The Wende Museum and Archive of the The Wende Museum and Archive of the Cold War located in Culver City, California, celebrated its 10th Anniversary in 2012

How a museum comes into being.

I met Justinian Jampol, the founder and president of The Wende Museum and Archive of the Cold War, for the first time in the summer of 2003 on the campus of the University of California, . That was one year after the museum was established. I had just returned from another extended trip to Europe and was pleasantly surprised to meet a young American who displayed such a keen interest in the history of the GDR and . We were immediately engaged in an animated discussion about the two German states. From 1972 – 1989 I had been traveling every summer in a rented car through East , and in order to help and support politically persecuted families, and continued my travels to the former East Bloc after the unification of Germany and Europe.

In 1972 my cousin in Erfurt had given me a cigar box full of family photos from our Grandmother that shed new light on my past and seemed like an unearthed treasure to me. In return for my presents from the west, among them the highly coveted Texas Instruments calculators that I had to smuggle into the GDR, I received the traditionally carved wooden Christmas figures from the Erzgebirge, among them smokers in miner’s uniforms, tiny music making angels, and cute flower girls that represent a typical way of life deeply rooted in the traditions of my Saxon homeland. Over the years I was also given wooden candleholders, hand-painted decorative plates as well as earthenware vases and pitchers with unique artistic designs. Illustrated books about the GDR were likewise favorite gifts. “That’s all we have,” they always added awkwardly, as if they had to apologize for something that was not their fault. Their words, in turn, embarrassed me, because I knew they had to employ all kinds of tricks to procure these handcrafted items, since the GDR exported the greater part of what it produced, because access to hard currency was an economic priority. The Federal Republic of Germany was their most important trade partner, major department and mail order stores sold GDR products as their own brand, but East German merchandise

2 was also shipped around the world – both to communist and non- communist countries. Luxury or high-end products such as Meißen porcelain, Zeiss optics, and even folk art found buyers not only in the Federal Republic but also in other western countries.

One day, my cousin proudly presented me with a huge volume simply titled DDR, published in 1981 by VEB F.A. Brockhaus Verlag Leipzig, boasting several double-page colored photographs. For comparison and to document the progress of socialism, they included black and white photos of ruins in Dresden and opposite rebuilt factories, former government buildings and entire blocks of prefabricated apartment buildings. Without exception, the book shows happy, self- confident women and men as I rarely encountered them on my travels through the GDR.

Such recollections went through my mind as Justin, beaming with excitement, was telling me ever more incomprehensible stories about the emergence of the Wende Museum. He is an American, so how was it possible that the disappearance of the GDR over ten years earlier, whose demise had filled me with unrestrained joy and relief, gets him so fired up, holding his undivided attention? I tried to figure out how old Justin could have been in 1989, at the time of the fall of the – eleven or twelve at most – and wondered how he could speak so lively and convincingly about recent German and European events, a period in history that he had hardly witnessed himself? Where did this fascination and feeling of closeness originate? He, however, didn’t seem to be conscious of this remarkable fact because he was caught up in the middle of a passion for collecting everyday utensils and other objects from the GDR that I was acquainted with, and that I suddenly saw in a whole new light because of his unexpected interest, – right here on the Campus of UCLA in the bright California sun. It was at this university that I was able to fulfill my dream of getting a degree that began forming in my mind while I was still a little girl living in the Soviet occupied zone of Germany, as it was often called then. And so it happened that years later I could only witness the reunification of Germany on television from the other side of the world.

To my question as to the origin of his curiosity about, commitment to and engagement with the former communist workers’ and peasants’ 3 state, Justin explained that as a child he had of course not grasped the significance of the fall of the Berlin Wall and the dismantling of the Iron Curtain in the fall of 1989, but that his parents had, as a matter of course, insisted that he and his brothers read at least the daily headlines on the front page of the Los Angeles Times, which pointed them beyond the local and national news to the earthshaking events on the other side of our planet. Justin noticed that his parents were clearly affected by the political upheaval in Europe and intuitively understood that they were of historical importance. Even so, after a week he was wondering when the newspaper would finally change topics and move on to something else.

I wanted to know more about his family background, and learned that Justin’s mother is protestant and that her family came from Switzerland. His Grandfather studied at Stanford University and taught as a scientist and specialist for Rhaeto-Romanic at UC Santa Barbara. His family was part of a group of German-Swiss people who had been brought to Russia by Catherine the Great in order to teach Russian peasants new agricultural methods. Eventually they came to North Dakota, where his Grandfather traded with Indians, used his influence to defend civil rights throughout his life, took part in the Civil Rights Movement in the 1960s and was one of the early leaders of the NAACP in Santa Barbara, California. Justin’s father was born in Los Angeles. His family came from the former Polish town of Jampol on the Dnjestr River that today belongs to Ukraine. He still remembers his Grandmother who remained illiterate throughout her life. She spoke Yiddish and Polish, but never learned English. The family suffered greatly during the Russian pogroms until they were finally able to immigrate into the United States via Ellis Island.

We met often after our first encounter, and the more I heard about Justin’s work the better I perceived the driving force behind his idea of a Wende Museum and an archive of the Cold War, and was able to integrate it into what was taking place in the reunited Germany. Justin couldn’t answer my question outright as to when he had acquired the first object from the GDR, but he explained to me the origin of his passion for collecting things that grew out of his fervor for history and archaeology. At sixteen he had participated in an expedition to Israel, Egypt and Jordan where he experienced first hand the worth of visual, material culture and learned how important it was to take a second 4 look at objects and to touch them. “If we look closely, these objects can tell us astounding stories about the culture as well as about ourselves,” Justin explained to me with his inexhaustible enthusiasm. As he listened to the different accounts of the Berlin Wall and saw the physical consequences of the city’s past, he realized with amazement, “There was no need to dig deep – you could still see the bullet holes in the walls of houses.” In the case of the GDR and Eastern Europe we are not dealing with tools and utensils from prehistoric times but nonetheless they are from a quickly vanishing historical epoch

At that moment I comprehended that his family’s origin and interest in history had predestined Justin for his life’s work.

His first assignment in the cultural sphere led him to Prof. Walter Reich, the former director of the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington, D.C. At the time Justin was employed at the Woodrow Wilson Center for International Scholars, where he assisted Prof. Reich with the research and compilation of material in connection with political history, a task to which he still looks back today as a rewarding experience.

