Do you know anyone personally who lived in the DDR back in the day? What was it like?

Do you know anyone personally who lived in the DDR back in the day? What was it like?

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youtube.com/watch?v=MwSYz82k1KA
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/City_Palace,_Berlin
youtube.com/watch?v=VarayMJDDTE
reddit.com/r/PromoteYourPatreon/comments/5gorpe/help_me_pay_my_college_tuition/
youtu.be/wwO2ffztOuQ
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Goodbye lenin is a good movie about this

Awful, like all communist regimes.

The GDR was basically the Soviet Union on steroids, because the Germans don't fuck around maybe. The Stasi had basically no budget to watch the entire population, but damn if it didn't try its best to make everyone feel like they were watched 24/7. Also, being in the Warsaw pact meant travelling was nearly impossible, getting shitty communist versions of products, when products were available (lol Kaffee Mix), and bending over to the USSR. Also the fucking Trabant lol.

On the upside, no homeless, stable jobs (and prison for those who refused to work lol), free education and gender equality I guess?

There's the website of the DDR Museum in Berlin that has a bunch of info on the topic available, if that's your thing.

why
>lol
so much
It was a repressive regime. High levels of security, education, welfare. Low level of personal freedom and wealth. Had there been palmtrees like on Cuba, it would be glorified by now.

>he doesn't know about ostalgia

>ain't what it used to be

My mothers family lived in the DDR so I directly talked with people who lived there.

People didn't have much and the products werent good. Stasi wasn't a problem for everyone but as soon as someone in your family or group of friends acted suspecious you were pretty much fucked too. Generally live was better outside of the big towns I think. My mother couldn't go to university because her parents already went and this wasn't allowed, one of the main reasons they sent her away early enough.
They also destroyed this awesome building in berlin...

... and replaced it with this pile of shit.

Overall we should all be glad that it's gone.

not defending socialist architecture, but i'm pretty sure the russians did most of the destruction during ww2. the ddr is mostly guilty of building ugly shit over the ruins.

Prussia died with the DDR
youtube.com/watch?v=MwSYz82k1KA

It may be shit, but at least it wasn't cucked.

Germany would survive under communism, but not under liberal democracy.

You're only 25% right.

>en.wikipedia.org/wiki/City_Palace,_Berlin
>The palace was heavily damaged by Allied bombing in World War II. Although it could have been repaired, the palace was demolished in 1950 by the German Democratic Republic authorities, despite criticism.

Good news though, it's getting rebuilded right now.

Apart from the military marches the army didn't have many prussian values. We have those once a year even in our crappy BRD. I always enjoy our Zapfenstreich.

youtube.com/watch?v=VarayMJDDTE

reddit.com/r/PromoteYourPatreon/comments/5gorpe/help_me_pay_my_college_tuition/

A few of my teachers were from there, but the times I talked to them about it it was mostly about the last few years and not really the general situation.
One of them was studying mathematics and remembered being amazed by the computers they had at the university in West Berlin (compared to the punch cards they were using) after the fall of the wall. He went to a few Monday demonstrations so he must have had some grievances.

>Do you know anyone personally who lived in the DDR back in the day? What was it like?

Actually quite comfy. Everyone got a job, free healthcare, free education, low rent. But you had to pretend to like communism.

The DDR was on life support with money from the BRD thanks to Willy Brandt since the 70s. Without the reunification the DDR would be on the economic level of other post-commie countries.

only lolberals care about freedom

The DDR spawned the most idiotic people in Germany, no wonder why the East is still behind.
>grow up in DDR
>little personal freedom, the state dictates every step of your life and assigns education and job to you
>state literally does everything for you, you don't have to worry about anything as long as you don't call Honecker a faggot
>DDR falls apart
>reunification with BRD
>state does not babysit and patronize you anymore
>become unemployed and poor because lol state can't get me a job and I am too stupid to take care of my own career
>wtf is personal responsibility I don't want to look after myself I want a strong state
And this is how populism is strong there compared to the west.

