BARKAS

Böhm - Trickverzerrer, GDR early70s

"My clone made off ebony + ivory (old piano keys)"

s. more böhm trickverzerrer

cred: facebook.com/Jan-Georghes van de Rhee

say hi to the paint peel from me

Pentacon Six TL by Pascal Volk

Als dieses Lied in den 80'ern heraus kam, war ich 16 Jahre alt... Ein Klassiker, den jedes Kind der DDR mitsingen kann! Damals, wie heute, ein schönes Lied und brandaktuell...

Dieter "Maschine" Birr ft. Nessi Das Buch

23 favourite piece of clothing? <3

I don't have a specific one but a few come to mind: - a red rescent shaped lace scarf I knit 6 years ago using my favourite yarn and am wearing all the time ever since - a simple gathered midi skirt I made out of old blue plaid bed linens and wear all the time no matter the season - a pair of beige linen trousers I made using this pattern, it has a genius button closure/pocket combo - and lastly something I didn't make myself (but still is sewing related): this sweater I bought a couple weeks ago and have worn whenever it doesn't absolutely have to be washed

liberals when someone from west germany has a nuanced view of the gdr: how dare you romanticize this brutal dictatorship!! go listen to someone from east germany who actually lived through this horrible authoritarian regime!!!

liberals when two thirds of east germans actually feel nostalgic towards the gdr and one fourth of east germans feel like their life got worse after the fall of the berlin wall: those backwards east germans are still brainwashed into authoritarianism, we should just rebuild the wall if they like it so much, they were simply not made for democratic participation

tomorrow I'm gonna learn how to play cyberpunk (the gdr) and it seems a cool af game even though the character sheet is so complex, I just hope i won't be tempted to murder the guys I play with

Here's a selfie with a weird stance cuz my only full-body mirror is a shoe rack lol.

Life expectancy at birth for males in the EU, 2022 Eurostat (OC)

The EU not only extracts billions of Euro worth of value from the global south, but it also does the same with the ex-socialist east, keeping it, relatively, impoverished as part of the broader shock therapy tactic employed by capitalists to funnel wealth from ex-socialist states to the imperial core, after the forced change back to capitalism. A good part, if not all, of the welfare system is dismantled and sold to foreign investors, massively affecting life expectancy, birth rates, nourishment, and general quality of life.

Taking the annexation of the GDR as an example, unemployment in the east rose from close to 0% to 40%. A forced conversion rate of 1:1 between the two currencies effectively made the east german population deal with a sudden drop in purchasing power while allowing any west german to buy more for a lower price. In more concrete figures, the annexation caused a 40% drop in income in the east and output figures in the east compared to those of 1989 took more than a decade to recover[1]. We could go on

A more recent and particularly insidious example on the abuse that eastern Europe experiences comes from 2021, in which the EU tried to force Lithuania to raise their retirement age to 72 from 64 (at which it thankfully remains). At the same time, Lithuania's life expectancy for males was 6 months lower at 72.5.

1: The Triumph of Evil, A. Murphy, 2002 (It's a very well researched book with a lot of empirical data, but the author falls into evil vs good moralisms which distract from the arguments being made and is generally unable to correctly express more theoretical political ideas, so keep this in mind. I have a lot of thoughts on this book)

TRABANT UNIVERSAL

Gonna make Ivan a literature guy... He's a weird guy, often reciting poems and quoting writers (probably Dostoevsky..). Something he picked up from his older sister, who used to read Taras Shevchenko's works to him when he was a child.

Gilbert thinks it's odd, but he tolerates it. Natasha thought it was strange too. Eventually they'll adopt the habit though. I like to think that these three lived together during the GDR era, which would have been uncomfortable.

Gilbert would remember poems that Ivan recites. Once, he interrupted Natasha while she was quietly reciting one, finishing the poem before she could. She was pissed.

I don't know how to describe Ivan.. I want him to have this sense of unpredictability that made others uneasy. Gggrrrhhh forgive me for rambling here, it's 1AM and I can't sleep.

