East Germany a retro utopia 15 years on

Few Easterners care to remember the hated Stasi secret police who crushed any sign of individuality and who persecuted even the mildest of critics as ‘‘enemies of the state’’.

Disillusionment among former East Germans has fused with a fashion for all things 1970s and retro, elevating the lost country to a bizarre, cult status. East German paraphernalia sells for exorbitant prices, films set in the communist East such as Good Bye, Lenin! draw huge audiences and night clubs offer period music and period drinks with free entry for those wearing communist youth brigade shirts.

‘‘People’s memories filter out what was negative, they want to see only positive things,’’ said Joerg Drieselmann, who runs the Stasi museum in their former headquarters, another building left virtually untouched in the 15 years since the Wall fell.

These rosy memories have brought many old eastern products back from the brink. This year, East Germany’s Zeha running shoes, socialism’s answer to Adidas, went back into production. The firm collapsed in 1993, but was resuscitated by two young East Germans.

In communist times the shoes were available only to the sporting elite, these days their 140 euro ($180) price tag keeps them beyond the reach of most people. ‘‘Of course we rode along on this Ostalgie wave when the shoes first came out, and we’ve certainly profited from this whole ’70s retro fashion craze,’’ said Zeha spokeswoman Jana Marx. ‘‘But the shoes are selling well and we can exist even without the nostalgia.’’ Drieselmann can well understand the reasons why people want to reminisce and enjoy the novelty of old products.

‘‘In E Germany the work place was often a fun place to be. There wasn’t much to do because there were so many employees. People had relatively equal incomes so there was very little envy and a complete lack of freedom was compensated with a high degree of security.’’ —Reuters