A bumpy ride down East Germany’s memory lane

In 1989, the East German band Karat had it all: black leather blazers, feathered mullets and gold records that even made it across the border to West Germany.

Then suddenly, everything changed for socialist East Germany, officially known as the German Democratic Republic (GDR). Massive protests brought down the Berlin Wall, along with the GDR regime.

Within a year, there was just one unified Germany — and in it, no one wanted to listen to Karat, according to the band’s guitarist Bernd Römer.

It wasn’t just Karat, or East German music. It was everything. Given access to the Western pop culture that had been forbidden for decades, East Germans dumped GDR culture for Coca-Cola and the Rolling Stones. And hundreds of thousands of people left for the West.

“Not much of the culture of the GDR survived, and that’s sad,” Römer said. And what’s left has been treated as second-class, added Karat singer Claudius Dreilich, the son of Karat’s original singer Herbert Dreilich, who died in 2004.

But these days, memories of former East Germany are coming back into style.

Once mocked, East German Trabant and Wartburg classic cars are now registered in record numbers in Germany’s eastern states. Vita Cola, the GDR’s answer to Coca-Cola, is the best-selling soda in the eastern state of Thüringen.

And a new Thüringen oldies station called Antenne Ostalgie plays hits from the days of socialism. Its name is a portmanteau of the German words for east and nostalgia — and its jingle goes, “It wasn’t all s— after all.”

Meanwhile, Karat is having its best year since the Wall came down.

On a recent Friday night, more than 1,200 people flooded the GDR-era Kultur- und Kongresszentrum (KuK) concert hall in the eastern city of Gera — once the GDR’s provincial capital and industrial hub — for Karat’s nearly sold-out show. 

Changing times have also impacted the economy. In 2014, Gera became the first German city ever to declare bankruptcy. Former East Germany is still poorer than the former West, and people still continue to move away. Politics reflect the dark mood, with strong support for opposition parties on both the far-left and far-right.

“When capitalism came, the Wessis [West Germans] just ran us right over,” Maik Schmidt said as he drank a beer in the KuK lobby before the show. He added that reunification had drained the East dry, and that today’s German government cared more about foreigners than its own people.

“Most people would rather have the East times back,” he said. “Today people only think about themselves. … It’s all only about money, only money.”

Surveys show that many people in what was formerly the East feel homesick for the GDR, see themselves on the losing side of history or think some things were better under socialism.

“They are creating an image of the good old past times which never existed,” said Anna Kaminsky, director of the federal foundation tasked with coming to terms with the GDR’s legacy. “Most of these people, deep inside, know that this is not correct.”

But, she agreed, the transition from the GDR was tough, especially for older people. Democracy turned out to be harder than people hoped. Generations of bad news about the East created feelings of inferiority that still resonate today.

“A lot of people in the East say, ‘we don’t feel heard, we don’t feel seen,’” she said. 

But when the lights went down in Gera, and Römer’s guitar started to wail, the old days and the people who remembered them were the stars of the show.

The crowd stomped, clapped a beat and sang every word to Karat’s big hits. And the ghosts of old East-West rivalries made a guest appearance when Dreilich took a break between songs to tell the audience about an interview backstage.

“Foreign press! Not from the East,” he joked, to chuckles from the crowd.

“From the West,” he intoned, “from America.” The chuckles stopped, replaced by silence and a few jeers.

Still, 35 years after reunification, Dreilich, Römer and their bandmates agreed that Karat feels like a German band. They’re packing concert halls not just in Gera, but in big formerly Western cities like Hamburg and Munich too. Today they’re some of the oldest surviving rockers in the whole country — East or West.

In 2025, Karat will mark its 50th anniversary, and to celebrate, they’re cutting a new album. Dreilich told the audience in Gera that it’s going to be on vinyl, just like in the old days.

And just like in the old days, he added, Karat will record it in the East.