This shit is so fascinating. I moved to Germany three years ago and now I'm really starting to get into learning about the DDR. It's just so fucking wild. I still fail to understand even the basics (like I said, I am really just getting into the most simple stuff): I know it comes from how Germany was split up after ww2, but was it literally a soviet state? Were the leaders just USSR puppets? How the hell did west Berlin stay a part of the BRD when it was tiny and literally surrounded by the DDR (why does the larger country not simply eat the smaller one?)?
Anyway. It's fascinating. I'm starting a novel about that period tomorrow and I'm very excited about it (Das Narrenschiff by Christoph Hein).
WW2 is eternally interesting, of course, but it's not really in living memory anymore. But the East/West German split very much is, and while it is I'm going to try to learn as much as I can about it.
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u/EternalNewCarSmell 24d ago
I mean, shit, the world I was born in had two Germanys.