Oh What A Time... - #80 Beyond the Wall: East Germany, 1949-1990 by Katja Hoyer (BONUS EPISODE)

Episode Date: January 5, 2026

We're back next week but until then, we have ANOTHER bonus subscriber episode for you to enjoy.BUT CRUCIALLY, DON'T FORGET! The comedy history podcast that has spent as much time talking about the invention of custard as it has the industrial revolution is here with its first ever live show! Thursday 15th January at the Underbelly Boulevard in London’s Soho. 🎟 Tickets are on sale now: https://underbellyboulevard.com/tickets/oh-what-a-time/And in huge news, Oh What A Time is now on Patreon! From content you’ve never heard before to the incredible Oh What A Time chat group, there’s so much more OWAT to be enjoyed!On our Patreon you’ll now find:•The full archive of bonus episodes•Brand new bonus episodes each month•OWAT subscriber group chats•Loads of extra perks for supporters of the show•PLUS ad-free episodes earlier than everyone elseJoin us at 👉 patreon.com/ohwhatatimeAnd as a special thank you for joining, use the code CUSTARD for 25% off your first month.--So.. Onto this episode which was first broadcast to subscribers in December 2024:We’re discussing the iron curtain, East and West Berlin, the infamous Stasi and East Germany.. all covered within the book that Elis has just read: Beyond the Wall by Katja Hoyer.Plus; how has Tom managed to lay his washing out in a manner that looks like a spider on LSD? We don’t have a clue, but if you know you can email us at: [e-mail] if you like it, why not drop us a review in your podcast app of choice?Thank you to Dan Evans for the artwork (idrawforfood.co.uk).Chris, Elis and Tom x Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

O Watertime is now on Patreon. You can get main feed episodes before everyone else, ad free, plus access to our full archive of bonus content, two bonus episodes every month, early access to live show tickets, and access to the O Watertime Group chat. Plus if you become an O Watertime All-Timer, myself, Tom and Ellis, will riff on your name to postulate where else in history you might have popped up.

For all your options, you can go to patreon.com forward slash O-Watertime. Hello and welcome to Oh What a Time. We're still on our Christmas slash New Year holiday. But today we have a bonus subscriber episode for you. This is number 80, Beyond the Wall, East Germany, 1949 to 1990 by Catcher Hoyer. It came out last December and this is East Germany during the Starzy era. It is Ellis's era in many respects. But we don't just have an excellent subscriber special for you about one of the periods in history I'm most interested in. In fact, Elle, by the way, very brief.

you impressed me so much with your sell of this book. I bought it for my father-in-law this Christmas as his gift. Lovely stuff. That's the impact you have on me, it's classic father-in-law stepdad stuff. I'm not here just to talk about Katia Hoyer's fantastic book Beyond the Wall. I'm here to talk to you about live shows. What did Elvis Prezi love as long as it was in America? What did the Beatles love up to 1966? What do we love? That's right. I'm talking about live performances. We're live animals. I had LSD, right up until you're revealed. We're doing a gig at the Underbelly Boulevard in London on the 15th of Jan. And the linked to by tickets is in this description or on oh what a time.com.

It sold really well. We're really pleased with how it sold, but there are one or two left. So if you want to see the three of us perform live together for the first time, then head down to the Underbelly Boulevard. We've got an awful lot of stuff planned. It's going to be a lot of fun. Ellis, if you suggest possibly for the final time as well, then people will think, oh, I can't miss this opportunity. Oh, one and only gig. There you go, nice. 15th of Jan, we're going to decide if we like it or not, and we might hate it. And then that will be that. Exactly. And we can always go back on that in the future. It's fine. It's not only you both. Oh, yeah, you've got to suggest scarcity. That's right. We're doing one gig, and it'll be one gig only on the 15th of Jan. No, it's going to be a lot of fun. I love doing a life pod.

So it's going to be good. It's going to be a good thing. I can't wait. As Ellis says, underbelly boulevard.com. I think that's right. You can pick up one of the remaining tickets and we will love to see you there. As for this episode, this is one of our favourite Patreon episodes from the past. If you want to become a new Patreon supporter, there are loads of episodes just as good as this one waiting for you. And also, as another benefit, every month, you will get two brand new Patreon episodes to bend your ears towards. So it's really well worth becoming a support. of the show, and it makes a huge difference to us and everyone who works on it. I hope you enjoyed this episode. As I say, I loved it so much. I brought a book about it for my father-in-law, and if anything is a seal of approval, surely it's that. It's replaced the British Cape Mark, isn't it? Would Tom pay this one put his father in law? Exactly. Hello and welcome to Oh What a Time, the history pod that tries to decide if a time in the deep dark past prior to the invention of the drying rack would have been a horrendous period to live in. The reason this comes into mind, let me just quickly explain, is because in the background of our last record, I had our drying rack, drying all our pants, t-shirts, underwear, and my wife said, you need to move that.

You can't have that in the background because you're now putting out video content. tap for Instagram as well. So that's no longer there. But did make me think about a time before you could do that when you were literally just trying to sort of drape your clothes and whatever you could find in the small cramp conditions that you were living in. I think the cloths horse slash dryer

must have been around for far longer than we think. Well, look, I hate to break at you, but you've got branches in the Stone Age. Like you're putting your animal hide on that. Or even a rock in the sun. In fact, they probably have to be. I had better dryers back then. Love that. Hate to break it to you.

As if Tom's like, I think I've invented something. The Clothes dryer. I didn't think the Stone Age was so stone heavy, it was only stone. It was just to be clear. I was aware that there were trees knocking around as well. Okay. You wake up, Elle. Yeah.

