My first trip to Germany was in 1994. Berlin and thereafter driving by the autobahn and country roads to Leipzig, Dresden and back. Unforgetable, and I feel fortunate to have seen these little things and many other Iron Curtain classics still trundling around in their spy-movie settings, from the massive Kraz and Maz soviet trucks to the ubiquitous IFAs or the old Robur Garant clearly based in the WW2 Phänomen 1500.
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My father-in-law, Ernst, had friends back in DDR and visited them sometime in the first half of the 1970’ies.
He had one of the larger Opels (not a Commodore, I think it was a Kapitän, an automatic).
Anyhow, he had one of his DDR-friends in the car and they were going to park “downtown” in a parking garage with a somewhat steep uphill ramp in the entrance.
His DDR-friend saw that some local car had just entered and told Ernst to wait until the DDR-car had had time to clear the entrance to avoid them getting stuck on the ramp and not being able to get moving uphill (it was somewhat steep) if the preceding car had to stop.
Ernst waited, entered and then stopped mid ramp. Ernst stepped on the brake, stood still and then calmly gave the car some gas and eased up the ramp. More than 100 hp had no issues where the poor Trabi had to approach with speed and hope for the best.
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I was one of the first Americans many East Germans had ever seen who did not get off of a tour bus. I know this because many of them told me so. After the wall came down, I hitchhiked across the East, making it as far as Wittenberg, to see the door Martin Luther nailed his theses to, and Dresden, where I had cultural exchanges with East German girls.
Hitchhiking is a poor term - I never stuck my thumb out. They saw the ALICE, the haircut, the boots, and they knew. The first words out of their mouths were, “Sind Sie Ami?” or something similar. I rode in many a Trabi, and it’s an experience one doesn’t forget. I’ve posted photos before - maybe they’re on the armorama archive, I’m not sure. I can always post more.
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Speaking of Luther, do you know why the Wartburg car was nicknamed Luther?
Here I stand, I can do no other. God help me. Amen
Martin said it in German of course and he may not actually have said it but everybody
“knows” that he did and who am I to spoil a good story …
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I never got to East Germany but I visited a monks cell in Augsburg where Luther composed his theses. Very, very spartan quarters.
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When I first read the term “Diet of Worms” I had a wholly different thing in mind than it is actually supposed to mean 
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We visited Eisleben last summer, where Luther was both born and died. He was quite a controversial and conflicting person. On the one hand he gave the peasants the chance to read the bible by translating it, but when they rose in consequence (Bauernkrieg) he supported the nobility to quell it. There are more samples of his duality in thinking…
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You too huh?
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Can’t have the peasants getting uppity now,
can we?
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As Robin mentioned the Wartburg car - to English speaking people that name might bring back memories of Duckburg, but it’s actually the name of the castle where Luther translated the Bible into German: “Burg” meaning “fortified castle” and “wart” is “to ward, to watch, to guard”, so Wartburg would be something like “Guardian Castle”.
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One more “propaganda” film about Duroplast, used in the precedessor of the Trabant, the AWZ P70.
Duroplast, Werkstoff der Zukunft. Die Entwicklung des AWZ P70
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RoG re-released their 1/24 scaleTrabant kit to commemorate the 60th anniversary of the Trabant.
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Beim Alex.
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After I got out of the Army I lived in Germany. I was there when the wall came down. I watched the marches in Berlin and Leipzig on TV every night. I remember the scenes of Trabis crossing into Austria and Germany from Czechoslovakia and Hungary at first, and then from the DDR. I lived in southwestern Germany, and the Trabants were everywhere. They were loud, smokey little cars, but a true symbol of freedom. We had a several East German families relocate to the little village where I lived. I think these two releases in 1/35 really open up the door for countless diorama opportunities. Ill be getting both.
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I was in Bavaria the summer after the Iron curtain was opened up and remember the busloads of Czechs coming into Germany to shop at the Kaufhofs.
We also went to Czechoslovakia (before their split up) and we were quite surprised by both their police cars (old Skoda Type 742, they would not have stood a chance against our modern cars, if they wanted to chase us) and the exchange rate.
We bought 7 ice creams and prayed with DM5,- (€2,50). We got the question if we didn’t have any smaller amount of money, which we didn’t. Deducting from the amount of change we got, we could have bought 20 ice cream cones for that amount!
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Very cool video. Thanks for sharing.
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I’ll feed you to the pigs I will!
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You could buy a Musima Meisterkraft violin, actually a very fine instrument, for roughly $20, if you brought in East Marks illegally, having gotten them at a West Berlin bank for the rate of 11:1 instead of the official 1:1 rate at the border crossings.
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I recon the West German banks were more than happy to undermine the Ossies’ economy like that…
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Not possible without guys like me.
Of course, I was undermining things in the West by way of untaxed American cigarettes.
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