October 9, 1989: The day the dictatorial GDR regime broke

Throughout the 1980s, discontent among the population of the GDR about the economical and political situation kept growing. Nonetheless, the ruling party SED (Socialist Union Party of Germany) upheld its role as the only governing part of the state, continuing the process of the "socialist revolution" in the state. People started protesting against oppression of dissidents.

The situation became explosive after the rigged local elections on May 7, 1989. People didn't have the choice between multiple options. Instead, there was only one list of the "National Front", which was automatically counted as "yes" as soon as the ballot was dropped into the urn. The only way to vote "no" was to strike all entries in the list through with a straight line. Although this was a tedious proces that could easily be traced by the Stasi officers in the polling stations, many people made use of this way of voting "no". For the first time, citizens gathered in the polling stations to observe the process of counting. Althouth this was explicitly allowed by law (§ 37 of the voting act), access was denied in almost all cases. Nonetheless, members of the church documented electoral fraud and made it public. This led to the first protests, which the Stasi and regular police forced tried to quench. Around the same time, a mass exodus through neighboring countries to West Germany started.

These protests attracted more and more people. In many cases, the demonstrations started after peace prayers in the protestant churches throughout the country. But still, the oppressive system of the state held the upper hand. On October 7, 1989, the police forces, workers' militia, and Stasi arrested thousands of protesters in Leipzig and arrested them in horse stables on the grounds of the agricultural fair.

This led pastor Christoph Wonneberger to publish a plea for non-violence, which was agreed to by some SED secretaries read out loud over the city's public announcement system (by Leipzig's Gewandhaus Orchestra's conductor Kurt Masur) and during the peace prayers. On October 9, 1989, the situation was tense as approx. 130,000 people took to the streets, marching past the Stasi central. A massive presence of state forces was also present, and people feared a "Chinese solution", referring to the violent Tiananmen Square massacre earlier that year. However, the plea for non-violence by the power of its wording kept both protesters and state forces from violent actions and the protests ended peacefully and without any arrests.

This was the first time the GDR authorities gave in to the masses of protesters. The word spread, and protests sprang up in more and more cities throughout the country, leading to state leader Erich Honecker's demise on October 18 and culminated in the fall of the Berlin Wall on November 9, 1989, which ultimately led to the German reunification.

Signalis is good but also very clearly made by anticommunist Germans still pissed at the GDR

What made you guys decide to write Worf as crossing the picket line btw? Was it just that you needed someone to and he was the most likely character? Also you didn't mention Garak... I think he wouldn't have crossed, since he grew up in the Space GDR so he likely believed all the propaganda about how good the state was to the workers etc. and distrusted Quark's way of doing things. Or maybe I'm being too nice. Maybe it would've been Bashir threatening to cancel lunch that week that convinced him

Worf seemed, of all our characters, to be the one that would most likely side with a business owner's rights to dictate employment conditions to his employees. To him that seems like freedom (for the owner) and lawful behavior (rules are rules). A strike, to someone like Worf (or Odo) who values order, is a chaotic, unnecessary mess.

It was also a good way to put him in conflict with the rest of our characters.

As for Garak, yes, he grew up in the Space GDR, but he also generally believed in the Space GDR. Obeying a superior's dictates, no matter how unreasonable, is the Cardassian way. At least publicly. So he probably wouldn't have supported the strike. Unless there was an advantage in it for him, and then his support would have probably involved skullduggery more than publicly honoring a picket line.

Of course, if pressured by his favorite doctor, and/or an authority figure like Sisko or Kira, he'd probably act differently.

vasárnapi zenehallgatás. a fotó az 1960-as években készült Nyugat-Németországban, készítője ismeretlen. magántulajdonban lévő 9x12 cm-es zselatinos ezüst.

via regifotok.hu Alapítvány a Kultúra Vizuális Kutatásáért / Facebook

in the front: GDR made Phonoton portable record player (most probably)

in the background: Dansette radiogram