Nostalgia for the GDR

In East Berlin, Leipzig and Dresden, you can easily see teenagers wearing T-shirts and sweatshirts with the GDR crest. In the east of Germany there is a unique case - the era of socialism is mutating into a youth cult.

First of all, people remember free housing, education, healthcare, support for motherhood and childhood. 65% of East Germans today believe that they lived better under socialism in the GDR, and this percentage is increasing. The GDR was a social paradise. The people did not know what unemployment and poverty were. Many representatives of the older generation remember what assistance was provided to East Germany directly from the USSR as part of socialist integration. The GDR Museum in Berlin is always full of visitors; souvenirs in the form of clothes, badges, and magnets with GDR symbols are sold superbly. In fact, it had the complete opposite effect of the ideologically driven context of the museum, designed to show socialism in a dark light.