#east-germany

#east-germany

Auf Fritzis Spuren (In Fritzi's Footsteps) tells the story of a 12-year-old girl living in the eastern city of Leipzig and how she experiences life in the east and the events that lead to the fall of the Berlin Wall. It definitely shows that no topic is too difficult for children, said the lead actor, Julian Janssen. It's precisely the difficult topics that should be addressed.

For while Erpenbeck adopted some of the features of the form apparently throwaway observations on daily life, such as minor irritation at the difficulty of sourcing proper splitterbrotchen, an unpretentious pastry now pimped for a more elaborate and wealthy clientele she consistently enlarged and complicated it. Into that recognisable tone of ennui and mild querulousness with which journalists hope to woo a time-pressed but disenchanted or nostalgic readership, Erpenbeck smuggled metaphysics, politics and history.

Seiichi Furuya is an image maker who, over the past few decades, has become well loved for the intimate portraits of his late wife Christine Furuya-Gössler during the seven years they spent together, first as a couple, then husband and wife and later as parents. Defined by their soft mundanity and Seiichi's clear dedication to the life he and Christine had built together, his images are backdropped by the strange brutalist beauty of East Germany not long before the wall fell.

In 2019 researchers at Berlin's Computer Games Museum made an extraordinary discovery: a rudimentary Pong console, made from salvaged electronics and plastic soap-box enclosures for joysticks. The beige rectangular tupperware that contained its wires would, when connected to a TV by the aerial, bring a serviceable Pong copy to the screen. Arcade fire East German attractions at ColdWarGames. Photograph: Dora Csala/AlliiertenMuseum At the time, they thought the home-brewed device was a singular example of ingenuity behind the iron curtain.

Depopulated towns in Germany's ex-communist east have come up with a novel scheme to bring back life: offering people several weeks of super-cheap housing to give would-be residents a taste of the place. The "trial-living" scheme aims to revitalise half-deserted communities as Germany nears the 35th anniversary of its reunification on October 3rd. One of those giving it a shot is Weslawa Goeller, 50, a kindergarten educator with a two-year-old daughter who is getting to know the small town of Guben on the Polish border.