Deutsche Welle, Germany's excellent English language broadcaster, has a great selection of GDR bits and pieces. The main reunification page is here, but a few specific pages that I've found particularly interesting:
- Path to Unity. Gallery of pictures that trace Germany's history from 1945 to 1990.
- Demolished Treasures. Selection of architecture from East Germany that has since been demolished.
- Highs and Lows of Reunification.
The Stasimuseum is located in the former headquarters of the Stasi, and allows a peek into the workings of the secrective organisation.
Our museum is located in the House 1 in the central complex of the Ministry for State Security in Berlin-Lichtenberg, in which Erich Mielke, last minister for State Security, had his seat. You can visit his offices which are preserved in their original state. Added are a lot of exhibits that sample the activities of the State Security, the different aspects of the political system and the resistance and opposition in the GDR.
As I read it in Stasiland, the offices were abruptly shut as they stood in their everyday working life, then re-opened as a museum within a couple of months. Amazing. I wish I'd known about it when I was in Germany.
DDR Museum:
The DDR Museum is the only museum which concentrates on everyday life in the GDR. We don't only show the crimes of the State Security or the border defences at the Berlin Wall but we display the life of the people in the dictatorship: Maybe you know the spreewald pickles, nudism beaches and the Trabi - the rest of the life in this socialist state is unfamiliar to most of the people in the world.
Archived ABC News broadcast reporting of the fall of the Wall. Probably the broadcast I watched, stunned, with my mouth flapping open. I recall only having half an eye on the news that night, but this caught my attention, to understate it. I obviously hadn't been paying attention to current affairs in the weeks leading up to this, because it was as amazing and shocking to me as if the broadcast had been reporting on the arrival of Martians. I still find it moving today.
Palace of the Republic. The now-demolished headquarters of the GDR. I saw this when I was in Berlin. I had no idea what it was, but it was absolutely arresting, in the sense that it takes a particular brand of genius to make something this ugly. The interior is another matter though, a wonderland of modernist excess. Love it.
1989 - Europe's Revolution, BBC's page on the topic.
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