Urbanities,
Vol. 3
·
No 2
·
November 2013
© 2013
Urbanities
74
irrelevant when one considers the wave of
Ostalgie
9
that has hit Berlin over the last several
years. This project was aimed at making up for the under-representation of daily life in East
Germany in the local communist memorial landscape. Thus, the museum offers an experience
of daily East German life by welcoming the visitor in a reconstructed typical GDR space. The
whole experience is animated with numerous theatrical and interactive devices.
The memorial institutions devoted to the communist past are now trying to satisfy
tourists’ need for leisure and culture, their interest in looking for ‘the red Berlin’. Cities have
long become valued destinations for tourists. Indeed, long stays at sea or mountain resorts
have been partly replaced by short trips to the city or to the countryside. ‘[These] new tourist
flows [become] a major resource in the development of areas, particularly urban ones’
(Bonard, Felli 2008: 2). The German capital thus aims at intensifying a specific type of
tourism: the historic one. Thanks to its tourist appeal the city has more chances to be seen as
dynamic setting boasting an interesting past, and thus it attracts the attention of investors and
potential new residents (Harvey 2004). From this point of view, the musealisation of the GDR
is an instrument in the promotion of the city and in the enhancement of its global territory.
Does the Re-use of Communist Objects and Icons Lead to New Forms of Identification?
It appears that the local authorities have become gradually aware of the fact that the past of
East Berlin represents an element of the whole city’s identity, as well as a potential for its
tourist appeal. In other words, they have realised the profitability of certain aspects of the
GDR – undeniably, a card to play from a commercial viewpoint. Next, I shall explore how the
interest in Berlin’s communist past has led to a process of commodification of the past.
Many people have started to exploit an imaginary vision of the East in the broad sense
by opening thematic bars, which sometimes go well beyond the simple evocation of the GDR.
An example is the CCCP club in Mitte, a club resembling a kitsch saloon bar, which was
originally established on the site of a former office issuing visas to people who wished to
travel to Western Europe and to Soviet Union nationals.
10
Another example is
Die Tagung
in
the Friedrichshain
district
.
This is a
bar decorated with portraits of great figures in the history
of the Soviet and East German communism. Indeed, it is not uncommon to find such cafés in
big east European cities (think, for example, of the
Propaganda bar
in Krakow).
The Café Sybille, which opened on the Karl-Marx-Allee in the 1960s, was taken over
in the late 1990s by an association helping people suffering from psychological disorders to
integrate into the labour market. This café sits next to the saloon bar. The latter is decorated
with East German furniture and includes a little museum on the history of the Karl-Marx-
Allee. The exhibition mostly includes photographs and texts, but also displays East German
objects and toys dating from the 1950s. The visitor can make a virtual visit of the former
9
This is a German term referring to nostalgia for aspects of life in East Germany. It derives from the
words Ost (east) and Nostalgie (nostalgia). The concept of Ostalgia designates ‘a positive retrospective
judgment on the former GDR which partly refers to a rational comparison between the skills of the
GDR and the skills of the FRG […], and partly refers to an emotional idealisation hiding the well-
known negative aspects of the GDR regime’. (Neller and Thaidigsmann, 2002: 425).
10
Since a couple of years the CCCP is located on the corner of Linienstrasse and Rosenthaler Strasse.