As fate would have it, Justin had chosen on his first trip to Tel Aviv the longer route via Berlin Schönefeld. In Berlin he heard the most improbable stories about the Wall, and apprehended the physical, political and psychical consequences of the past for the city and its population on both sides of the Wall in a completely new light. For the first time he experienced for himself the ramifications the divided city must have had for the inhabitants of Berlin that touched all situations of life. Frequent visits followed and through this physical and mental proximity, the destiny of the German capital became clear to him.

Magically attracted, he turned his steps time and again toward the Brandenburg Gate, where, at a permanent flea market, an abundance of items was offered daily for sale on tables that were overflowing with merchandise, as if people, like in a frenzy, had to get rid of everything from their past immediately. But not only the inhabitants of Berlin bought, sold and swapped things, often at dirt-cheap prices. “It was not long before people began arriving from many other countries of the former to take part in this giant sale. The whole world seemed to meet at the flea market around the Brandenburg Gate,” 5 Justin recalls. He quickly ascertained that more was thrown away than sold and that the entire former GDR was going through a Müllphase (trashing phase). With great haste, seized by a sudden giddiness of freedom, citizens of former got rid of everything they had been forced to live with for forty years. Sick of it all, and without any thought for the future, they threw away their possessions, and with it their own past, as worthless, unusable and unloved, without reflecting about what they were discarding from their former lives, nor did they ask about the actual, ideal and historic value of these items. At the same time they were coveting everything coming from the West, considering it to be better and more desirable.

As Justin watched the bustling activities, observing what people brought to light as they lugged things to the flea markets from their apartments, hauled them down from their attics and carried them out of their cellars to turn them into cash, he was reminded of archaeological diggings. Whatever people had used daily until only recently in their own homes, factories and offices received a completely different meaning; they were suddenly ashamed of their cheap, unattractive and anachronistic furnishings and mechanical devices. “We can count ourselves lucky when others also collected paraphernalia from the Cold War era,” Justin stresses. “It was a sobering experience to see what a society leaves behind, to witness a culture transforming right before your own eyes. Today these objects shed light on forty years of European history. In the sudden freedom at the Brandenburg Gate they awoke to a new life and traveled from there as newly found treasures into the whole world.” This excess of discarded items engrained itself on Justin’s mind as he witnessed discoveries and joined investigations of a very different kind. As a historian he knew intuitively that he would have to concern himself with these occurrences that, on another level, to him were comparable to the research and excavations in Greece, Israel, Egypt or Jordan.

Justin’s mentor, the professor and historian Peter Baldwin at UCLA, had encouraged him after his Bachelor’s Degree to accept the offer from St. Antony’s College at Oxford to pursue his probe into life in the Soviet Union during the Cold War. However, he soon took every opportunity to fly to Berlin. Through these repeated contacts the focal point of his attention shifted from Israel, Egypt and Jordan to every day life in the GDR. While leafing through family photo albums and 6 scrapbooks from the 1950s and 60s that had belonged to stamp collectors he learned much about life in East Germany. Postal stamps had been favorite collectors’ items. For propaganda purposes and to get much needed foreign exchange, the GDR had put out countless beautiful and very colorful single postage stamps as well as whole sets with equally beautiful first day covers that portrayed and praised the achievements of socialist life while feigning an openness toward the world outside. For the people of the GDR, most of whom could not afford to travel even to the socialist countries while it was still allowed, the manifold motifs on the stamps represented a gateway to the outside world; they were so to speak an ersatz for their dreams.

In the midst of these ongoing overly hasty sales to dispose of everything that had embodied people’s lives over two generations, Justin began to collect more and more of these cast-offs. Many of them proved to be real bargains. “This continuously growing collection tells us about daily life in the GDR, it offers a deep insight into the years between 1949 - 1989 and will become a lasting legacy for future generations”, he points out proudly. He tried to save as much as he could, and thus counteract the sudden general disregard for and contempt of all eastern consumer goods, in the private sector as well as in the public domain. In those early days after the fall of the Wall, complete archives ended up in the shredder and entire bedroom and livingroom furnishings, household appliances and office equipment were hauled to the dump. Unfortunately, these “rescued” objects amount to just a fraction of what was thrown away, destroyed or demolished, which then was not only lost to exploration and posterity but also to their original owners.

Of course not everything sold at flea markets was genuine. Justin even saw remaining stock from the Los Angeles “Surplus Store” that people, keen on finding something new, snatched up eagerly, completely indifferent to whether these were authentic pieces or would profit them in any way. In the general awakening and resulting turmoil, no one seemed to care and Justin witnessed daily how a country and its culture changed. He observed how people deviated from their former selves because they first had to learn to ask questions about the meaning and significance of their own past that was suddenly unraveling and becoming obsolete. Only then would they be able to gain new self-reliance and eventually find their way back to 7 themselves in this new unfamiliar world. Few people, emerging from the political, economic and geographic confinement of the GDR, were able to separate their everyday belongings from the new political and economic reality that had come over them and therefore they questioned everything in their lives prior to that moment. This lack of confidence hindered them from keeping even perfectly good gadgets. However, this reaction was not surprising, because long before reunification scientists and researchers in the west already fought vehemently about the question of whether daily life under the SED regime was worth researching, wondering what value the results of such an analysis would have and whether the effort to rewrite the history of the GDR and the , free of the old political restraints, would pay off.

In the late nineties, Justin seized the opportune moment and used the merchandise, piled high on the tables of the flea markets, and began to interview people. While he was only looking for information, venders started giving him all kinds of things. At the time he had no interest yet in collecting anything himself, for in order to store what people insisted on giving him he would need space, time and money. However, when he declined to take the items they simply answered that they would throw them away if he wouldn’t accept them. That’s when he understood that these materials that document what life was like in the GDR were rapidly disappearing and with it an entire cultural history. Everywhere historical landmarks were being torn down, including the Palace of the Republic in Berlin, statues were vandalized, consumer products discarded, factories were sold for scrap and dismantled, stores closed, films and photographs were left to deteriorate, and entire archives were actively destroyed or ended up in landfills. And so his collection grew unexpectedly. Initially he stored everything in his dorm at Oxford where he soon ran into a severe shortage of space.

