4.western influences on the GDR

• travel

  west -> east

  • Not much at all - no one willingly wants to go east 
  • Family visits : bring things like food and clothes 
  • Trade (business people) 
  • Currency exchange 

  East -> west : 

  • Sport 
  • Diplomacy 
  • Workers (live in the east, sent to work in the west - have to be married , outwardly supportive of the government and 26 or over) 
  • Workers brought back luxury items such as bananas and kiwis 

  East west travel inside germany 

  • Reminder that Germany has been divided by the government - is the divide even real?
• Tv

  • very cheap and accessible (because they can be used for propaganda) 
  • Western music channels (beat club) 
  • Easy to access western tv by pointing your aerial in the right direction
• Film

  • 70% of cinema goers are young 
  • Some western films are allowed  ( eg ET) 
  • James bond banned but honecker had them smuggled in and watched them
• music

  • NATO radio 
  • Radio luxembourg can be picked up 
  • GDR radio - they know people like western music but only 40% of their air time can be given over to western media 
  • Western radio provides western news (eg cuban missile crisis) 
  • Read between the lines (listen to both GDR and western radio news and the truth is usually somewhere between both of them)
• magazines

  • People redesign their own east german clothes to be western 
  • Bravo magazines - western fashion 
• impact

  • Not everyone wanted to flee to the west as the government feared 
  • Honecker realised by allowing people to have western influences , meant they were less likely to protest against their own government 
  • A bigger issue than getting the music you liked is the stasi bugging your house 
  • Working class young men were the ones most into subculture  
  • Protest of 2,500 rebelling in leipzig against issues with radio 
  • GDR comes out and officially says 1500 were working for the stasi (shows paranoia of the government)