Radio GDR - East Germany Podcast

In this episode of Radio GDR our host John Paul Kleiner ( gdrobjectified.wordpress.com ) interviews Debby Pattiz about the unusual semester she spent in the GDR back in 1988 as a Brown University (Providence, Rhode Island, USA) student at Wilhelm-Pieck Universität in Rostock.

What do you do with a hundred thousand idle spies? By 1990 the Berlin Wall had fallen and the East German state security service folded. For forty years, they had amassed more than a billion pages in manila files detailing the lives of their citizens. Almost a hundred thousand Stasi employees, many of them experienced officers with access to highly personal information, found themselves unemployed...

Thanks to Tim Mohr for taking time to speak with John Paul Kleiner (GDR Objectified blog) and Prof. Ed Larkey (University of Maryland - Baltimore County) about his book Burning Down the Haus: Punk Rock, Revolution and the Fall of the Berlin Wall. Tim's book is well worth a read and you don't have to be into punk music to enjoy it. Thats a wrap for season 2! Hopefully we will be back with season 3...

In this episode of Radio GDR - the East Germany podcast, we are joined by Patrick Hoffmann, assistant director, pedagogue and historian at Borderland Museum Eichsfeld, one of the more than 20 museums along the former Inner German Border Founded in 1995, the museum sits at the border crossing point Duderstadt-Worbis, which is about 190 kilometers west of Leipzig on the border of Thuringia and Lower...

From being raised by a World War 2 veteran who spent time in a Soviet prison camp to having of view of the Berlin Wall from her apartment to meeting westerners like Celeste and her family who she finally visited in California after the wall fell, Adelheid has quite a story to tell!

This episode of Radio GDR, the East Germany podcast, lives up to Paul Harvey's famous expression, "and now you know the rest of the story." In episode 24, Shane Whaley interviewed Eric Friedman who, as a 10-year old boy in 1988, accompanied his mother Celeste Barber, a teacher in the English Department at Santa Barbara City College in California, and stepfather Frank McConnell on a Fulbright grant...

A conversation with author Michael Wagg.  In The Turning Season, he goes in search of hidden histories and footballing ghosts from before the fall of the Berlin Wall. He revisits the 14 clubs that made up the 1989 DDR-Oberliga, East Germany's top flight. From Aue in the Erzgebirge mountains to Rostock on the Baltic Sea, this quirky account of his whistle-stop tour is for fans who know that footbal...

John Paul Kleiner chats with the author of Bowling for Communism: Urban Ingenuity at the End of East Germany. Andrew Demshuk.   Bowling for Communism  illuminates how civic life functioned in Leipzig, East Germany's second-largest city, on the eve of the 1989 revolution by exploring acts of "urban ingenuity" amid catastrophic urban decay. Andrew Demshuk profiles the creative activism of local comm...

John Paul Kleiner and Dr Ed Larkey return to Radio GDR/The East Germany Podcast for part 3 in our series on East German Pop Music. In 1971, East German leader Ulbricht is out  and is replaced by Erich Honecker Our experts discuss how music listening in East Germany evolved and changed in the 1970s including The Red Woodstock Festival of Political Song. Ed Larkey attended the festival and shares hi...

In this episode of Radio GDR East Germany podcast, Steve Minegar speaks with Dr. Claudia Sandberg. a film scholar and filmmaker at the University of Melbourne in Australia and a colleague of Katrin Bahr. Born in the GDR and raised watching DEFA films, Claudia's research focuses on migration and mobility in European and Latin American film, Cold War memory and archives. Part of her interest concern...

On today's episode of the East Germany Podcast, GDR Objectified's John Paul Kleiner and Shane Whaley chat with the Herr Helge Heidemayer, director of the Hohenschönhausen Memorial in Berlin. You will learn: 1) About Hohenschönhausen a) What was Hohenschönhausen? b) Who was incarcerated there? c) What was the prison's place in the GDR justice system? And Much More!

