Totally East. Life in the GDR.
From Peaceful Revolution to German Unity 1989/90.

Exhibition opening with guided tour: 3.11.2019 (Sun), 4:00pm

Exactly 30 years ago, on November 9, 1989, the Berlin Wall, which had divided Germany into two parts: the Federal Republic, a Western democracy, and the German Democratic Republic (GDR), a socialist one-party system, fell. The fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989 had been forced upon hundreds of thousands of courageous citizens in the GDR by their months of protests in the "Peaceful Revolution". The GDR government had to resign, paving the way for the reunification of Germany as a democracy.

On the occasion of this anniversary, the Goethe-Institut is showing a double exhibition:

Totally East. Life in the GDR. Harald Hauswald, OSTKREUZ / Stefan Wolle.

In the 1980s, Harald Hauswald photographed in the GDR what other photographers regarded as uninteresting: Glimpses of everyday life, old and young people, young lovers, parties and party celebrations, young people in church standing up for peace and the environment, rock concerts... The unvarnished image of the late GDR emerged, which was home to 16 million people, between oppression and stagnation on the one hand, rebellion and longing for freedom on the other.

Harald Hauswald, born 1954 in Radebeul, completed his training as a photographer in Dresden and from 1978 lived as a freelance photographer in East Berlin. After the fall of the Berlin Wall, his pictures were shown all over the world. He was one of the co-founders of OSTKREUZ. Agency of the photographers.

Stefan Wolle, born 1950 in Halle/Saale, holds a doctorate in history. After the fall of the Berlin Wall he became an expert for the Stasi files and worked as a historian at the Humboldt University in Berlin. As author and editor he was involved in numerous publications about the GDR, he also wrote the texts for this exhibition. Since 2005 Stefan Wolle has been the scientific director of the GDR Museum in Berlin.

The exhibition Voll der Osten was produced jointly by the Bundesstiftung zur Aufarbeitung der SED-Diktatur and OSTKREUZ Agentur der Fotografen. Language: German/ English. A translation into Cantonese is available for visitors.











From the Peaceful Revolution to German Unity. A story in Pictures. With Texts by Ulrich Mählert.

The development in the GDR from the protest movement in the summer of 1989 to the fall of the Berlin Wall in November 1989 and the reunification of Germany in 1990 is told in 20 picture-text panels.

This exhibition was produced by the Bundesstiftung zur Aufarbeitung der SED-Diktatur. Texts: Ulrich Mählert. Language: English/Chinese.

This part of the exhibition will be shown at Room MBG19, Lingnan University Hong Kong during November 5 to 12, 2019.