The Worst Car Communism Gave The World: The Trabant Slow, smoky, and decades behind the West, the Trabant became a symbol of everything wrong with communist-era car manufacturing. Motor1 · 35m ago
I know why many east Germans vote AfD. And no, it’s not an inherited longing for dictatorship Grievance politics has grown in the east of the country where I was born. But west Germans have hard questions to answer too, says writer Carolin Würfel The Guardian - UK · Sep 15
How Iran draws citizens into political surveillance Authoritarian governments have long drawn ordinary citizens into political surveillance. Joseph Stalin’s Soviet Union encouraged denunciations. East Germany’s secret police service, the Stasi, embedded informants in workplaces and neighbourhoods. The Conversation · Sep 11
Readers reply: would equal pay create a better society? The long-running series in which readers answer other readers’ questions considers the possibility of one wage for all The Guardian - UK · Sep 6
Quote of the day by Angela Merkel: "What does freedom mean to me? This question has occupied me my entire life... Freedom is for me not to..." — Inspiring life lessons on continuous learning, personal growth, leadership, self-discovery, purpose, and how pushing your boundaries unlocks lifelong autonomy by the former German Chancellor Today's Quote of the Day by Angela Merkel: Angela Merkel’s quote on freedom defines true liberty not merely as the absence of external political oppression, but as an active, personal commitment to lifelong learning and self-transcendence. Drawing from her youth in East Germany and her sixteen-year tenure as German Chancellor,… The Economic Times · Aug 5
We investigated Russia’s military indoctrination of Ukrainian children in occupied territories – what we found was more shocking than we could have imagined When we were asked to investigate Russia’s indoctrination and militarisation of children living in the Ukrainian territories occupied by Moscow since 2014, we had a general idea of the Kremlin’s occupation policies. Two of us grew up in what was then Soviet-occupied Latvia and East Germany. We were already familiar… The Conversation · Jul 31
In 1950, amid the Cold War, a tiny beetle from the US was destroying potato crops across East Germany. Then began one of history's strangest propaganda campaigns In 1950, a striped potato beetle became the centre of one of the Cold War's most unusual propaganda campaigns after East Germany accused the United States of dropping the insects from aircraft to destroy socialist food supplies. While farmers battled real crop damage, governments turned the infestation into a political… The Economic Times · Jun 19
How a tiny potato beetle became a Cold War weapon: The bizarre story behind East Germany's 'American insect' campaign In the summer of 1950, farmers across East Germany began finding their potato crops stripped bare. The culprit was the Colorado potato beetle, a small, striped insect native to North America that had been spreading steadily across Europe for decades. What happened next had nothing to do with agriculture and… The Times of India · Jun 18
After Cape Verde’s heroics against Spain, more great World Cup underdog stories From Sparwasser being the toast of East Germany to Cameroon’s rumbling of Argentina, the finals are littered with upsets The Guardian - UK · Jun 16
‘I shared a single bed with my mother for three years’: Sung Tieu on her monument to immigrant workers in Venice At the German pavilion, the artist has re-created the housing estate where she grew up to tell the forgotten history of migrants, including her parents, hired under a socialist agreement between East Germany and Vietnam – then abandoned The Guardian - UK · May 12
Chernobyl at 40: Secret Stasi files reveal extent of Soviet misinformation campaign over nuclear disaster On April 26, 1986, Soviet engineers at the Chernobyl nuclear power plant were conducting a safety test. Doomed by a fatal design flaw and pushed to the limit by human negligence, reactor 4 exploded amid an attempted shutdown during a routine procedure, setting off a chain of events that ultimately… The Conversation · Apr 22
This Week in History: From the liberation of Nelson Mandela to East Germany’s final gasp Explore how major events between 9 and 15 February were captured on The Independent’s front pages The Independent UK · Feb 9
“I didn’t know him or trust him. But I gave him all of that money in the hope he would bring me a Strat. I had no idea if I’d see him again”: Rammstein’s Richard ZK on the coffee shop rendezvous in East Germany that got him his first Fender The Rammstein riffer wanted a Strat to imitate his hero, Jimi Hendrix – but getting hold of one took some serious work Guitar World · Jan 1
‘No topic is too difficult’: children’s series on life in communist East Germany wins an Emmy In Fritzi’s Footsteps tells story of a girl growing up in Leipzig who witnesses the fall of the Berlin Wall The Guardian - UK · Nov 26, 2025
PC Gamer · Oct 18, 2025 I played communist Germany's only arcade cabinet and you can too, comrade VEB Polytechnik Karl-Marx-Stadt is my dev to watch for 2026.
The Guardian - UK · Oct 7, 2025 Cold war power play: how the Stasi got into computer games A new exhibition in Berlin shows how the notoriously paranoid East German state greeted the dawn of video gaming with surprising enthusiasm
The Guardian - UK · Sep 6, 2025 Why the legacy of East Germany’s prefab housing blocks is more relevant than ever Once considered progressive, then later derided, a new exhibition is exploring the developments’ place as part of a collective experience
RideApart · May 16, 2025 This Oddball Electric Scooter Is More Than Just a Throwback Before electric scooters were cool—or even a thing—the streets of East Germany were buzzing with the unmistakable whirr of the Simson Schwalbe. First introduced in 1964, the smoky two-stroke scooter became a beloved icon, with over a million units sold before production wrapped in the mid-’80s. Fast forward to today,…
Guitar World · May 8, 2025 “I didn’t know him or trust him. But I gave him all of that money in the hope he would bring me a Strat. I had no idea if I’d see him again”: Rammstein’s Richard ZK on the coffee shop rendezvous in East Germany that got him his first Fender The Rammstein riffer wanted a Strat to imitate his hero, Jimi Hendrix – but getting hold of one took some serious work
The Independent UK · Dec 10, 2024 Frieder Reimold, journalist who wrote AP’s iconic ‘East Germany opens borders’ bulletin, dies at 80 Frieder Reimold, the former Berlin bureau chief of The Associated Press German-language service who wrote the iconic 1989 bulletin that East Germany had opened its borders, has died aged 80, his family said
The Independent UK · Nov 8, 2024 The Berlin Wall: a divide that once shaped German women's lives apart still echoes today As Germany celebrates the fall of the Berlin Wall 35 years ago on Nov. 1989, women look back at how different their lives were under communism in East and capitalism in West Germany
The Independent UK · Nov 8, 2024 AP Photos: 35 years after the Berlin Wall opened, fragments of East Germany's border remain Most of communist East Germany’s heavily fortified border was torn down quickly after it was opened in 1989, but there are still places where visitors can see the remains of the Berlin Wall and other sections of the frontier
The Conversation · Nov 6, 2024 Thirty-five years since the wall fell, Berlin is divided – over what to do with crumbling communist buildings The 35th anniversary of the fall of the Berlin wall, an event that powerfully symbolised the collapse of communism in eastern Europe and signalled the end of the cold war, is an opportune moment to take stock of what remains of East Germany (GDR) in the capital of Germany.
The Guardian - UK · Nov 5, 2024 As a former East German athlete doped by the state, I see how our past pain is fuelling the far right In east Germany, our history is shrouded in lies and silence. Until we break their hold, support for extremism will flourish, says academic and author Ines Geipel
International Business Times · Nov 5, 2024 How East Germany's 'Traffic Light Man' Became A Beloved Icon As Germany readies to mark 35 years since the Berlin Wall fell, one symbol of the former communist East has become an icon of reunification, seen by millions every time they cross a street.