Berlin 2011

A typical East German kitchen.

Worker's locker. The photos are either family photos or photos from the "worker brigade" that the locker's owner was part of. Spending time with your brigade mates was encouraged by the state - probably as a way of keeping people in the fold.

In the museum is a game where you get to be the director of a car factory; the purpose of the game was to show why the economy of the DDR tanked. You get to decide how to handle theft of materials, your superiors in the Communist bureaucracy, and much more. As this screen proves, with me at the helm, DDR would have been successful. However: I chose a hard-core capitalist approach. I sacked any non-productive person, outsourced production like crazy so I insulated myself from having to keep the workers happy, underpromised to my superiors and in general did what the automobile industry does today.

Interrogation by the STASI[a]. An interrogation of a dissident is played back in speakers set in the table. In order to hear, you put your elbows on the speaker plates and your hands over your ears. The sound propagates through your lower arm, making the palm vibrate like speaker membranes; and making you look like a broken person. It is quite ingenious.

This is what awaited you after the interrogation. The next step would be your death[b].

Wenn wir auch sterben sollen, So wissen wir: Die Saat Geht auf. Wenn Köpfe rollen, dann Zwingt doch der Geist den Staat.

Glaubt mit mir an die gerechte Zeit, die alles reifen lässt!

— Harro Schulze-Boysen, 2.9.1909 - 22.12.1942

In English:

If we, too, shall die, we know this: The seed grows. If heads roll, the spirit nevertheless coerces the state.

Believe with me in the just time that lets everything ripen!

— Harro Schulze-Boysen, September 2, 1909 - December 22, 1942

The first wall section. There are many, many more.

A sad gas mask named Leo. Detail from Pneumohumanoiden by Jens-Helge Dahmen[c].