I'm genuinely pretty sure the DDR Museum in Berlin is run by socialists who want you to notice this, I swear to god that entire fucking place makes 0 sense otherwise. All the stations are like this, they're describing something good that nominally west germany did or still does but then describe it as bad because the communists did it, it ends with you looking at ginormous flat which it tells you cost the equivalent of 50€ per month or something and that nobody but the the richest 5% of the country could afford in Berlin today, before letting you out via the gift store full of DDR nostalgia to buy. Even all the most unpolitical, co-worker-belief-system people I've went there with caught on to it.

[–] TechnoUnionTypeBeat@hexbear.net 1 points 11 months ago* (last edited 11 months ago) (1 children)

before letting you out via the gift store full of DDR nostalgia to buy

Holy shit you're not kidding

I went to check their online shop and it is entirely the kind of merch you'd expect to see in a pro socialist shop: plenty of Hero of Labour merch, Marx and Lenin stuff, a faux DDR passport notebook, that kinda stuff. There's a few things that border on either being actual anticommunism or possibly parody (like a sign saying "No Goods Today" in German), but none of it looks like it's meant to be ironic

Adding on as I look at more things: they sell a magnet celebrating the formation of the DDR (Republic Day, October 7th). I'm with you, there's no way this place isn't run by socialists

[–] miz@hexbear.net 1 points 11 months ago

Republic Day, October 7th

another reason to celebrate

[–] normal_user@hexbear.net 0 points 11 months ago* (last edited 11 months ago) (1 children)

Yes, i think there is a panel where it tells you that some worker for a 3 room apartment pays 10% of their salary. Then they show you a standard 3 room apartment and while going through it I was so surprised because I would never be able to afford anything even close to it.

But all the museum is about how people where oppressed and poor !?

[–] 7bicycles@hexbear.net 1 points 11 months ago

I think the most egregious one to me was the stasi listening post that said they listened in to every 3rd person or something along those lines. this was post snowden, so by objective metrics that seemed a lot better than the allied NSA listening in to 100% of everything lol

[–] Budwig_v_1337hoven@hexbear.net 1 points 11 months ago

It kinda funny how the German is already heavily loaded and trying to make it a bad thing, but the English translation is reducing any amount of nuance the original text still had left in it, painting it as this devil institution brainwashing young people into becoming soulless borg commies.

for example, the original last sentence reads like this, faithfully translated: "Socialist morals and a positive attitude to life in a community were more important learning goals than the development of individual skills."

Here's the whole thing, trying to be as faithful and transliteral as I can be to the original:
Kindergarten served not only for childcare, it was also the first educational institution, anyone born in the GDR would visit. Obviously, because of this, state leadership had an interest in providing wide coverage: places at a Kindergarten were available for way more than 90 percent of children. The daily schedule was precisely planned and applicable to everyone: they would play together, eat together and have naps together - under instruction [you could read this as "guidance" too, but the tone of the original is very clearly already trying to make the supervision part of childcare into an evil commie thing, so yea]. Socialist morals and a positive attitude to life in a community were more important learning goals than the development of individual skills.