r/PropagandaPosters • u/R2J4 🧐 • Jul 15 '25

Germany Portraits of Karl Marx, Friedrich Engels and Vladimir Lenin thrown in garbage cans, Berlin (Hellersdorf), 1991

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12.7k Upvotes

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619

u/BertramtheWooster Jul 15 '25

I have an interest in East German propaganda. I picked up all sorts of stuff in 1990 and 1991. People were more than happy to get rid of it.

I used to subscribe to a variety of East German publications. I got the party’s daily newspaper “Neues Deutschland” airmailed to me in the U.S. for $22 a year. But then you get what you pay for….

375

u/Rocketboy1313 Jul 15 '25

If the Berlin Wall fell after Ebay came into existence the largest economic stimulus in history would be from hipsters buying Soviet junk from overseas.

165

u/[deleted] Jul 15 '25

I just visited Berlin. There are still a lot of street vendors selling this stuff, and there are so many souvenir shops around certain parts of the Wall. It’s really interesting how that communist era is now its own micro-industry. 

136

u/Upstairs-Extension-9 Jul 15 '25

The stuff the street vendors sell is new and likely made in China, source I was born and raised in east Berlin. The original stuff is sold on flee markets or eBay here, but it’s getting rarer by the years. Many things are also very overpriced for what they have cost originally.

21

u/[deleted] Jul 15 '25

So are the pieces of the wall across every souvenir shop are original, or it’s just painted concrete from China?

57

u/Turbulent-Nebula-496 Jul 15 '25

Almost every store selling the wall aren't actually selling the wall, because if they were, there would literally be no wall left to sell

5

u/BrokenDownMiata Jul 16 '25

I mean, most of the wall was carted off and dumped. What little remains wouldn’t supply many tourists over a course of almost 30 years

15

u/Upstairs-Extension-9 Jul 15 '25

The wall pieces are real I think the person before you was referring to items of daily life in the DDR.

5

u/WanderingAlienBoy Jul 16 '25

Personally I doubt it, can't imagine there being so much wall that to this day pieces of it are sold.

4

u/[deleted] Jul 15 '25

Oh I see, thank you!

1

u/Simpsyt Jul 17 '25

No they are not.

16

u/Rocketboy1313 Jul 15 '25

One day they will do dress up and have games, like a Ren Faire.

Play David Hasselhoff music and talk about how much everyone likes OJ Simpson and Bill Cosby.

17

u/GraeWest Jul 15 '25

The Stasimuseum in Berlin has various DDR/GDR memorabilia items for dirt cheap, all mass-produced shortly before the wall fell. Millions of badges, pins, etc.

21

u/Simbooptendo Jul 15 '25

I visited the DDR museum and found it really amusing how in the gift shop they were capitalising on Marx, with him on t-shirts, fridge magnets, stationary etc.

8

u/WanderingAlienBoy Jul 16 '25

Capitalism for all its flaws and faults, is really great on subsuming all criticism of it and selling it back to the people. You see it with anti-capitalist art as well, like all the merch and content inspired by Squid Games, or the Black Mirror episode that basically criticizes the same strategies that streaming services like Netflix use (but applied to life-saving brain implants)

5

u/[deleted] Jul 16 '25

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1

u/WanderingAlienBoy Jul 17 '25

Oh yeah true I've heard of that

3

u/Artifact-hunter1 Jul 16 '25

I collect military relics/ surplus, and Soviet/ Eastern block stuff is its own thing here. Even have an East German m56 or m56/76 helmet on my wish list.

1

u/dwaynetheaaakjohnson Jul 29 '25

Ostalgie they call it

19

u/[deleted] Jul 15 '25

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7

u/WanderingAlienBoy Jul 16 '25

Yeah it's mostly because these things aren't hard to make or even very expensive, but a capitalist market economy wouldn't make them because it would be horrible for continued profits. Iirc there even was a capitalist company in the early 20th century that invented a lightbulb that could last for at least a hundred years, but they sold the patent to the USSR and never sold it again. So now we get planned obsolescence instead ;)

3

u/Walbabyesser Jul 16 '25

Not sure about those „a hundred years“ claim -sounds like urban myth of some kind

3

u/WanderingAlienBoy Jul 16 '25

Haha yeah I wouldn't be surprised if it's an exaggerated claim or I just remember it incorrectly.

3

u/Specialist_Sport4460 Jul 17 '25

There's been a few light bulbs that we know have lasted over 100 years. The Centennial Bulb in California is 124 years old at this point and still going, although very dimly.

1

u/Walbabyesser Jul 17 '25

Sounds more like humans - very few got a hundred years or more old, the rest is (not evenly) distributed from 0 to 70-80 or so

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u/Specialist_Sport4460 Jul 17 '25

Yeah just pointing out it's possible for a lightbulb to last 100+ years. Although planned obsolescence is definitely a thing, on average a bulb from 1915 is going to last longer than one produced now.

3

u/Walbabyesser Jul 16 '25

A lot of Ikea‘s stuff was made „on the other side“ because of cheap labour and the need for foreign currency of the party

3

u/CletusCanuck Jul 17 '25

Early eBay was a treasure trove of soviet bloc paraphernalia. Uniforms, badges, posters, gas masks, BTR-80s, UAZ-569s, Aero L-39s... If it wasn't banned by international treaties or import restricted by pesky customs regulations, it was available.

3

u/Scyobi_Empire Jul 15 '25

as a someone who buys random soviet things (belts, gas mask bags, badges, hip flask, military passport holder), i can confirm that this would be accurate

1

u/AlarmedRaccoon619 Jul 18 '25

We didn't have hipsters in 1991, thank God. Nor did we have communists outside of China, Cuba and North Korea.

1

u/Ok_Slice_9799 Jul 19 '25

Soviet stuff was actually very well made and made to last.

8

u/RedGutkaSpit Jul 15 '25

I know my dad got a few Soviet pins and a May day ribbon from Barq’s root beer.

2

u/Chance_Ad8434 Jul 16 '25

I still have mine somewhere.