The Heimat Museum proudly displays Rudi Dutschke’s pullover. Another native son is clothier Carl Ottow, who with his wife Wilhelmine moved to Papua New Guinea to Christianize the natives.
I found these newspaper clipping displays fascinating! On the left are clippings from October 1989 detailing the oppression of the west, the propaganda campaign carried out by the west against the DDR, and the troubles faced by those from the east foolish enough to head west.
The following panels detail various stages of public consciousness following the Wende, including euphoria at the wall being down and shock and anger at the extent of Stasi activity and complicity. I especially liked the Würde statt Anschluß piece. I remember Günter Grass and others championing the idea of a third way, rather than simply subsuming the DDR into the west.
I spent some time talking with the museum docent about her experiences. I mentioned the articles and she said look, before the wall came down all they wanted was freedom, like the freedom to travel — what would happen with the economy wasn’t something she and people she knew were thinking about at all. That quickly changed as factories shut down and people’s already meager incomes disappeared. I told her about driving through the east in the 1990s and seeing the decay. She said now enough time has gone by that people have forgotten, and there is a nostalgia for the days when there was work for all, with people saying they wish the wall hadn’t come down. She pointed out that while sure, you had work, and the rents were low, you had to wait for years to buy a car, and the goods you could get were shoddy. She said people don’t remember that now.
Dutschke Elternhaus