>arguing with ostalgia goggles on

Why are communists and socialists so obsessed with shoehorning their symbols into everything?

Imagine it like a product placement in the west.

I was born in 1971 in Leipzig.
The DDR was shitty, don't believe in pro DDR propaganda.

I was born in 1929
The turdreich was the best! Trust me bro

In the DDR:
>There were no homeless
>Everyone could get a cozy job where you only worked 1-2 hours per day and sat around the rest of the day
>Even with such a job you could still afford a car
>Food was cheap
>The radio still played Volksmusik instead of american nigger music
>You could leave your home unlocked and nobody would rob you

I lived next to the honeckers in chile.

I was a young child and didnt know about his past untill after he died. But he was a very soft spoken man, he talked alot about the war, the world and places hes been and told my brother and I we should always travel. I never heard him implanting socialist ideas in out minds, to us he was a very kind neighbor.

My parents were very saddened when he died, as was i

>Everyone could get a cozy job where you only worked 1-2 hours per day and sat around the rest of the day
Lol, no not everyone was a government """worker""".

>Even with such a job you could still afford a car
You had to ask the government for one and had to wait for several years to finally get one. What you got then was a shitty Trabant made out of plastic.

>Food was cheap
because people were poor and the food wasn't of great quality.

>The radio still played Volksmusik instead of american nigger music
I would enjoy this too but thats up to personal taste.

>You could leave your home unlocked and nobody would rob you
Source?

i actually live in Berlin and my gf's family all grew up in the east

On the whole you couldnt expect much in the way of products or ease of living. Bureaucracy was also shit.

But generally if you kept your head down it wasnt so bad and they miss the communal aspects of it. I think that has less to do with the communist ideology and more to do with the east being poor and once the borders went down, alot of people went to the west for work.

Also being dependent on the west for financial support breeds a toxic feeling of helplessness. Especially since alot of laws and modern german culture is of a "west" variety.

More than anything the rise of things like the AFD is because the people in the east want to feel like theyre in control of their lives.

a shitheap. like everywhere else that had communism.

>They also destroyed this awesome building in berlin...
The palace is currently being rebuilt.

My stepdad used to work at a chemical engineering plant in Germany. He was later sent back to a lang in the US. One week, a guy from Germany came in to collaborate with them. The catch was he didn't speak English so my stepdad was the only one who could talk to him. It was the '90s at this point, but the dude had lived while the Wall was up and he was on the commie side. He said that at their chemical engineering plant, they had to start making their own desks and supplies because the shit Moscow sent them was, well, shit.

But how will they rebuild it? An authentic copy or with "modern architecture" just as a kind of symbol? There is a huge difference.

You can't really tell how much structural damage happened from a blurry picture, although most looks repairable.

Communists in general are fucking cultural barbarians though, look at what they did in Koenigsberg, razed the castle and other historical shit to the ground and replaced it with literal commieblocks. I think the only communist country that didn't go full mental retard on historical architecture was Poland.

I visited Poland for six weeks back in the summer of 1977 when I was 9 years old with my ex-pat parents.

I remember one day, when we and a whole bunch of other Polish-American tourists were rolling along a country road in the tour bus, when all of a sudden we pulled over to the side.

I looked out the window and saw a BRDM-2 armored car (“neato!”) and then heard a hubbub at the front of the bus, after which I saw a hat being passed around and my dad and others tossing in $5 bills while bitching under their breath about the “kurwa zomo!”.

Turns out it was a squad from the commie state security police, who would pull over tour busess with foreigners and threaten the driver with all kinda false traffic violations (implying the bus would be delayed for who knows how long…) until the American tourists forked over the case to pay the "ticket".

After the ZOMO cops got their payoff, we were free to go.

I want communism back, I miss the DDR.