To solve this problem, he tried to give much to museums, but they only picked out a few select items. It was simply still too early; the recent past had not yet reached widespread historical acceptance. Today, Justin can say that no other museum or archive is actively acquiring the kind of artifacts the Wende Museum collects. In fact, he stresses, many museums in Europe are actually de-accessioning works of art and artifacts from the Cold War era. Right after unification, the people from the former GDR simply wanted to get rid 8 of everything, and the majority of the West Germans, who didn’t know the former East Germany, and who for forty years had never visited that part of their country, needed a very long time to venture out again into lands behind the now no longer existing Iron Curtain, which, as a phantom, continued to exist in their heads. They, too, had lived with the German division for forty years, a division that had ensured them freedom and prosperity. Politically they had become accustomed to their divided country, and the status quo that had guaranteed them security from the Soviet Union as well as a latent peace, was to be preserved under any circumstances. During the forty years, from 1949 to 1989, the majority of Germans in east and west had become estranged, and it was therefore not surprising that many West Germans didn’t even watch the festivities for the fortieth anniversary of the GDR.

His fast-growing collection forced Justin to reassess the forty years of German and European division. What were the chances for its rescue and preservation? He had begun studying visual material culture in Oxford, but his interest in Germany had already been awakened at the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington, D.C. At the same time he recognized the visual significance of GDR culture and wondered how it could be interpreted in a time for which it had not been conceived? Because only when this was established would those collected objects no longer be at risk of being discarded a second time. He was convinced that they could only be safe in today’s society after we had reached a true understanding of their historical meaning. Therefore it was urgent to find a safe place for the collection where it could survive our fast-moving present, so that it eventually could be taken into a secure future. Such reflections, in the face of the overwhelming mass of objects that the end of the Cold War had brought us, slowly allowed the idea of a museum to evolve. The decision was guided by Justin’s passion as a historian and he began with his own research.

One day Justin had the idea of a lending library that was to point his collection into a new direction as he loaned selected items to historians who were working on topics about the Communist bloc. As he was writing his dissertation: “Swords, Doves, and Flags: Evolution of Political Iconography and Cultural Meaning in the GDR, 1949- 1989”, the concept for his own museum became more concrete. The 9 three-dimensional objects that he needed to support his thesis he had to search for on his own. That’s when he met Alwin Nachtweh at Checkpoint Charlie. Alwin, who lived in Neukölln, had had his share of Cold War adventures in the shadow of the Berlin Wall and became one of the “Mauerspechte” (wallpeckers, derived from woodpecker) when it fell. He wanted to explore the history of the Berlin Wall and dedicated his life to make sense of this border that had divided Berlin and collected everything in the nineties that had to do with Berlin’s past: art pieces, important historical objects and every-day products. Through his many contacts and by being on the scene in those immediate post-Wende months, Alwin, with his sharp eye for history, also “guided” many border signs and other memorabilia into his basement. Above all he was able to distinguish reproductions from originals and warned people of forgeries, imitations and fake pieces of the Berlin Wall. He was especially intrigued with Checkpoint Charlie. More souvenirs were offered at this world-famous spot where tourists gathered daily to bargain for exotic objects. Justin learned much from Alwin, who, in the beginning, judged him to be just another one of those young Americans who threw around his money in order to gain Alwin’s attention.

During those times of his awakening, Justin fell in love with Berlin and decided to stay in Germany. He continued to stop by Alwin’s, involving him in discussions until he became convinced that Justin’s intentions were serious. Alwin gave in, taking Justin into his confidence. He showed Justin everything he had collected thus far and passed on all he knew. One day Alwin took him to his basement in Neukölln, where, amongst other things, he showed Justin the colorful, hand embroidered GDR flags, banners and pennants, explained to him the textiles and expert finish while pulling him ever deeper into his world. During their meetings it became evident that Alwin was looking for a new home for his collection, and he offered to sell it to Justin. He, in turn, had to admit that he was not able to buy the collection at the time, but promised that he would transfer the money as soon as possible. Alwin trusted Justin and accepted the proposal without asking for any securities. This deal doubled Justin’s collection. Together with the items already at Oxford, the newly acquired treasures would fill two overseas containers, and Long Beach Harbor in California had suddenly become the logical place to ship the entire collection. As a historian, Justin recognized the importance of his 10 collection for which he urgently needed to find storage. He was excited and realized that GDR culture was changing daily, moving away further from our perception and that the country, that the GDR had been, was dissolving fast in our consciousness. Changes in the East continued at breath-taking speed, pushing those forty years into a distant past.

That was in 2001. When the containers were on their way, Justin flew for a week to Los Angeles, where he called museums and spoke with people about the possibilities of establishing a museum for these objects from the former GDR. Immediately his idea was met with great enthusiasm, stemming from a real interest in German culture and art. Everyone with whom he came in contact, be they people at Starbucks, at the supermarket register or at UCLA, spontaneously offered their help. Someone promised him free storage for the containers at a safe place, someone else offered free transport, all in stark contrast to the typical questions from Germans that had always been, “What is your concept, can you explain your ideas?” Whereas in Germany no one offered any help, nor was anyone willing to discuss alternative concepts with him, in Los Angeles things were very different. Everyone there had a project and therefore embraced Justin’s ideas and was freely at Justin’s disposal. The city that makes everything possible took him in even before he could chose it as a place for his museum.

From a psychological point of view, he needed to hear such practical, completely unconventional and totally crazy-sounding offers during those difficult beginnings, just so he could go on. Even today, ten years after the founding of the museum, it all sounds like a miracle and clearly points out the easy-going, joyful way of the people of Los Angeles, whose zest for life makes them not only so likable but makes everything possible. They can look at something they heard about only five minutes earlier in a completely unconventional and uncomplicated way, and trusting that it will work, they help bring it about. Seen in this light, the emergence of the museum is a typical L.A. story, because the museum connects directly to the events of World War II, a time during which not only German exiles found refuge from the persecution of the Nazis in Los Angeles, but also people from all over Europe. In retrospect it can be said that what brought Justin to

11 Los Angeles happened as a direct consequence of World War II and the subsequent division and eventual reunification of Europe.

Justin also called various organizations in Los Angeles and told them his story. One late afternoon he went to the History Department at UCLA, walked through the long halls from door to door, knocking on each one until he finally found a former Professor, Peter Baldwin, in his office behind the very last door. Baldwin suggested that he immediately set up an appointment with Dr. Barry Munitz, the then president and CEO of the J. Paul Getty Trusts, one of the largest museums worldwide, – while his museum was just in the primary stage. When Munitz mentioned that a large storage facility, once used by the Auction House Christie’s, was now available to store his collection, the decisive step forward was made. The requirement for adequate temperature controlled storage was met, along with the necessary racks and shelving as well as office spaces. Beyond that, the meeting with Munitz led to a fruitful cooperation that continues with the J. Paul Getty Museum to this day.

