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Two former acrobats opened a GDR-style hotel in Berlin

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Travel Articles >> Locations >> Europe >> Germany >> Berlin

An idea to open such hotel came to two former acrobats of the State Circus long ago. Gido Sand, presently being a psychotherapist and his former colleague Daniel Helbig do not have nostalgia for GDR. “I was very happy when everything ended. We used our own past in order to create something new, unique, and outstanding at the background of all already existing in Berlin”, told one of the owners of the hotel.

Outside the building is completely renewed. The hotel hall is decorated with original wallpapers of the 70s, heavy dark-brown sofas and red carnations. According to Gido Sand, the furniture from IKEA cannot be compared to that of GDR.

Finally the hotel tuned to be a designer's one. The style can be observed in everything – starting from original accessories, furniture and wallpapers and ending with cocktail – bar, not rather corresponding to retro atmosphere.

“The suite decoration should evoke the guests’ reminiscences”, - says Gido Sand and remembers the cases when the visitors recognized separate articles of furniture that were present in their parents’ flats in their childhood. A portray of Erich Honecker is hanging in many of the suites, former General Secretary of the Social Unique Party of Germany (SUPG) and the Chairman of the GDR State Committee. Many guests however sometimes do not understand the joke and hide the picture in the cabinet.

Ostalgia
In 2004, 15 years after the fall of Berlin Wall more than a half of the inhabitants of Eastern regions of FRG (59%) had nostalgia for GDR times, informed German Weekly “Stern”.

“Nostalgia for GDR” finds its expression in such way that in Germany a demand for production with symbolic of those times had significantly grown up for the last years. The cult articles become the t-shirts, bags, films, blue shirts of members of the Free German Youth Union ( GDR “komsomol”), belts, service caps and shoulder straps of Eastern-German Army military personnel manufactured by “popular enterprises”.

All this was called “ostalgia”, i.e. nostalgia for GDR (originated from German word Osten means “east”).

Herewith, “ostalgia” still bears only political character. For many eastern Germans it is a warm reminding about days of youth, and for the youth and representatives of the vanguard art it is a classic “banter”. For example in German capital the parties in the form of “GDR memories meetings” take place from time to time. In order to be permitted at such "party” you should present at the entrance something preserved from the “relics of GDR epoch”, for example the badge of the Free German Youth Union, the tie of pioneer-tehlmann, or any other ‘antique’ things including elements of military uniform of GDR or Soviet Army.

And certainly this is a way to earn money. Some businessman from Karlsruhe city had even purchased the license for the right to use the state symbols of former GDR as a trademark protected by law for 300 Euro. Nowadays his enterprise has a unique right to place the image of arms, emblem of the Social Unique German Party (SUGP), of the Ministry of National Safety of former GDR or on the textile article, vessels, transport vehicles.

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Article Submitted On: October 17, 2007