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Soviet Chic
In German culture, ''Ostalgie'' () is nostalgia for aspects of life in Communist East Germany. It is a portmanteau of the German words '' Ost'' (east) and ''Nostalgie'' (nostalgia). Its anglicised equivalent, ostalgia (rhyming with "nostalgia"), is also sometimes used. Another term for the phenomenon is GDR nostalgia (german: DDR-Nostalgie) The term was coined by the East German standup comic in 1992. Social scientist Thomas Ahbe argues that the term ‘ostalgia’ is often misunderstood as a lack of willingness to integrate, an uproar to reverse German reunification and reinstate the GDR. However, Ostalgia is rather an integration strategy used by East Germans who wanted to retain their own original experiences, memories and values incompatible with those of the West German majority. As with other cases of Communist nostalgia, there are various motivations, whether ideology, nationalism, wistfulness for a lost sense of social status or stability, or even aesthetics or iro ...
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GDR Shirts
East Germany, officially the German Democratic Republic (GDR; german: Deutsche Demokratische Republik, , DDR, ), was a country that existed from its creation on 7 October 1949 until its dissolution on 3 October 1990. In these years the state was a part of the Eastern Bloc in the Cold War. Commonly described as a communist state, it described itself as a socialist "workers' and peasants' state".Patrick Major, Jonathan Osmond, ''The Workers' and Peasants' State: Communism and Society in East Germany Under Ulbricht 1945–71'', Manchester University Press, 2002, Its territory was administered and occupied by Soviet forces following the end of World War II—the Soviet occupation zone of the Potsdam Agreement, bounded on the east by the Oder–Neisse line. The Soviet zone surrounded West Berlin but did not include it and West Berlin remained outside the jurisdiction of the GDR. Most scholars and academics describe the GDR as a totalitarian dictatorship. The GDR was established ...
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Video
Video is an Electronics, electronic medium for the recording, copying, playback, broadcasting, and display of moving picture, moving image, visual Media (communication), media. Video was first developed for mechanical television systems, which were quickly replaced by cathode-ray tube (CRT) systems which, in turn, were replaced by flat panel displays of several types. Video systems vary in display resolution, Display aspect ratio, aspect ratio, refresh rate, color capabilities and other qualities. Analog and digital variants exist and can be carried on a variety of media, including radio broadcast, magnetic tape, optical discs, Video file format, computer files, and Streaming media, network streaming. History Analog video Video technology was first developed for mechanical television systems, which were quickly replaced by cathode-ray tube (CRT) television systems, but several new technologies for video display devices have since been invented. Video was originally excl ...
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Wolfgang Becker (director, Born 1954)
Wolfgang Becker (born 22 June 1954) is a German film director and screenwriter, best known to international audiences for his work ''Good Bye Lenin!'' (2003). Biography Becker studied Germanistics, History and American Studies at the Free University in Berlin. He followed this with a job at a sound studio in 1980 and then began studies at the German Film and Television Academy (dffb). He started working as a freelance cameraman in 1983 and graduated from the dffb in 1986 with ''Schmetterlinge'' (Butterflies), which won the Student Academy Award in 1988, the Golden Leopard at the Locarno International Film Festival, and the Saarland Prime-Minister's Award at the 1988 Saarbrücken. He directed an episode of the television drama ''Tatort'', titled "Blutwurstwalzer", before making his second feature ''Kinderspiele'' (''Child's Play'', 1992) and the documentary ''Celibidache'' (1992). In 1994, he co-founded the production company "X Filme Creative Pool" with Tom Tykwer, Stefan ...
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Sonnenallee
''Sonnenallee'' (''Sun Avenue'' or ''Sun Alley'') is a 1999 German comedy film about life in East Berlin in the late 1970s. The movie was directed by Leander Haußmann. The film was released shortly before the corresponding novel, '' Am kürzeren Ende der Sonnenallee'' (''At the Shorter End of Sonnenallee''). Both the book and the screenplay were written by Thomas Brussig and while they are based on the same characters and setting, differ in storyline significantly. Both the movie and the book emphasize the importance of pop-art and in particular, pop music, for the youth of East Berlin. The Sonnenallee is an actual street in Berlin that was intersected by the border between East and West during the time of the Berlin Wall, although it bears little resemblance to the film set. ''Sonnenallee'' was broadcast in the Czech Republic under the title ''Eastie Boys''. Cast * Alexander Scheer as Michael "Micha" Ehrenreich * Alexander Beyer as Mario Naujoks * Robert Stadlober as Wusche ...
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Leander Haußmann
Leander Haußmann (sometimes Haussmann) (; born 26 June 1959, Quedlinburg) is a German theatre and film director. The son of actor Ezard Haußmann and costume designer Doris Haußmann, he attended the Ernst Busch theatre school in Berlin. Haußmann was the theatre director of the city theatre in Bochum ( Schauspielhaus Bochum). He also wrote and acted in several plays (1995–2000), and had a role in the Detlev Buck film '' Jailbirds'' (1996). His feature film breakthrough came with '' Sonnenallee'' in 1999. His second feature, '' Herr Lehmann'', followed in 2003. His production of ''Die Fledermaus'' in Munich was controversial, compounding the trouble surrounding his production of ''Peter Pan''. As a result, his scheduled production of ''Romeo and Juliet'' was cancelled. Filmography * '' Sonnenallee'', with Detlev Buck, Robert Stadlober, Alexander Beyer (1999) * '' – Die Durchmacher'' (2001, TV documentary series episode) * '' Berlin Blues'' (2003) * '' NVA'', with De ...