In 2002 Justin used the six-figure inheritance from his paternal grandfather to rent more storage space and to acquire more objects from the former Nations. In the same year, the museum was founded as a nonprofit organization in the State of California under 501(c)3. After that it was once again Peter Baldwin, Chair of the Donor Board of the -based Arcadia Fund, a private UK foundation, who suggested to Justin to apply for a grant – a step that would open the way into the future for the museum. Arcadia is a grant- making fund established in 2001. In their own words, “Arcadia’s grants in the Environmental Conservation field have been on programmes that protect and enhance biodiversity, and provide field training and academic research to help endangered nature and works to preserve near extinct languages, rare historical archives and museum quality artifacts.” The Arcadia fund is managed by the CAF (Charities Aid Foundation). Currently a capital campaign is being developed to match a $5 million lead gift from Arcadia Fund. (www.arcadiafund.org.uk)

In August of 2002, just a few hours before a catastrophic flood in Dresden reached its peak, Justin was able to rescue at the last moment an almost complete collection of the daily socialist newspaper 12 Neues Deutschland. This was in fact exactly at the time when the Wende Museum was officially established. Neues Deutschland had been the most important propaganda tool and central organ of the SED. The entire newspaper is filed in large burgundy red portfolios, and constitutes one of the highlights of the museum’s collection. “There are only very few copies of the newspaper missing from the beginning as well as the very end of its publication,” John Ahouse told me and he added, “The newspapers are in a remarkably good condition, especially if you consider the change of climate and the lower quality of paper used for newspapers in the GDR. Even today, hardly anything else can remind us in such a direct way of the Cold War years. Rereading some of the articles about events of long ago lets our hearts beat higher once again, but will often also bring a smile to our faces as we leaf through editions of Neues Deutschland.”

The Federal Archive in Berlin Lichterfelde, that was established in 1996, gave Justin new inspiration. The Archive had taken over the inventory of the Department in Potsdam, the former Central Archive of the GDR, and also houses the Stiftung Archiv der Parteien und Massenorganisationen der DDR (Foundation Archive of the Parties and Mass Organizations of the GDR). He was especially impressed with the holdings of the Berlin Document Center that the U.S. had finally turned over to the Germans after having electronically scanned all of its assets. At that time Justin began scavenging the Berlin flea markets with renewed energy and resolve. People there knew him by then and called him in Oxford when they thought they had something that he may be interested in. These items usually had to be picked up right away, and Justin simply told his professors that it was very urgent that he fly to Berlin early the next morning to buy something for his museum.

During these short stays in Berlin it came to him one day that there would never be any more new items of any kind from the GDR because the country no longer existed. From that moment on, collecting became a race against time. Justin noticed how more and more people got rid of the things by simply throwing everything away so that trashcan all over Berlin overflowed. Even their Trabants, the quintessential East German car that they lovingly called Trabi, and for which they had had to wait twenty years for delivery, they simply abandoned at the side of the road or just heaved them into huge waist 13 bins. Yet he couldn’t possibly save everything that presented itself to him. It was time to decide what kind of museum he wanted, where the emphasis should lie and which items should receive priority in collecting. It took researchers from East and West Germany quite a while to realize that in order to do a thorough reappraisal of the Cold War, it would be of vital importance to include all aspects of everyday life in the former the GDR.

Although various differences of opinion concerning many questions have been resolved while others have lost their significance over the years, the dispute among scholars about the interpretation of the East German and Eastern European past still remains. Countless items of East German material culture are being exhibited in GDR Museums. Located on former East German territory, they committed themselves to collect objects of daily life from the Cold War period, and try to rebuild within their walls the not-so-distant past. They set up completely furnished apartments along with the entire immediate surroundings of a small town with its stores, workshops, a post office, a doctor’s practice and a police and fire station. They play with people’s feelings and help spread nostalgia that keeps especially the older citizens of the GDR, who once lived with those things, from leaving the past behind and looking toward the future. Visitors can go on a trip back in time, and thus continue to identify themselves with their past, which feeds their backward-looking longings and appeases their grief over their losses.

The slogan “Not everything was bad” is frequently attached to these collections, a phrase that is repeated to this day without much thought by people from the GDR who are being interviewed on the streets of Berlin, Leipzig or Dresden. The statement, articulated in such a negative way, points to the ambivalent psychological state of older people even twenty years after unification, and shows how deeply they continue to identify themselves in their daily lives with the leadership of the SED regime, how hurt they still react, and how little they’ve been able to integrate into their new situation. We may rightfully ask, what does “everything” mean, and how would they interpret “bad”? What would be the opposite? And what was life really like? Why can’t museum directors and GDR citizens express it in a positive way? Why don’t they simply say, “Much was good in our lives,

14 and beautiful and practical and innovative. Go ahead, take a closer look! We made the best of it.”

Justin, who was not part of these futile, one-sided and often misdirected discussions in Germany about everyday life in the GDR, solved these issues very elegantly by bringing the Wende Museum to Los Angles, an ideal location that opened its doors for his collections. By setting his museum up 6000 miles away from Europe, on the other side of the world, he freed it from this East-West German dispute. This distance helps to preserve the museum’s neutrality. The impartial surroundings in a more carefree Mediterranean climate make analytical thinking easier, and at the same time invite researchers to ask questions anew or for the first time, while allowing them to pursue their goals in a more unprejudiced way.

“We have many very beautiful and artistic objects in our collection, others are kitsch, but that’s not the lens through which we collect or how we prioritize their value. Certainly in Eastern Europe these materials are often either perceived as nostalgic remnants of an extinct culture or they are instruments used as political lessons. But if this is the case, there is no point in having a museum on the subject. The rationale for preserving large collections is not sufficient if it’s merely as proof of an emotional state or political lesson. The utility of the Wende Museum’s collection is rooted in differentiation and the 15 possibility of using it for many purposes while making it available to as many people as possible”, Justin explains. “And this is exactly where the Wende Museum sets in. It doesn’t ask whether a product was good or bad, whether it was qualitatively or ideologically comparable to what was available in the west or what political message the artifacts convey. However, the museum doesn’t want to exhibit something like in a showcase either to give the illusion that an intact world existed in the GDR. Rather, the museum is set up very puristically as an archive of material culture, a research center and an educational institution. Already today, the Wende Museum in Culver City is the world’s the largest visual archive of the Cold War material.”

