DDR Museum

When in Berlin, we visited the DDR museum which showed a lot of personal details of what it would be like to live in the DDR (AKA German Democratic Republic, or East Germany). The residents of the DDR lived under strict communism, and a planned economy. They were not allowed to go to West Germany, and because so many were leaving, they built the Berlin Wall. Inside the museum was a full scale replica of a typical apartment from the DDR. These apartments were very standardized and built in large quantities. The apartment was very standard and had little creativity inside, but was a perfectly nice living environment. There was running water, TV, and radio, but few had phones. Everyone with a phone was being listened to by the secret police. They were forbidden from having board games such as monopoly because it was capitalist. People could tune their TVs to receive channels from the West but it was forbidden. The secret police would go to primary school and play the news theme song of the western media, and if kids knew it then that meant their parents watched western news. They may or may not be prosecuted for this. <a href="https://medium.com/sustainablegermany/ddr-museum-2eb8ce63b651">Read More</a>