The Wall:
Sure, it was hard to get out but even harder to get in. No Muslims, no rapefugees.

Economy:
Sure, there weren't 60 different kinds of chocolate available but there was also no unemployment and people helped each other out instead of trying to bring each other down.

Patriotism:
Sure, we were occupied by the Russians in a way, but patriotism was still encouraged and no one promoted racial and cultural suicide.

Culture:
Poisonous American culture was mostly kept out of the country. No McDonalds, no Hollywood, no SJW degeneracy. The DDR was undeniably GERMAN. Not American degenerate race mixed brown-black Hollywood Niggers working at McDonalds, ads with trannies and queers.

Religion:
Was hard, I admit that. But being a Christian in the DDR was still easier than being a Christian today in a SJW shit hole that is increasingly becoming Americanized. Sure, we don't have gay "marriage" in Germany yet, but it's just a matter of time until we are like the US where you commit a crime if you don't bake those gays their fucking cake.

Downside:
The surveillance was shit, of course. Secret police and everything. But we have the same today. With NSA, CIA, FBI whoever watching. And don't you dare to say a wrong word about feminists or refugees! We arguably have less freedom of speech today.

Also:
The part of Germany that was communist is the part now, were 30.000 people march through the streets to rally against Merkel, mass-immigration, against the Islamization adn the Americanization of Germany. It's the part of PEGIDA, LEGIDA, Björn Höcke, people in Heidenau literally attacking the refugee-protecting police at night and then hiding in their neighbor's houses. West Germany is the "Refugees Welcome" SJW part.

I wish I lived in the DDR.
The NSA makes the stasi look like children playing cops and robbers.

>Apart from the military marches the army didn't have many prussian values
Uniform, helmet, Stechschritt, Wachwechsel.
This shit is as undeutsch as it gets
youtu.be/wwO2ffztOuQ

>triggered leftard

>What you got then was a shitty Trabant made out of plastic.

even worse, those shitboxes were literally made out of cotton. and you (as a proletariat) had to wait 10 years to receive your order. you can't make that shit up.

t. Veeky Forums

If East Germany still existed, they wouldn't have to worry about millions of immigrants. Its a shame the Syrian crisis didn't happen in the early 1980's. The DDR would be laughing at the collapse of West Germany under the weight of all those immigrants.

They'd already have a wall to keep them out.

you can't really blame the people if they were raised like that, I would blame the state.

>You could leave your home unlocked and nobody would rob you

>nobody would rob you

that's because you were too poor to afford anything of any significant value

*revisionism intensifies*

From what I've read about him, he seems more like a genuine human being than a monster like Stalin or Rakosi. He apparently regretted the killings of people fleeing the Berlin wall, both from a human perspective and a political perspective. His wife was apparently another matter entirely...

>His wife was apparently another matter entirely...

They interviewed her for a documentary on german television a few years ago. Absolutely disgusting, elitist old hag. should be put in front of a court and behind prison bars.

>No Muslims, no rapefugees
Nah nigga the GDR officially welcomed Vietnamese refugees, but there simply weren't too many of them. You can bet your ass they would've accepted tons of syrians if the same situation were to break out back then, at least as long as big daddy USSR backs one side.

>people helped each other out
Excespt when they snitched you to the Stasi so their kids will be allowed to go to uni

>ads with trannies and queers.
Those didn't exist in West-Germany either.
Also If american culture was so horrible why did everyone in the GDR try to get their hands on american stuff?

>But we have the same today
Sure, the Stasi recruiting half the population to spy on each other is as bad as the NSA.

>Rest of that rant
We get it you think because there's an alternative said alternative must therefore be better to the current situation.

Even if I concede that germany right now could be better at least you are ALLOWED to protest it, which is way more than you'd ever get in the GDR. If Honecker said that every german women is to be raped by refugees it will happen and everyone against it will be imprisioned or worse, when Merkel says it there will be a debate in parliament, protest (as you mentioned) and it will eventually be shut down and Merkel voted out of office via vote of no confidence. But sure cling to your retarded delusion that freedom = degeneracy and supression is so much better.

