1949    1990

East Germany Revisited

Resources on the German Democratic Republic bzw. die Neue Bundesländer

Introduction to Patriotic German Musicology

MIDI file of the GDR National anthem, Auferstanden aus Ruinen (4 KB).	Rare recording in MP3 format of the GDR anthem's music and words together (2.8 MB).	The words (in German and in English) to the first verse of the GDR anthem.	Link to words and music for the FRG's anthem, Das Deutschlandlied (music in RealAudio format).

Web Sites, Research Centers, & Library Collections

Eastern German Studies Group Homepage

Eastern German News -- The Newsletter of the Eastern German Studies Group

The DEFA Film Library at the University of Massachusetts

GDR Special Collections at Stanford University

Subject: Hanns Eisler -- Web site honoring the student of Arnold Schönberg who composed the GDR's national anthem

International Brecht Society 

Universities in the New Federal States

Humboldt Universität zu Berlin

Friedrich-Schiller-Universität Jena 

Universität Leipzig

Universität Rostock 

Universität Greifswald

Newsmedia

Freitag is the post-Wende successor to the GDR's excellent cultural weekly Sonntag.
Writer Christoph Hein is a co-publisher.

Also try the Berliner Zeitung's Kiosk Page, with links to German newspapers, magazines, and TV broadcasters.

Some Other Eastern German newspapers online:   

Select a title: jungeWelt Sächsische Zeitung Schweriner Volkszeitung via Hansanet

There's no more DDR-1 and Der schwarze Kanal lives only in infamy, but if you want that old-time thrill of pointing your antenna West, sit back, open a Radeberger Pils, and watch

Die Tagesschau on RealAudio.

Ostdeutsche Landeskunde

Lesson One: The Trabant

Select a Trabant site: Images of engine cross-sections! Profile of the 1965 Trabant P60!! German who love Trabis (www.trabi.de)!!!!!

Lesson Two: The German Language

Comparative Dictionary of Neufünfländisch and Bundesdeutsch
"Damit auch Wessis in Zukunft nicht immer so unwissend danebenstehen,
wenn sich 2 Ossis unterhalten"

Lesson Three: Ostalgia

For a Western version, here is an interesting memoir of one American man's visits to the East. (I should write one of these sometime....)

Here is a fantastic photo-essay by Ulrich Wüst showing Berlin (East of course) during its transformation throughout the 1990s. Find a broadband connection and look at the whole thing. Annett Gröschner, a Kommilitonin of mine in Frank Hörnigk's Heiner Müller seminar in 1988, has written an essay on Wüst's Berlin photography, and about the quick, nearly total disappearance of a city that was so long on ice. (She also has a recent novel on that theme.)




I'll bet you miss Erich Honecker. Here's a page full of useless information about Honecker and his era of "unsr' Deutsch' Demokratsche Rebbublik." It includes this surprising picture of Onkel Erich with "Spitzbart" (Walter Ulbricht) in happier days.

Lesson Four: Politics

The former-Socialist Unity Party (SED) is very, very sorry about Stalinism and all that. As the Partei des demokratischen Sozialismus (PDS), it promises to uphold the bourgeois constitution and put Gregor Gysi on TV a lot.

The Christian Democratic Union (CDU) is very, very sorry about promising the East "blühenden Landschaften" back in 1990. It promises "blühenden Landschaften" in the East if it ever gets re-elected. The Party also denies ever having been led by Helmut Kohl, Germany's largest and most unapologetic money launderer.

The Social Democratic Party (SPD) is very, very sorry that it was out of power for so long. Under Gerhard Schroeder and his current wife, the SPD promises to remind the CPU who Helmut Kohl was, and to try to forget who Gregor Gysi is.


Bündnis 90 / Die Grüne has no need to apologize for anything. Indeed, Green Foreign Minister Joschka Fischer apparently feels that his youthful experience as a violent lefty uniquely suits him to negotiate with Yassir Arafat.


Um, the Freie Demokratische Partei. Huh?



Die Republikaner may lack a charismatic, impressively Hitleresque leader like France's Jean-Marie Le Pen or Austria's Jörg Haider, but their website is a hoot. Check it out. Too bad most people educated enough to use a computer don't want to be Neo-Nazis.

Lesson Five: Geography

These sites provide information about cities:

Select your next tourist destination: East (Yes, East!) Berlin Leipzig Dresden Gera Weimar Wittenberg Rostock Jena Greifswald Stralsund Halle Magdeburg Gotha Neubrandenburg Potsdam Frankfurt an der Oder Cottbus Eisenach Erfurt Chemnitz Görlitz Meissen Freiberg Weißenfels Wismar Neuruppin Dessau Eisenhüttenstadt Eberswalde Beeskow Torgau Genthin Stendal Güstrow Brandenburg Parchim Strausberg Schwedt Oranienburg Ribnitz-Damgarten Insel Rügen Anklam Wolgast Insel Usedom Demmin

Or search Städteseiten Deutschland.

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Page created March 14, 1998; last updated 25 June 2001.