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Ostkreus, Ute Mahler. |
Photographic Stories from a Country that is no Longer There |
Ostkreuz, Harald Hauswald.
Ostkreuz, Harald Hauswald.
Ostkreuz, Maurice Weiss.
Ostkreuz, Harald Hauswald.
Ostkreuz, Ute Mahler.
Ostkreuz, Werner Mahler. |
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House of World Cultures The German Democratic Republic (German: Deutsche Demokratische Republik, DDR; more commonly known in English as East Germany) was a self-declared socialist state (mistakenly referred to in the West as a "communist state") that originated from the [Soviet Zone] of occupied Germany and the Soviet sector of occupied Berlin. The German Democratic Republic existed from October 7, 1949 until October 3, 1990, when its re-established states acceded to the adjacent Federal Republic of Germany, thus producing the current form of Germany. During its existence, the GDR was a member of the Eastern Bloc of eastern European nations that were aligned with the Soviet Union (USSR). In 1955, the USSR declared that the GDR was fully sovereign. However, Soviet occupation troops remained in East German territory, based on the four-power Potsdam Agreement, while British, Canadian, French and American forces remained in the Federal Republic of Germany in the West. Berlin, completely surrounded by East German territory, was similarly divided with British, French and U.S. garrisons in West Berlin and Soviet forces in East Berlin. Berlin in particular became the focal point of Cold War tensions. East Germany was a member of the Warsaw Pact and a close ally of the USSR. Following the initial opening of sections of the Berlin Wall on November 9, 1989, new elections were held on 18 March 1990, and the governing party, the Socialist Unity Party of Germany, lost its majority in the Volkskammer (the East German parliament) soon after. On August 23, 1990, the Volkskammer recreated the five pre-war states (which had been dissolved in 1952), which would later join the Federal Republic of Germany on October 3, 1990. As a result of reunification on that date, the German Democratic Republic ceased to exist. In an authentic and unadorned way, these photos the Ostzeit exhibition tell of a country that no longer exists, yet remains preserved through these images. Twenty years after the fall of the Berlin Wall, Ostzeit presents a photo series by, perhaps, the best chroniclers of the German Democratic Republic; gathered from the first-class inventory of the Ostkreuz Agency, founded on the concept of authorship in 1990. These unvarnished and sensitive pictures show the everyday life in the GDR beyond the images distributed by the political system. Thanks to their direct honetsy, this unique collection of photographs allows a very special view on Eastern Germany and its realitiy, that leaves its mark until today. The East German population declined steadily throughout its existence, from 19 million in 1948 to 16 million in 1990. Around 4 million of the 1948 population were German expellees from areas east of the Oder-Neisse line. This was primarily a result of emigration — about one quarter of East Germans left the country before the Berlin Wall was completed in 1961, and after that time, East Germany had very low birth rates. This compares starkly with Poland, which increased during that time from 24 million in 1950 (a little more than East Germany) to 38 million (more than twice East Germany's population). The exhibition includes the photos of Sibylle Bergemann, Harald Hauswald, Ute Mahler, Werner Mahler (founders of the Ostkreuz Agency), and Maurice Weiss, all associated with the Ostkreuz Agency. The photographs date from 1972 onward, and they offer an authentic and unadorned tale of a country that no longer exists but is preserved in these photographs. In addition to the artists’ most important works—from Harald Hauswald’s observations of everyday life to Ute Mahler’s fashion photography and Sibylle Bergemann’s often decorated documentation of the building of the Marx-Engels monument on the forum of that name—other works from the final years of the German Democratic Republic are shown for the first time in this form. For example, in an early conceptual work, Sibylle Bergemann explored the P2 model apartment in the concrete slab buildings of East Berlin; Werner Mahler accompanied with his camera the students of one secondary school class from 1978 to the present in a reunited Germany; and Ute Mahler is presenting her impressions of May Day in 1980. The book concludes with a series of photographs from the period of the fall of Communism by Maurice Weiss, a French photographer who became a member of Ostkreus Agency in 1991, shortly after it was founded.
Ostkreuz, Sibylle Bergemann. |
Ostkreuz, Sibylle Bergemann. |