>Muh Stechschritt is german
It's a relict of prussian militaris which every concsious south german should oppose as it represents our cuckening during the empire and third reich.
Additionally it looks retarded as fuck.

50 years of Soviet occupation has obviously done less damage than 50 years (and counting) of American occupation.

Capitalism = free flow of capital.
No wall can keep money in or out.
Therefore, people from outside your country can get their hands on you through their 'investing' in your national industries.

Germany was better under socialism.
East Germany:
- 99% white
- extremely safe
- no terrorism
- no mosques
- no degeneracy
- low divorce rate
- above replacement fertility
- no immigration

What's so wrong with Soviet style socialism Veeky Forums? Don't be fooled by the blue haired freaks. Socialism isn't about learning the pronouns of mentally defective sexual deviants and worshipping niggers.

>but muh iPhones and muh big houses!

Is materialism really worth becoming a minority in your own country for?

I thought materialism was the whole point of communism

also remember that the iron curtain kept out all the materialist poison of the west

what that meant was all men dressed like autists (Urkel-style with pants pulled up to the belly) and were drowning in pussy

and ladies were properly innocent, feminine, homely and nerdy as well

>posts a shitty collage of bullshit
>muh this proffs my shitty point
>doesnt value creativity
yes it does, expt it values useful creativity like creativity in engineering and architecture not in useless shit
>indifference towards the eviroment
way less then capitalists
>no rights ´
communist countires had a giant number of firsts in the field of human rights like womans rights and workers rights
>karl marx was wrong
kek thats bourgeoisie talk
show me how
>collectivization
implying thats bad
>mass murders
so do all ideologies
>militant opposition to imperialism
implying thats bad
>class strugle is going nowere
taking in to account the 20th century thtat bullshit

>men were drowning in pussy
>ladies were properly innocent

Pick one you Autist

This is the worst Ostalgie i've ever seen.

yes

it was shit but no shitskins but in the east there arent still many

the state recognized sex as a human right and guaranteed all autists a fresh and shiney virginal vagina by high school graduation, and all yours.. free to keep!
girls were actually raised by the government education system to keep themselves pure, innocent, and submissive, emphasizing on their vaginas being clean, untainted, and tight and not withered, weathered, battered and infested with worms and fecal matter

My friend's stepdad grew up in east Berlin. All he ever told me was that there wasn't enough coffee.

>Even with such a job you could still afford a car
wrong. A lot more people in the west could afford a car and they were much better cars.
The real market price (i.e. black market price without waiting period) was equivalent to a Porsche or Mercedes in West Germany.
>Food was cheap
and shit. Again. People in the west could afford more and better food.

>WAAAA People in the west have bigger dicks
>WAAAA Hanz in Hamburg ate a hamburger last night
>WAAAA Fritz in Frankfurt stuffed a huge frankfurter up his ass
>WAAA MUH OPPRESSION NEVAR FORGET

>Deutsche

>Demokratische

>Republik

basically like living in a way poorer version of west germany, plus everyone is spying on you

Fun fact about jobs: my ex-gf's mum works at a bank near the former border. after unification, the banks of east an west germany were merged and some east german women worked in the west.
At the first day they started knitting behind the counter and were genuinely surprised that a lot of customers showed up. they also immediately put on scuffs.

look up the average wage of a worker and the price of cars in both the Bundesrepublik and the DDR.
Trabant was ridiculously expensive compared to western cars.

DDR had the highest living standards of any of the Eastern Bloc countries and arguably the entire communist movement of the 20th Century.

If you are the kind of person who values community, air-tight pristine vaginas and hasnt got much material desires or wishes to travel it was a very good country to live in.

this

immaculate, tight pale blonde vaginas > homoWagons