorance. The people in the East were often “despised”. McFalls hopes to make his project a small contribution, “that the people closer”.

The slightly different views of the world youth festival 1973 games

The McFalls but not only similarities, but also the insight that “as things were, the were different.” In the now online to view movies is also typical of the socialist scenes and designs: monotone prefabricated or mass marches such as the world youth festival in 1973, playing in East Berlin.

The world festival of youth in 1973, was not only a propagandist skills, but also a large-scale private event

Complements the films are witnesses to time comments of those of which the films are derived or which are to be seen in. “Stories” is how the project initiators of this supplementary information. The soundless of the Original classified footage like in a documentary by a voice from the Off. Sometimes music is heard.

“We saw nothing but happy people”

The historian Frank Bösch find this combination fascinating. “It goes beyond the purely Scientific, in addition to, it has something playful.” On the one hand, there is the “official memory”, on the other hand, the “popular”. The films showed the “ordinary life”. How people celebrated, holiday made, the everyday saw. The breaking common perceptions, says the Director of the Leibniz-Institute for contemporary historical research in Potsdam: “We saw nothing but happy people.”

But of course, this is only a part of the GDR. Now it is a matter of these films to be classified. Bösch hopes to work in education new ideas in dealing with the history of the GDR. In the East German dictatorship Much was controlled and monitored, but of course, there have been spaces. The movies are ideally suited to recognize these spaces in more detail and to evaluate, so the historian: “you give incentive to have a discussion about that.”