Alastair Witnesses the Wende

Alastair took up a teaching post in Halle, East Germany in August 1989 and continued to work in Halle for the next 9 years, seeing the unravelling of the GDR first hand. Listen on Apple PodcastsListen on SpotifyListen on Google PodcastsBecome a Patron! He arrived just in time to see the early protests and the … Read more

A Cold War UK/GDR Romance

    In 1986 GDR student Antje met a British guy who was installing sewing machines in of the hosiery companies in East Germany. Unusually he was given quite a bit of freedom to socialise locally and he eventually asked Antje to marry him. However, with her prospective husband being a citizen of the capitalist … Read more

Watching Socialism : The Television Revolution in Cold War Eastern Europe

Watching Socialism: The Television Revolution in Eastern Europe is an exhibition co-curated by the Wende Museum and British scholars Sabina Mihelj and Susan Reid.  Both the capitalist West and the communist East attempted to leverage TV as a medium that represented modernity and progress during the Cold War. While television was indeed a tool that … Read more

Stasi Infiltration of the Prenzlauer Berg Underground Literary Scene

  In this episode we speak with Professor Alison Lewis is Professor of German in the School of Languages and Linguistics, The University of Melbourne, Australia. She is the a co-author of Cold War Spy Stories from Eastern Europe which is published in August 2019. Now several of our fans are the proud owners of … Read more

Arrested by the Stasi on a Cold War East Berlin day trip

Todd Anton was arrested by the Stasi while on a day trip to East Berlin and gives a raw and powerful account of his arrest, interrogation and eventual release. If you’d like to support us then from the price of a cup of coffee a month you can help us cover our increasing costs and … Read more

Cold War Spy Stories from Eastern Europe

Today we’re talking to  Alison Lewis, a professor in German at the University of Melbourne. She is the author of several books, including one in German about love and gender in literature during Germany’s reunification and a book in German about the Stasi’s infiltration of the literary underground. We spoke to Alison in episode 71. … Read more