An important mission of every museum that deals with the forty years of the GDR, is to give an answer to the question: How can we take our collection safely into a secure future? How do we analyze our most recent past and how do we present the historic course of events in such exciting and attractive ways that we can be sure to hold the interest of the younger generations over the coming decades?

Exhibiting objects from the East Germany and their acceptance by the public quickly confirms that Los Angeles, this energetic and beguiling metropolis, situated at the far reaches of western civilization, was exactly the right place for displaying objects from the former GDR that had collapsed only months after an almost in 1989, followed by a dramatic political change for the entire European continent. Because of its geography, it was not at all clear in its beginnings that the best place for the new museum would be Los Angeles. However, Los Angeles had taken an active and sincere interest in the political events in Europe that brought about the change. Besides, this exceptional city on the Pacific, somehow detached and far away from Europe’s problems, was already experienced in welcoming people from Europe, granting them asylum and dealing with their heritage. This time, however, the “luggage” did not arrive in smuggled suitcases across countless borders and via many detours, but it entered the US completely legally on a container ship. The boxes and cartons were filled with the fascinating remnants of innumerable lives, thrown away by their former owners. In Los Angeles, on the other side of the world, they became treasures and exhibition objects because the city understood how to stay impartial and at times even indifferent to the items that were brought to it. At the 16 same time, the city holds her hands protectively over her new treasures, guards them jealously, and adorns herself proudly with the new arrivals, and, when necessary, acts as an advocate, thus making the otherwise impossible possible, and adorns itself proudly with it.

As I’m writing about the Wende Museum, I become aware of how much time has passed since my own escape from the GDR, which in those days was consistently called the Eastern Zone by West Germans, to cover up the political existence of the other German state, and to serve as a reminder of the provisional state of the German division, as set forth in the preamble of the Grundgesetz on May 23, 1949, to give the public life a new order for a transitional period (“ … um dem staatlichen Leben für eine Übergangszeit eine neue Ordnung zu geben”). This formulation was to do justice to the (West) German claim to self-determination and reunification. At the same time I realize how I am continuously reinterpreting for myself the forty years of the German division. My political curiosity in the German past since the end of World War II has gone through many phases. My concern for the people in East Germany increased and my desire to know more about the political and economic developments deepened.

“The perception of our past changes continuously for us,” the historian Jampol explains as we discuss the transformation in Europe, “depending on where we happen to be at a particular moment in time, but what took place in Berlin in 1989 was unparalleled in modern history. I really would like to know how the political component will present the past, how it will interpret it anew, and I wonder just what significance visual culture – these visible, touchable, three dimensional objects – from the GDR will have for research, to give us a better understanding of our past and present. These objects give us the opportunity to see history in a completely new light, and we are faced with the question of what meaning an archive of a government that no longer exists has for us today. There is no simple answer, but rather it is a long, drawn-out process. We use the objects as a source to shed light on our past, while we continue to ask people about their meaning for them.”

These words remind us in the west of the images on television of an angry people storming the archives of the State Security Service 17 (Staatssicherheitsdienst or Stasi) in (East) Berlin and other cities throughout the GDR, hauling away thousands of sacks stuffed with records ready to be shredded, to save them from destruction for posterity and to gain insight into their own State Security Records. Their fearless and farsighted actions overrode the quarrel amongst historians in the Federal Republic of Germany whether the secret documents should be destroyed or saved. They fought for their preservation during the early weeks of upheaval, immediately after the fall of the Berlin Wall, when only few West Germans could imagine that anything in the East would ever gain historical significance. Some of these documents have since made their way to the Wende Museum, among them personal papers, notes and the Moabit prison manuscript from , General Secretary of the Socialist Unity Party (SED) from 1971 until 1989 and the notorious Head of State the former GDR.

“Museums work with concepts,” Justin explains their slow reaction to objects, of which thousands continue to disappear daily. Instead of recognizing them as a treasure trove for historical research from which they could simply help themselves freely in order to interpret the forty years of German division, they got rid of many items again without much thought. Among them were several items they had at one time received from him. They realized only much later just what they were giving away. In the early years after reunification, West Germany was busy with the scandalous liquidation of the GDR economy that was equal to a despoilment, from big industry to the local stores. The “blühende Landschaften” (blossoming landscapes), a well-meaning promise, hastily made by Chancellor Helmut Kohl, appeared much slower than anticipated by the impatient and at the same time ill- informed population of the former GDR, who, in their euphoria after forty years of Soviet occupation, coupled with political repression and economic exploitation, were not willing to wait. How should the people in the East have known how to do things better? They first had to learn to live in freedom and to take on sole responsibility for their actions, hopes and desires.

In 2004 the Wende Museum could take another decisive step forward when the Arcadia Fund awarded a $ 1,000,000 grant per year for five years, thus providing the necessary funds for ongoing expenses as well as the purchase of artifacts associated with the commission to 18 research the fascinating but up to then mostly unexplored epoch of the Cold War. This generous financial support enabled the museum to continue with the systematic collecting as well as begin planning for long-term expansion. Beyond that, the grant also allowed the museum to take the necessary measures for the acquisition of objects from all of Eastern Europe at a still favorable point in time in order to save as many cultural objects as possible from imminent destruction and loss.

“There are some great narrative museums out there, but that is not our approach. We are not trying to tell people ‘how it was.’ There are endless lived realities. That does not just apply to East European history. That applies to every culture in every time period, but the Wende Museum provides resources to investigate a multitude of lived realities. While we could do this kind of inquiry with the available American Cold War materials, we limit ourselves to Eastern Europe”, Justin emphasizes. “That’s one reason why the Wende Museum decided to extend its collection from the GDR to all of Eastern Europe because we are dealing there, too, with extinct geo-political societies. This way we gain an additional archaeological dimension, which adds to our research.” In order to stop the ever-expanding trend of irretrievable losses of objects at least somewhat, even if it can’t reversed, the Wende Museum acquires, analyses, catalogs and exhibits artifacts and opens its archives to researchers and scientists as well as to the public. The museum hopes to establish a comprehensive fund for the studies of societies of the former Warsaw Pact Nations that were up to now either largely misrepresented or described inaccurately. “And if the museum doesn’t have a certain item for research purposes, we’ll do everything in our power to acquire it,” Justin promises.

