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Home , East Berlin, Wende Museum

16 June 2010

Twenty years ago, letters “PR” (for Palast der Republik) in was reunified, and soon gold, and where their menus have ended the remnants of the up? Indeed: in Culver City. As a German with memories of the Wall disappeared. Nazi regime and its Communist So did many of Com- successor I got goose bumps, munist ’s though, when Jumpol told me weird features, it’s uni- about one of his eeriest items, forms, banners, slogans the black robe of a judge in the National Socialist “people’s and snooping gadgets. court” system in World War II, But there is one curious not the regular judiciary. This place where they have robe had a swastika embroidered been amply preserved: the to it. What makes this item so intriguing is that its owner later Wende Museum building became a “Volksrichter” (peo- close to the film studios of ple’s judge) under Communism, southern California. as Jumpol said. How come a youngster from s I entered “Suite E” of America’s surfers’ paradise the bleak office building developed such a consuming on 5741 Buckingham passion for artifacts, art and Parkway in Culver City I kitsch from the era Awas perplexed. There on a platform particularly in the eastern part I spotted three rows of wooden jump of Germany? Well, it’s hard to seats reminding me of rural movie say. But when he was nine years houses in decades past. It turned old he already acquired an East out that these chairs once accom- Berlin policeman’s uniform of the modated the rears of East Germany’s 1950s. A young man with a love leaders as they pondered political for history uncommon among matters. They were part of the fur- most of his contemporaries, he niture of the now-defunct country’s briefly studied in ’s “Staats ratsgebäude,” or building of Free University and found it the Council of State, according to astonishing that almost nobody Cristina Cuevas-Wolf, the Wende in Germany seemed to take much Museum’s program director. interest in collecting memorabilia “Wende” is the German word for of the vanished GDR culture. turning point. The turning point this So he started collecting, at first museum’s name evokes was the col- randomly. lapse of the East German Commu- “Soon people were bringing me nist regime in November 1989, and their stuff,” he recalled. Then he then the creation of a unified Federal found “scavengers,” as he called Republic of Germany on October 3, people scouting eastern Germany 1990. on his behalf. One of these “scav- Wandering through this museum engers” was a man with perhaps triggered diverse sensations in me; I a murky background making a remembered my childhood escape from living on flea markets. Jumpol Soviet-occupied , my coverage was now a graduate student at The Wende Museum of the construction of the Oxford University where things in Culver City is full in 1961 as an Associated Press reporter, of East German artifacts, East German filled his dorm room. my banishment from entering East Ger- like this locker full of One night, he received a particu- many for many years, and then my sports keepsakes. larly urgent call from his scout, return immediately after this hideous who had found an extraordinary structure was breached. “treasure” in the basement of a I imagined smells that weren’t there. house near . As I stared at some of the museum’s This was in 2006 at the time of F OL -W 120,000 Cold War artifacts, the inimi- VAS the huge Dresden flood when water CUE table odors of the “German Democratic CHRISTINA from the Elbe River kept pouring into Republic” (GDR) seemed to return to people’s basements threatening the my nostrils, odors that once hit me East Germany “scavenger’s” find – ledgers contain- even before I handed my passport to ing the complete collection of the daily GDR border guards whose uniforms, newspaper “Neues Deutschland,” the badges and medals are now on exhibit East German Communist Party’s cen- in Culver City. It was a peculiar cocktail tral organ. “My scavenger could not of emissions from cars with two-stroke by the Pacific rescue them from the water by himself,” engines, of industrial disinfectants, of Jampol told me. “So, as many times chickens broiled in stale oil, and lignite- Twenty years after the Berlin Wall perished, a museum in California before, I took the first bus from Oxford fired stoves. to Heathrow, flew to Berlin and raced Of course all of this was only in my evokes the land that lay behind it | By Uwe Siemon-Netto down to to rescue the ledgers mind, for even a young genius like Justin- before they were soaked.” ian Jampol, 32, the Wende Museum’s men shoot over the heads of a family was nonetheless, and so it was a brilliant embroidered flags and banners of party They are now, he said, among his founder, would not have been able to ship of nine escapees until a French military idea by Jumpol to preserve so many of front organizations to films concerning favorite items in his museum, which is the stench in containers across the North jeep with a mounted machine gun raced its relics ranging from a 2.6-ton piece of personal hygiene, and a collection of funded primarily by the London-based Sea, the Atlantic, Caribbean, the Panama right up to the border and fired over the the Wall to a “Minol” gasoline pump of “Das Magazin,” a state-owned popular Arcadia Fund whose key mission is the Canal and up the Coast to . militiamen’s heads until they quit execut- the kind in front of which East German soft-porn publication. protection of endangered culture and But the sight of a poster bearing the image ing the “law.” motorists sometimes lined up for hours After the “Wende,” East Germans nature. Peter Baldwin, Jampol’s former of a helmeted East German soldier and the Jumpol, a Californian completing his to fill up their tiny “Trabant” cars whose found out that Honecker himself pre- history professor at the University of inscription, “Der Befehl ist Gesetz” (The doctorate in history at Oxford University, bodies were made of plastic containing ferred more salacious materials, as evi- California Los Angeles (UCLA), and the Command is the Law) was sufficient to told me that a former border guard at resin strengthened by wool or cotton. denced by his personal film collection. earliest supporter of his collector’s pas- give me a dose of Post-Traumatic Stress “,” the key crossing The Wende Museum’s exhibit is He also had grand architectural visions, sion, serves on the Donor Board of this Disorder. point for non-Germans, donated the con- breathtaking, ranging from rows and namely the “Palace of the Republic” international charity. I know what that slogan meant. I struction and maintenance plans for the rows of busts of Communist luminaries he had built in downtown East Berlin And which of his artifacts renders remember standing on the Western side Berlin Wall. I remember the early days of to the straw hat and last private papers where the Kaiser’s castle once stood. East Jampol particularly contemplative? of Bernauer Strasse, a Berlin street sealed this checkpoint well; for a while I had my of , East Germany’s pen- German wags called this glittering struc- “Well,” he said, “a former East German off by men following a “command” reporter’s observation post in a bedroom ultimate Communist Party chief, and his ture, which was razed two years ago, prison guard gave me the tools of his elevated to “law.” I watched people jump above a sleazy beer bar in the last building secretary’s office furniture; from “Erichs Lampenladen” (Erich’s lamp former trade, his handcuffs and electri- out of windows just a few feet away, des- on the West Berlin side before the official (secret police) listening devices and other store). It housed the country’s rubber- cal shock equipment, for example.” And perately trying to evade men executing border post. snooping paraphernalia to an impressive stamp parliament, a cultural center and how, I wanted to know, does this man this “law.” Some jumped to their deaths. This wasn’t a pretty period in recent collection of oil paintings in the style elaborate restaurants. Guess where their earn his living in reunified Germany? Said I watched East German workers’ militia- German history, but a memorable one it of “;” from artfully silverware and china marked with the Jampol: “He is still a prison guard.” ! Adlon_290x130 05.03.2009 10:10 Uhr Seite 1

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