EAST GERMAN HANDBOOK
Artifacts photographed from the Wende Museum in LA, this 800 page book features around 2000 objects which gives an overview of GDR visual and material culture to date. Accompanying these remnants of a now-vanished world are texts from scholars and specialists, with themes ranging from the secret police to sexuality, from monuments to mental-mapping.
Author: Justinian Jampol
Publisher: Taschen GmbH
Paperback. 816 pages
ISBN: 9783836571883
Published: 2017
Price: £29.99
Times Book Review – https://www.thetimes.co.uk/edition/saturday-review/review-the-east-german-handbook-by-justinian-jampol-t6952mh5w
EAST GERMANY DVDS TO WATCH
25 YEARS GERMAN REUNIFICATION (E) 2009 ZINTL, T. £19.99
Documentary used to advertise the merits of the East German classical music and culture-loving population in direct contrast to the ‘decadent’, western pop music.
ABSCHIED – BRECHTS LETZTER SOMMER/THE FAREWELL. BRECHT’S LAST SUMMER (15) 2000 SCHUTTE, J. £19.99
Portrait of Brecht set in the summer of 1956 in East Germany.
BARBARA (12A) 2012 GERMANY PETZOLD, CHRISTIAN £17.99
Set in East Germany in 1980, Barbara is sent to a new job in the provinces as punishment for applying for an exit visa from the GDR. Her aim now is to escape to the West
DEUTSCHLAND 83 (15) 2015 GERMANY £24.99
German TV drama set in 1983 during the height of the Cold War, when a young East German is reluctantly recruited as a spy and embedded into the West Germany army.
FATHERLAND (15) 1986 UK LOACH, KEN IN ENGLISH £19.99
A singer swaps the political intimidation of working in East Germany for the equally controlling Capitalist music industry in the West. Loosely based on the German singer Wolf Biermann.
GOOD BYE LENIN! (15) 2002 GERMANY BECKER, WOLFGANG £19.99
One of the biggest German comedies of recent times.
HEIMAT 3 – CHRONIK EINER ZEITENWENDE (15) 2004 GERMANY REITZ, E. 6 DISC DVD BOXSET £59.99
Final part of the trilogy follows the fall of the Berlin Wall to the eve of the new millennium.
LAGERFEUER/WEST (15) 2013 GERMANY SCHWOCHOW, CHRISTIAN £15.99
Based on Julia Franck novel ‘Lagerfeuer’. Nelly along with her son decide to escape East Germany after the mysterious death of her boyfriend. However once in the West the intelligence agencies want to know more about her boyfriend.
Nelly, as a GDR refugee trying to adjust to life in the West, is forced to choose between discovering the truth about her former lover and her hopes for a better tomorrow.
LEBEN DER ANDEREN/LIVES OF OTHERS (15) 2006 GERMANY H. VON DONNERSMARCK, F £19.99
Five years before the downfall of the DDR, party-loyalist Captain Gerd Wiesler hopes to boost his career when given the job of collecting evidence against the playwright Georg Dreyman and his girlfriend.
DER TUNNEL (12) 2001 GERMANY RICHTER, ROLAND SUSO £15.99
Cold War thriller set in 1961. After fleeing the Communist regime in East Berlin, Harry Melchior is now determined to go back for his sister and her family
YELLA (12) 2007 GERMANY PETZOLD, CHRISTIAN £19.99
Yella leaves her home in the East Germany for a promising job and a new life, but as success is within reach, she finds herself haunted by truths from the past.
DEFA EAST GERMANY FILMS
ABSCHIED/FAREWELL (EX) 1968 E. GERMANY EGON GÜNTHER £15.99
August 1914 and seventeen year-old Hans Gastl decides not to join the war. This decision is a turning point in his life marking a farewell to his class and his family.
ALS MARTIN VIERZEHN WAR/WHEN MARTIN WAS FOURTEEN (EX) 1964 E. GERMANY BECK, WALTER £15.99
March 1920, Martin and his friend find a cache of weapons intended for the
Kapp Putsch to overthrow the Weimar Republic. Can Martin get help to stop the Putsch.
DIE BUNTKARIERTEN/GIRLS IN GINGHAM (EX) 1949 E. GERMANY MAETZIG, KURT £15.99
Family saga spanning 70 years of German history ending in 1945
DIE FRAU UND DER FREMDE/WOMAN AND THE STRANGER (E) E. GERMANY 1985 SIMON, RAINER £15.99
Golden Bear winning film about two German soldiers, Karl and Richard, captured World War I. When Karl escapes he visits Richard’s wife and falls in love with her. However one day Richard returns.
KÄTHE KOLLWITZ – BILDER EINES LEBENS (EX) 1986 E. GERMANY 1985 KIRSTEN, RALF £15.99
After the death of her son in the First World War, artist Käthe Kollwitz
became a radical pacifist and after signing a petition against the Nazis her art was labelled “degenerate.”
DAS LIED DER MATROSEN/SAILORS SONG (E) 1958 E. GERMANY REISCH, G/MAETZIG, K £15.99
After the 1917 Russian Revolution German the dockers of Kiel call for a mass strike to demand the end of the war and the abdication of the Kaiser .
SOLANGE LEBEN IN MIR IST/AS LONG AS THERE’S LIFE IN ME (EX) 1965 E.GERMANY REISCH, GÜNTER £17.99
Biopic about the pacifist Social Democrat, workers’ leader Karl Liebknecht and his fight against World War I.
Voting against war loans he is considered a traitor and his party leadership turns against him.
TROTZ ALLEDEM!/IN SPITE OF EVERTHING (EX) 1972 E. GERMANY REISCH, GÜNTER £15.99
Part two of the Karl Liebknecht biopic
DER UNTERTAN/KAISER’S LACKEY (EX) 1964 E. GERMANY STAUDTE, WOLFGANG £15.99
Film of Heinrich Mann’s novel ‘Der Untertan’, written during the First World war which is a historical satire about a man scared of everyone but who progresses in society by subjugating himself to the whims of his superiors while treading on those below.
WOLZ – LEBEN UND VERKLÄRUNG EINES DEUTSCHEN ANARCHISTEN/WOLF-LIFE AND ILLUSION OF A GERMAN ANARCHIST (EX) 1974 E. GERMANY REISCH, GÜNTER £15.99
World War One veteran, Ignaz Wolz, return from the front with a hatred of the war profiteers and starts his own revolution stealing from the rich and divides the spoils with the poor.