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German Democratic Republic Deutsche Demokratische Republik 7th October 1949 - 3rd October 1990

 
 
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Old 10-21-2018, 10:26 AM   #13
desantnik
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Re: Stasi Decorations And Memorabilia Reference Book.

Book Review

Stasi Decorations and Memorabilia Volumes I-III

By Ralph Pickard

Reviewed by Dr. Marc T. Voss


The history of the twentieth-century is one of conflict, the pursuit of utopia, catastrophic wars, dramatic social upheaval, and also the era of dictatorship and authoritarian regimes. Throughout the world, the long standing traditional social, political, and economic order collapsed and radical new ideas in politics paved the way for world views that claimed to establish a paradigm that promotes human virtue and happiness. Political ideas that formed during the times of the French Revolution were in particular a powerful new force upsetting the old aristocratic system. Despite the promises of a better future, most of the radicals and revolutionaries that did manage to create what they claimed to be a utopia turned out to be a dictatorial nightmare in reality. In Italy in 1922, Benito Mussolini established a fascist regime that promised Italians a return to the glory of the Roman Empire. In Germany in 1933, Adolf Hitler promised to usher in a Reich that would last a thousand years. This was to be a utopia for the racial elite of the world, namely those who belonged to the Nazi Aryan racial community. In Russia from 1917 onwards, a communist revolution carried out by Vladimir Lenin and intensified by Joseph Stalin claimed to bring the world a proletarian classless society free from bourgeois oppression. Each regime created its own rites, rituals, regalia, ceremonies, and material culture that expressed the will of the state and encompassed the values of their ideology.

By 1945, the Nazi and Fascist utopias were destroyed in the wars they initiated. The regimes collapsed, their military were obliterated, and the leaders were either dead, fled justice, or were put on trial by the victorious Allies. With the United States, Britain, France, and the Soviet Union as the ultimate victors in World War II, they became the occupiers and masters of continental Europe and thus inherited everything that the defeated dictatorships left behind. This included everything from advanced technologies to the massive amounts of Nazi and fascist material iconography. These objects became prized souvenirs by troops of the occupying forces. Allied soldiers stationed in Germany, for example, sought out anything that the Nazi dictatorship created to take home as war booty. This included everything from medals and badges to uniforms, helmets, weapons, daggers, and much more. An entire industry built up around providing soldiers and later, a general community of collectors resources for collecting Nazi memorabilia. As time went on, retired vets and their families began selling their war booty and a cottage industry for collecting sprouted up. All over the globe WWII buffs interested in collecting began hunting prized Nazi regalia. Books on how to detect postwar reproductions and price indexes appeared to help the collector community in their pursuit to build their collections.

This phenomenon, however, was not limited to WWII collectibles nor was it restricted to Nazi military antiques. Indeed, collecting material culture from other dictatorships became increasingly popular as well and, for the most part, a healthy research initiative usually conducted by veteran collectors helped create a body of knowledge that is, to this day, an important resource for contemporary historians, museums, and archives. In Germany in particular, the Nazi regime was replaced by another repressive dictatorship that became known as the German Democratic Republic, which was created out of the Soviet occupied zone in postwar Germany. Although the GDR (Deutsche Demokratische Republik, or DDR) claimed to be humanistic and for peace, it was a system based off of the dictatorial model designed by Stalin, which included its own secret intelligence service which was known as the Ministry for State Security (MfS or Stasi) in East Germany. Indeed, the early leaders of the DDR, who like General Secretary Walter Ulbricht were trained Stalinists, felt that the DDR had to be more Soviet than Soviet Russia because Germany still had to atone for WWII and appear to be the model Soviet state to their superiors in Moscow. These, among many other reasons, led to the DDR being a highly oppressive police state. East Germany also became a highly collectible dictatorship as well. Although Nazi Germany is one of the most researched fields in contemporary history, the history of the German Democratic Republik is still in the early stages of being explored in detail. This is especially true for the collecting of DDR memorabilia as a whole and MfS memorabilia in specific. With this in mind, finding literature that explores the intricacies and nuances of Cold War East German iconography is a challenging pursuit for anyone interested in understanding not only DDR history but also the symbolic and material culture of the socialist dictatorship on German soil.

Ever since the reunification of Germany in 1990, the collecting market was flooded with East German memorabilia. Until about 1993, most of the rarest and most difficult to find items had been snatched up or thrown into the garbage. Those items that were saved in those early years have now become highly sought after objects. Now, with almost thirty years having passed since East Germany disappeared, DDR memorabilia is becoming increasingly more expensive and collectible. As with Nazi militaria, East German objects have been reproduced, copied, and faked in ever increasing numbers based off of known original examples. Historians, museums, and educational institutions that study the Cold War may discover that finding good resources to examine original DDR items to be exceptionally difficult. Indeed, even novice collectors of militaria may unwittingly be accumulating objects that have been reproduced and sold to them as originals. This is one major reason why having literature on DDR collectibles is so important. Beyond this, preserving and analyzing in detail the material objects of a bygone dictatorship adds important historical clues to what the regime was really like. It is, therefore, crucial to have research conducted on the physical objects that represented some important meaning to the regimes that created them. In studying material objects, one can learn a tremendous amount about the society, its axioms, rituals, values, and norms. Although there is a divide in opinion from professional historians about the value of literature that focus exclusively on material objects, it is nonetheless important to know about the objects because, much like societies as a whole, changing circumstances forced not only changing social norms, customs, and values, but it also changed the material objects themselves. For example, in times of hardship, manufacturers may opt to simplify their production and cut costs by altering aspects of their product. This was very noticeable in WWII German helmets where minor adjustments in helmet production actually led to the design that would become the standard battle helmet of the DDR after the war. Hitler may have rejected what was known as the M46 (Model 1946) helmet because it no longer looked Prussian but the East German authorities who wanted to maintain but adjust their military equipment to reflect both German heritage and socialist ideals liked the M46 design and subsequently adopted it.

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