In this episode, our hosts return to look at the broad theme of pop and politics in East Germany. 'So we're looking at ways that East German authorities, the party, the free German youth organization struggled or worked to frame youth culture in a way that was appealing to East German, young people, but also delivered the desired ideological content. John Paul's thesis at the outset here would be...

Today we chat with the author of Interflug - East Germany's airline, Sebastian Schmitz. This is the first book published in English about Interflug. Don't worry though, you do not need to be an aviation nerd to enjoy this one!  In this episode, we ask Sebastian your questions as we learn more about Interflug, her history, her planes, her employees and her passengers on the East Germany Podcast. An...

On this episode of Radio GDR the East Germany Podcast, Steve Minegar explores the lives of East Germans who, in the name of international solidarity and cooperation with fellow socialist countries, worked on behalf of the GDR in Mozambique in the 1980's. He has the distinct pleasure of being joined by Dr. Katrin Bahr, Visiting Assistant Professor of German at Centre College in Danville, Kentucky....

I have always wondered what small-town life was like outside of Berlin in the GDR. In this episode of Radio GDR, Bill Blosen and I sit down to talk about his experiences traveling to Görlitz, a small medieval town on the East German-Polish border. Photos at www.radiogdr.com/30 He went there to visit family as a young man in the 1980s before the fall of the Berlin Wall. Bill and I both work in tech...

East Germany Podcast Host Shane Whaley's Amazon Explore review of The infamous Berlin Wall: stories of the Death Strip and a divided city tour. Shane works in the tours and activity industry hosting a podcast for tour operators called Tourpreneur. He is currently reviewing Amazon Explore which is Amazon's foray into virtual Livestream experiences around the world and he brings you this report of t...

In this episode, you will hear how Peter Keup's life was made a misery following his family's application for an exit visa. Peter discusses how his life was never to be the same again. How he was treated as a pariah by the East German state, which led to him trying to escape the GDR, getting captured, and spending time in an East German cell. He was later bought out by West Germany and following t...

In this episode of the East Germany Podcast - Radio GDR we go on a journey of Rock and Pop Music of East Germany. Our good friend John-Paul Kleiner (GDR Objectified) is in the East Germany podcast host chair for this one. He is joined by Dr Edward Larkey, an expert on GDR music and author of Rotes Rockradio. John Paul turns his hand to DJ'ing as he plays some hand-picked tracks from the GDR. He ha...

This episode is dedicated to our friend Neil Tooley who sadly passed away last week.   In this episode of we explore the world of East German movies and DEFA, the studio that produced them. I know nothing about East German-made movies so in this episode we are joined by two East German Cinema buffs to find out more. I was delighted when Jeffrey Babcock reached out to me, pointing out that we had n...

In this episode of the East Germany Podcast we ask Christine the podcaster behind the East German Fashion History Podcast , why she is fascinated with East Germany and East German Fashion.

In 1988, a reluctant 10 year old American boy, Eric Friedman moved to East Berlin. His father Frank was granted a Fulbright grant to lecture at Humboldt University. Eric shares his experiences living in East Germany in his memoir The Ghosts of East Berlin, he shares some of those memories with us here on the East Germany Podcast Radio GDR

In this episode of the East Germany Podcast, Shane Whaley is joined by Anthony Russell. Anthony shares with us what fascinates him about East Germany. Anthony was so fascinated by the GDR that he chose to live for a year in Rostock as part of his Germany degree. He also discusses his favorite books written about the GDR as well as TV shows and movies concerning East Germany.

In this episode of the East Germany Podcast, Shane Whaley is joined by Cold War Conversations Podcast Co-Host James Chilcott. James shares with us what fascinates him about East Germany. James tells us how he visited the Fulda Gap as a schoolboy and was photographed by East German Border Guards. He also discusses his favorite books written about the GDR as well as TV shows and movies concerning Ea...

In this episode of the Radio GDR Podcast, host Shane Whaley kicks off season 2 of the East Germany podcast chatting with listener Steve Minegar about the relationship between East Germany and Chile. Part of the Why We Are Fascinated by East Germany series.

Radio GDR Co-host Shane explains why there have been no episodes of late and why you should not unsubscribe because more episodes are coming your way in the near future.