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Article: Ostalgie; East German products.(The trendiness of old East Germany)
- Article from:
- The Economist (US)
- Article date:
- September 13, 2003
CopyrightCOPYRIGHT 2003 Economist Newspaper Ltd. This material is published under license from the publisher through the Gale Group, Farmington Hills, Michigan. All inquiries regarding rights should be directed to the Gale Group. (Hide copyright information)
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A wild repackaging of German history
ANOTHER bubble may be about to burst: the craze for products and brands that were the hallmark of the former East Germany. Ostalgie (nostalgia for the east) is all the rage. Former citizens of the old Deutsche Demokratische Republik (DDR) are big buyers of the packaged foods and clothing that quickly vanished from the shelves after unification in 1990. They want some of that lost world back, kidding themselves that it was a sort of Utopia.
Many former West Germans have caught the nostalgia too. As well as the popularity, now replicated abroad, of "Goodbye Lenin", a film fondly looking back at the fall of the Berlin ...