in the Waren (Müritz) Town History Museum
An exhibition by the Federal Foundation for the Reappraisal of the SED Dictatorship by Clara Marz
The division of Germany has been history for over three decades. Nevertheless, there are still many clichés that are attributed to women from East and West Germany. Western women are often described either as "homebodies at the stove" or as tough career women. The East German woman, on the other hand, is described as tough or as a raven mother because she puts her children in a crèche. She is sometimes seen as a loser, sometimes as a winner of German unity. The list of attributions is long. Although some of them are grotesquely contradictory, they all testify to the conviction that we know exactly what makes THE Eastern woman and THE Western woman tick. One thing in particular seems to be clear: they all tick in the same way, but very differently compared to the other part of Germany. Where do these attributions come from? And what is true about them?
The exhibition "Women in Divided Germany", published by the Federal Foundation for the Reappraisal of the SED Dictatorship, aims to answer these questions. The different realities of women's lives in the Federal Republic and the GDR in the 1970s and 1980s are depicted on 20 posters.
The aim of the exhibition is to make the diverse experiences of women visible and to show the similarities and differences between their German-German lives.