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Erfurt
Erfurt () is the capital and largest city in the Central German state of Thuringia. It is located in the wide valley of the Gera river (progression: ), in the southern part of the Thuringian Basin, north of the Thuringian Forest. It sits in the middle of an almost straight line of cities consisting of the six largest Thuringian cities forming the central metropolitan corridor of the state, the "Thuringian City Chain" ('' Thüringer Städtekette'') with more than 500,000 inhabitants, stretching from Eisenach in the west, via Gotha, Erfurt, Weimar and Jena, to Gera in the east. Erfurt and the city of Göttingen in southern Lower Saxony are the two cities with more than 100,000 inhabitants closest to the geographic center of Germany. Erfurt is located south-west of Leipzig, north-east of Frankfurt, south-west of Berlin and north of Munich. Erfurt's old town is one of the best preserved medieval city centres in Germany. Tourist attractions include the Merchants' Bridge ...
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Lübeck
Lübeck (; Low German also ), officially the Hanseatic City of Lübeck (german: Hansestadt Lübeck), is a city in Northern Germany. With around 217,000 inhabitants, Lübeck is the second-largest city on the German Baltic coast and in the state of Schleswig-Holstein, after its capital of Kiel, and is the 35th-largest city in Germany. The city lies in Holstein, northeast of Hamburg, on the mouth of the River Trave, which flows into the Bay of Lübeck in the borough of Travemünde, and on the Trave's tributary Wakenitz. The city is part of the Hamburg Metropolitan Region, and is the southwesternmost city on the Baltic, as well as the closest point of access to the Baltic from Hamburg. The port of Lübeck is the second-largest German Baltic port after the port of Rostock. The city lies in the Northern Low Saxon dialect area of Low German. Lübeck is famous for having been the cradle and the ''de facto'' capital of the Hanseatic League. Its city centre is Germany's most e ...
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Berlin
Berlin is Capital of Germany, the capital and largest city of Germany, both by area and List of cities in Germany by population, by population. Its more than 3.85 million inhabitants make it the European Union's List of cities in the European Union by population within city limits, most populous city, as measured by population within city limits having gained this status after the United Kingdom's, and thus London's, Brexit, departure from the European Union. Simultaneously, the city is one of the states of Germany, and is the List of German states by area, third smallest state in the country in terms of area. Berlin is surrounded by the state of Brandenburg, and Brandenburg's capital Potsdam is nearby. The urban area of Berlin has a population of over 4.5 million and is therefore the most populous urban area in Germany. The Berlin/Brandenburg Metropolitan Region, Berlin-Brandenburg capital region has around 6.2 million inhabitants and is Germany's second-largest metropolitan reg ...
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Erich Honecker
Erich Ernst Paul Honecker (; 25 August 1912 – 29 May 1994) was a German communist politician who led the German Democratic Republic (East Germany) from 1971 until shortly before the fall of the Berlin Wall in November 1989. He held the posts of General Secretary of the Socialist Unity Party of Germany (SED) and Chairman of the National Defence Council; in 1976, he replaced Willi Stoph as Chairman of the State Council, the official head of state. As the leader of East Germany, Honecker had close ties to the Soviet Union, which maintained a large army in the country. Honecker's political career began in the 1930s when he became an official of the Communist Party of Germany, a position for which he was imprisoned by the Nazis. Following World War II, he was freed by the Soviet army and relaunched his political activities, founding the SED's youth organisation, the Free German Youth, in 1946 and serving as the group's chairman until 1955. As the Security Secretary of the ...
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Petit Bourgeois
''Petite bourgeoisie'' (, literally 'small bourgeoisie'; also anglicised as petty bourgeoisie) is a French term that refers to a social class composed of semi-autonomous peasants and small-scale merchants whose politico-economic ideological stance in times of socioeconomic stability is determined by reflecting that of a ''haute bourgeoisie'' ('high' bourgeoisie) with which the ''petite bourgeoisie'' seeks to identify itself and whose bourgeois morality it strives to imitate. The term is politico-economic and references historical materialism. It originally denoted a sub-stratum of the middle classes in the 18th and early-19th centuries. In the mid-19th century, the German economist Karl Marx and other Marxist theorists used the term ''petite bourgeoisie'' to identify the socio-economic stratum of the bourgeoisie that consists of small shopkeepers and self-employed artisans. Definition The ''petite bourgeoisie'' is economically distinct from the proletariat and the ''Lu ...
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Ampelmännchen
(; literally ''little traffic light man'', diminutive of ''Ampelmann'' ) is the symbol shown on pedestrian signals in Germany. Prior to German reunification in 1990, the two Germanies had different forms for the , with a generic human figure in West Germany, and a generally "male" figure wearing a hat in the East. The is a beloved symbol in former East Germany, "enjoy ngthe privileged status of being one of the few features of East Germany to have survived the end of the Iron Curtain with his popularity unscathed." After the fall of the Berlin Wall, the acquired cult status and became a popular souvenir item in the tourism business. Concept and design The first traffic lights at pedestrian crossings were erected in the 1950s, and many countries developed different designs (which were eventually standardised). At that time, traffic lights were the same for cars, bicycles and pedestrians. The East Berlin was created in 1961 by traffic psychologist Karl Peglau (1927–2009) ...
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