The Wende Museum also collects state documents that shed light on the workings of the State Security Apparatus of the GDR, as well as records that not only bring to light the mutual influence in politics and economics between East and West but that also point out the machinations and secret interactions with “capitalistic” countries and . Furthermore the museum holds over 6500 documentary films from the GDR ministry of education, put together for schools about hygiene, nursing, traffic safety and further training in such diverse areas as architecture, chemistry and biology. This information is supported by very personal stories, numerous interviews, and 19 private letters, family photo albums, home movies, fan mail and post cards that give insight into the private lives of people under communism. These materials suggest the existence of an often fuzzy line between politics and culture. They tell us how people adapted to circumstances and made things possible under communism on the one hand and how, on the other hand, they began to voice their doubts, eventually coming to resist the ever-present predominance of the state and to defend their right to personal happiness. They organized grass roots demonstrations and challenged the ruling powers until it came to the dramatic turn of events or Wende in 1989 that brought about the end of the Honecker regime in the GDR and finally led to the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991. Through these archives for material culture the Wende Museum also is a very special educational institution that brings together interdisciplinary scientists for stimulating discussions. It counteracts the wholesale neglect and rampant destruction of Cold War material culture that Justin witnessed first in Berlin, then in the GRD and later in all of Eastern Europe and the Soviet Union. The museum grants access to this unique collection and at the same time it allows interpretations from very different perspectives. Interns from Germany and its neighboring countries as well as from the United States help to screen and sort the material and to conserve documentary movies as well as DEFA films. The museum was granted $ 150,000 over a period of three years to continue this work with purpose and without further loss of time, from the Museums for America Program of the Institute of Museums and Library Services (IMLS.gov).

Even with the continuous collecting of artifacts the museum is constantly pressed for time, because on the one hand countless objects are carelessly thrown away, while on the other hand the fight for what is still available becomes harder. “The prices for art and everyday objects go up all the time; our perception of what’s collectible changes continuously,” Justins observes. “The Wende Museum is very conscious of this pressure, and we use a system of scouts who traverse Eastern Europe in a van to acquire objects straight from the source. They carry along lists of items we are looking for so they can buy the objects on location. Our scouts continue to search through cellars and attics in the entire area of the GDR and the former Warsaw Pact Nations. They frequent flea markets and try to be there first at household clearances before second-hand dealers arrive. 20 These acquisitions are put in air-conditioned storage at the Wende Museum in Berlin until they can be shipped to Los Angeles. Just the other day, the museum was able to get a complete collection of fabric swatches from a former designer for the state design council of East Germany and . At other times, governments have de- accessioned their collections. We recently acquired over seventy artworks from the Hungarian government that were found in the basement of the former headquarters of the secret police. We were fortunate to hear about it early enough. Of course we cannot possibly preserve everything, nor should we. We have to be careful and strategic about what we pursue”, Justin said. “We need to keep our eyes and ears open and be ready to act quickly and move in unconventional ways for our unconventional collection. We use every tool at our disposal, including advertisement, media, auctions, and word of mouth. In 2011 for example, we heard about an over two meter high and two ton heavy bronze statue of Vladimir Lenin (1954) by the Russian Sculptor Pavel I. Bondarenko, which was originally made in Leningrad for the Baltic city of Riga and that was close to being melted down. We were able to buy it from the smelter for the price of the bronze plus five percent”. Justin is proud about having pulled off this coup but adds, “while many of the materials we collect do not have monetary value and are thus not appreciated by collectors and dealers, they are of enormous historic value and scholarly significance.”

The museum also holds much colorful communist folkart, Soviet tapestries, posters, diaries, brigade and scrapbooks, mailed picture postcards and menus from all kinds of restaurants. “Our collection of menus has great worth, the designs are fascinating,” Justin points out. “The prices indicate the economics of food, and the ingredients suggest taste, access and availability. From the ingredients we can draw conclusions about the culinary taste of the people and they tell us to what extent the selection of food in the restaurant and hotels was similar or even comparable to that in the west. These menus are great resources that have been largely ignored up to now.”

Because of limited space, less than two percent of the collection is on display in the showrooms of the Wende Museum at any given time. In the main exhibition room at the right side of the entrance, thirty porcelain and crystal commemorative plates are displayed on the wall. 21 On the other walls hang oil paintings by Soviet artists that are rotated often, and in the middle of the room stands a three foot high wooden statue of Lenin by Istvan Csorvássy (ca. 1959): Lenin’s right arm and index finger are stretched out far, as if pointing into a distant promising future. However, if we look closely, the direction does not lead straight upward and forward, but rather Lenin’s finger points in a large wide arc downward, and his eyes do not look at the person opposite him. One of the very special artifacts and the official icon of the museum is the vandalized Lenin bust that the visitors encounter at the end of the exhibition before stepping down into the archive. Sprayed in pink and turquoise, the bust embodies in an exemplary way what the museum wants to present in its collections.

“The entire collection is available to everyone by appointment”, Justin explains, “and can be checked out for research purposes. Beyond that, the Wende Museum and its partner institutions in the USA as well as in Europe offer a variety of programs that especially students and lifelong learners, but also the public, can benefit from. These include special exhibitions, such as putting up online exhibitions - most recently with the University of Leipzig - that provide access to shared knowledge; we loan materials to museums and institutions around the world, we produce and publish research projects, we put

22 on cultural events and functions at anniversaries, we plan annual conferences and workshop for international scholars and students, and we set up film weeks, performances and readings. Throughout all of these activities, collaboration is essential.”

As far as working together with LACMA is concerned, two events are especially worth mentioning. From January 25 – April 19, 2009 LACMA put on the Exhibition Art of Two Germays: Cold War Cultures, to which the Wende Museum loaned the painting by Heinz Drache, “Das Volk sagt ‚Ja‘ zum friedlichen Aufbau (The People Say ‘Yes’ to a Peaceful Rebuilding)“, DDR, 1952, oil on canvas (149 x 212 cm). The exhibition was organized in collaboration with Kulturprojekte Berlin GmbH, and was shown subsequently from May 23 – September 6, 2009 under the title “Kunst und Kalter Krieg – Deutsche Positionen 1945 – 1998 (Art and the Cold War – German Positions 1949 – 1998)” in the Germanisches Nationalmuseum in Nürnberg. After that it went to the Deutsches Historisches Museum in Berlin from October 3 – January 10, 2010.

On November 8, 2009, in remembrance of the 20th anniversary of the fall of the Berlin Wall, the Wall Project was celebrated in collaboration with LACMA and the City of Los Angeles, to which the public was invited. The Wende Museum had brought ten original pieces of the Berlin Wall to Los Angeles and had them placed on the lawn in front of the Ratkovich Building on Wilshire Boulevard, opposite LACMA, for the celebration of the reunification of Germany on November 9, 2009. With a combined length of about 40 feet and 26 tons in weight, these ten wall pieces constitute the longest segment of the original Berlin Wall on display outside of Germany. Tourist and visitors pose in front of it daily to have their photos taken. Another piece of the Berlin Wall, painted by , stands in front of the Wende Museum.

During the three day conference on October 1-3, 2009, “Germans’ Things: Material Culture and Daily Life in East and West, 1949-2009”, to which the Wende Museum, in collaboration with the Deutsches Historisches Institut in Washington, D.C., had invited over thirty historians, journalists and observers from all over Europe and the US, who came together to discuss the role of things, namely objects of material culture and their importance for the understanding of German history since the Wende in the fall of 1989. The conference 23 concentrated on the following three research topics: “1) The function of things in everyday life of East and West Germans; 2) The history of culture as an instrument of power; and 3) Contemporary museum practices as indicators of the politics of writing about and visualizing history.”

Many of you may still recall the appeal of former president Ronald Reagan to the last General Secretary of the Soviet Union, , during his speech on June 12, 1987 in front of the Brandenburg Gate, “Mr. Gorbachev, open this gate! Mr. Gorbachev, tear down this wall!” Today, visitors of the Ronald Reagan Presidential Library and Museum in Simi Valley in California can see loans from the Wende Museum in the permanent exhibition “Berlin Wall”, including GDR border guard uniforms and Stasi briefcases among other things.

Removed from their onetime surroundings, the original meaning of objects changes drastically in our fast-lived society, as they are transformed from everyday objects to museum pieces or become part of archives, because even people from the east at first preferred West German products in the united Germany and no longer wanted to buy their own goods. Justin began to view the items offered at flea markets from every day life and government archives early on as leftovers of a regime that no longer existed. Suddenly, they had become objects of a past that was even more difficult to understand than we in the west had expected, and we had to probe into that past. He is still convinced, however, that this could never mean to simply reenact daily life in the GDR behind new walls, this time those of a museum. Such remains would fast lose their former identity and who would then still want to see such remnants of an economically and politically failed system?

Justin is far from giving rise to any kind of nostalgia. Instead, he hopes to lead museum visitors to the point where they can come to their own individual understanding and conclusion of the four decades of the Cold War – an understanding of the past that rests on a personal knowledge and an inner conviction. Only then will people be able to connect the collected objects and what they once represented with what became of them and excitedly watch the museum’s development. “People need to be touched by the exhibited on a very 24 personal human level”, Justin explains. “The real significance of our history does not exist in a compilation of dates and a representation of time lines along with an accumulation of objects. It is just as important that we are aware of where we are at any given moment in history. Only then will we gain a better insight into our psyche and into the human condition. Every one of us must develop as an individual in such a way that we can learn to properly sense the force with which these events hit us after the fall of the Wall in Berlin.”

What began as a grass-roots acquisition initiative and a warehouse filled with crated artifacts, grew within just a few years into a museum and research institution that is at the forefront of its field. At the moment, the Wende Museum has 100,000 objects, among them 234 posters, 2000 commemorative porcelain plates, over 5,000 flags, pennants and banners, 22,000 books, brochures and magazines. The largest part of the collection, with a library of 8,000 books, is stored on shelves in the storage area in the basement, where visitors, scientists and researchers have access to the holdings. The basic stock of the library is made up of books from publishers. “Deutschland – Leseland, Germany – a country where people read”, they used to say in the GDR, and allotment of paper for book printing took precedence in their centrally planned economy. “But even then, books by GDR authors were out of print much too fast. Today these books are valuable if only for the simple reason that after 1989 books from GDR publishers ended up in land fills or paper mills. Even the bookstores in the former GDR got rid of them to make room for West German novelties”, explains Ahouse, and his voice sounds sad.

The open stairs that lead from the main floor down into the archive take the visitors past a collection of chairs, like a Krabben-Stuhl by Renate Müller, a Gartensuhl-Sitz-Ei (egg-shaped garden chair) by Peter Ghyczy from the year 1968, or a PCK or Känguruh-Stuhl (kangaroo chair) from 1970, manufactured in the VEB Petrochemisches Kombinat (petrochemical factory). While walking through the archive, visitors are surprised by the large number of Lenin and Stalin busts. Marx, Engels, Thälmann and Liebknecht are standing on shelves surrounded by photos of Ulbricht and Honecker, all relics of the Cold War. Even over twenty years after the reunification, visitors from East and West Germany often still lack the

25 necessary emotional distance in order to place historically correctly what no one wanted to see anymore after 1989.

There are innumerable unexpected treasures awaiting the visitor on the ground floor, like oil paintings, among them the above mentioned Drache painting, “Das Volk sagt ‚Ja‘ zum friedlichen Aufbau – The People Say ‘Yes’ to the Peaceful Rebuilding”, “Growing Wheat – The Air Drop” by Viktor Makrozhitskii, 1977 from the Ukraine, oil on canvas (175 x 106 cm); or “Building the Subway”, oil on canvas, no date, by the Hungarian painter Béla Kontuly or “In the Meadows” oil on canvas, 63 x 110 inches, by P.V. Alekssev and B.I. Kaloev. The museum also boasts 12 white porcelain dinner sets with gold rim, 6 white porcelain dinner sets with blue rim plus the matching service plates and bowls, as well as matching sets of wine, water, beer, sparkling wine and brandy glasses. These dishes and glasses in the restaurants of the Palast der Republik (Palace of the Republic) in “Berlin, Hauptstadt der DDR” (Berlin, Capital of the GDR), marked PdR, once were the pride of the East German people.

Before the visitors leave the museum, they are led through the permanent exhibition “Facing the Wall”. There they can in retrospect get a look behind the scenes of the border crossing “Checkpoint Charlie”, as the people called it, and gain insight into the goings on from the western as well as eastern side of the Berlin Wall. Between 1961and 1990 it was the best known border crossing. The East German name was Grenzübergangsstelle (GÜST). This checkpoint connected the American sector with the Soviet sector at the Friedrichstraße, between the Zimmerstraße and the Kochstraße, in other words the East Berlin district Berlin Mitte with the West Berlin district Kreuzberg. One of the highlights of the exhibition is the panorama photo taken from East to West Berlin at Friedrichstraße, with the control house Checkpoint Charlie in the direction Hallesches Tor.

Another attraction and the apple of Ahouse’s eye is an architectural model of the new border crossing that was built in 1985/86. It replaced the barracks of the old border crossing that had been in use until 1985. At the time, Honecker had insisted on this renovation because it was important to him that this particular border crossing was to be second to none as far as international border crossings were 26 concerned. It was to look distinguished and last for a hundred years. Everything was covered and modernized so that the applicants would no longer have to wait in endless lines in the open air, in the blazing sun, in rain, cold, wind or snow. Who would have guessed at the time that this border crossing would be torn down in 1990, only four years after its completion?

In 2006 the Wende Museum started its “Historical Witness Project”, and John Ahouse began to interview four eyewitnesses and document their very personal experiences in the GDR. In Berlin, he talked with Alwin Nachtweh, Peter Bochmann, major in the people’s army and border officer for passport control of the GDR, Hagen Koch, a former State Security officer and renegade after the Wende, and finally the French artist, Thierry Noir, who was born in Lyon in 1958 and moved to West Berlin in 1982.

In April of 1984, Thierry Noir and Christophe Bouchet started to paint the three-meter high wall in flashy colors because they wanted to do something against the oppressive presence of the Wall in Berlin that was painted plain white on the side facing west. Since the Wall was erected on GDR territory, about three meters inside the official border, DDR-Grenzpolizisten, the East German border police, could arrest anyone who was getting too close to the wall. In the eighties of the last century, the wall, stretching 155 kilometers, or 96 miles, right through the middle of Berlin and around West Berlin, became almost over night a giant canvas for many international artists, among them Indiano, Keith Haring and Kiddy Citny. It was dangerous, they had to paint fast while always being on the lookout for the border police so they could flee in time. In 2009, for the 20th anniversary of the fall of the Wall, the Wende Museum commissioned as part of its “Wall Project” four artists to repaint five of the original slabs of the Berlin Wall: Thierry Noir, Kent Twitchell, Farrah Karapetian and Marie Astrid González. “We reference the past to inform the present”, Justin stresses.

Among the special exhibitions that the Wende Museum put on during the last years, the exquisite presentation of “Deconstructing Perestroika: Soviet Ideology and its Discontents” at the Craft and Folk Art Museum, Los Angeles from January 28 – May 6, 2012 is worth mentioning. The exhibition was curated by Dr. Ljiljana Grubisic, the 27 former director of Collections and Programs at the Wende Museum, in collaboration with the Craft and Folk Art Museum to commemorate the 20th anniversary of the disintegration of the USSR in December of 1991. It was comprised of twenty-four original, hand-painted posters by well-known Soviet artists with resounding political messages that had hardly been shown in public before, and that were conceived as a visual answer to Mikhail Gobachev’s politics of and perestroika.

For the past year, everyone at the Wende Museum has been working on an ambitiously illustrated volume, presenting over 3500 photos on over 800 pages: Beyond the Wall: The East German Collections of The Wende Museum. The Taschen Verlag in Köln, Germany will publish this bilingual book (English and German). Eight essays in the Taschen book are written by top international scholars in their field. The seventy-five texts to explain the particular collections are written by John Ahouse.

In the fall of 2012, the Arcadia Fund renewed its grant for the third time for another five years to support the Wende Museum in its efforts to gather the most complete collection of artifacts worldwide of the Cold War. The evolution of the museum, its ongoing purposefully supported development, together with its claim to shed light on the forty years of a divided Europe through its vast collections, progresses steadily. Today, the Wende Museum is well on its way to taking its place as one of the most interesting and varied museums of the 21st century, and is moving into the first league of innovative museums. In this light, Justin can say, “The Wende Museum will continue to acquire artifacts from the Cold War era while expanding its efforts to reach ever deeper into smaller and rural communities, focusing particularly on materials at-risk or those that are on the periphery of traditional archival interests.”

In December of 2012 the Wende Museum signed a lease with the City of Culver City, California for the historic former Armory building, centrally located at 10808 Culver Boulevard in Culver City’s cultural corridor that includes Sony Pictures Studios and the City’s downtown restaurant hub. Easily accessible to the public, the Armory will offer twice the space and supply ample parking. This move will fulfill a threefold goal for the Wende as a museum of history, an archive of the 28 Cold War and a spacious hall for its collections and exhibitions. The Wende Museum’s main warehouse is currently located at 5741 Buckingham Parkway in Culver City.

A discussion with Justin is always worthwhile. The stories simply flow from him. At one moment thoughtful, the next moment full of enthusiasm, he tells the story of the beginnings of his museum, helped along by his astute way of approaching things, to uncover the past and then take it as it presents itself to him. His vision is infectious, and he inspires everyone to think along. “We must not allow ourselves to provincialize our past. Instead, we must deprovincialize history and make it universal like music and art”, he says. “These are large conceptional issues, but we must make room for them, and with distance we gain a clearer view. We need to find some personal significance to grasp the Cold War, something that appeals to us on a personal, human level to connect things, so we will be able to begin to make sense of it all. Being far away in time and place can be a burden at times”, he muses, “but then again, this distance can be very beneficial for people to gain a better understanding. We live in a multi- cultural, diverse realm. German art and architecture, the Leipzig school, expressionism, German music – it is all popular in the U.S. People in Los Angeles have an outside perspective, so there are not the same constraints as in Europe. The museum benefits from this attitude.”

Culver City, February 2013

29 Photography credits: Photos are from the archive of The Wende Museum Justinian Jampol with Lenin © Coleman-Rayner/Glen McCurtayne Cover photo © The Wende Museum and Archive of the Cold War

Copyright © 2013 Regine Angela Thompson, Ph.D. 5432 Janisann Ave Culver City, CA 90230-5307 e-mail: [email protected] website: www.angela-thompson.com

Dr. Justinian Jampol, President and Founder The Wende Museum and Archive of the Cold War 5741 Buckingham Parkway, Suite E Culver City, California 90230 www.wendemuseum.org

The Wende Museum, Inc., is a registered trademark

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