It was a wet night hunting the night before as a caveman and your animal hide is soaked. What are you doing? How are you driving? I think that's what they were doing. They were dripping their animal hides on. brunches. Yeah, like the primitive washing line. You'd put it in front of a bit of fire, wouldn't you?

You would put it on a branch? Well, that's if it's night time. If it's a sunny day and you've been in the lake. That's a great slogan. The branch. The primitive washing line. The washing line of yesterday. Primitive washing line.

Yeah, Zach. Yeah. I am not good hanging clothes, is worth saying. As Ellis has seen, a picture that Henry Packer once showed. you of one we live together in Edinburgh. One of my favourite photos of all time. It's actually in my favourites. It's been on our Instagram, that picture.

Has it really? I don't remember if I said this at the time, but I tell you now what it reminds me of. You ever seen what happens to spiders webs when they give spiders LSD? What? Can I shock you? No.

You know they did this experiment where they gave spiders different drugs and saw what they did with their webs. and so they give one they give like why I don't know how true this is I've seen it online I don't know if it's accurate

but they give like a spider cannabis and it does a really minimal lazy web they give it LSD and it does like an insane web just darting everywhere

which is what your clothes look like they gave a spider eight joints to smoke at one one for every hand what does it do what does it do to the web

so they go higgledy piggledy yeah let me show you hang on it is it is one of my favourite photos of all time the way Tom finds it

completely impossible to handclothes in but that's the old mate as we covered before but it's not though is it you haven't changed but does your great tragedy

oh here we go here we're now looking at LSD inspired spider webs we all knew it would come to this at the start of history pod inevitably it would come to this

oh wow yeah they really have lost their way yeah so if you give a spider some weed it says weed on the thing but I think that is this scientific term but you can see this is quite a sparse web if you give a spider sleeping pills it's very sparse yeah caffeine is all over the place but LSD is like an intense like jaggedy all over the place kind of thing the caffeine wow the caffeine one is crazy where's caffeine down oh yeah yeah that's what's worrying is the LSD one is far better than the caffeine one

to you that we really made a bad choice as kind. I mean, oh God, I'm I addicted to the wrong thing. Should I be taking acid to sort of, to give me that pep to answer all my emails? So I'm going to give you each of these drugs. I just want to let you know. You want you to tell me how are you giving it to a spider?

Okay. So I think weed is probably hotboxing the kitchen or whichever room it's in. No, no, no, no. You're taking the spider to one side, putting your arm around its shoulder and saying, let me give you a bit of this. You're going to absolutely love it. I'm going to change your life. You're putting a spider on the left-hand side. Put my arm round a spider and saying,

do you like speed garage? If so, I have got the drug for you. You're taking him to Amsterdam. 48 quid on an easy jet. You're taking him to a coffee shop. Okay, so that's fine. So LSD, how do you get... Well, I suppose LSD is just...

I imagine it's something... It's like people lick it, don't it? It's like tabs of it. So you can just put that down and you can walk over it, I guess. That's how you get an LSD. is a very basic question. Does spiders drink water? Surely they drink. Shall I find out? I've never given a spider drugs. So I don't know. I don't know how they're doing it. I mean, I don't know what drugs Tom is on when he's hanging out his, you know, when he was hanging out his clothes.

Because it is, check our Instagram out. It is one of the funniest photos we've ever put up there. It is just chaos. It is madness. It is madness. There's a lot of bunching of pants and sort of not spreading out into their full drying shape. The spider that bit Spider-Man must have been on drugs, by the way, because that made him go all funny. So I assume that had something going on, didn't it? Yeah.

Normal spider. To answer your question, Chris, yes, all spiders need water, but the amount they require depends on species and environment. They can survive on very little water, while others need regular access to it. My quick Google doesn't tell me how they drink it, though. They get a lot of their moisture. Oh, this is nice.

here we are, get a lot on their moisture by sucking blood and juices from other insects. Oh, there you go. But they can survive a few months without water, but they will eventually. I'm looking at your clothes as well, again.

Yeah. Just sensational. Do we need to put it back on the Instagram? Well, we put it on the Instagram on the 9th of February and do you know what? 42 comments. Yeah. A lot of people asking if a spider did this under the effects of LSD.

Or was it caffeine? Or was it caffeine? It's something. It is not normal. Did Packer take this photo? Henry Packer, brilliant Harry Packer from Three Means Salad. He took that photo, yes. Because with the greatest of respect to Henry Packer,

it was one of my favourite people to have ever been born. If he saw this and thought, well, that's bad. I need to take a photo. That speaks volumes. I think that's the most cautionary part of this, isn't it? That's a bit that really hits hardest. That man was shot by it. Yeah.

If you can shock Packer, I mean, I don't know. I'm trying to think of a sensible person. If William Hager had taken a photo, I'd be like, all right, bear enough. I'd say, first of all, William, why are you in my front room? Yeah, but Henry Parker. That would be my first reaction. Bloody hell. Yeah.

So there you go. So spiders do weird webs on LSD. I can't hang my washing. But I tell you, someone who can do something, that's Louise Steele. She can send us a great email. Shall I read it out? Yes, please. Nice little link there. Louis Steele, thank you so much for getting in contact. This email says Welsh Christmas, Mary Lloyd. Oh, love me. Hi guys. First off, love the show. Can't wait for my Monday commute so that I can laugh along on my drive to work. Now, this email makes me feel a bit better about my washing situation because it pokes fun at you, Ellisbury. I must have looked completely mad the other week

as I was wiping away tears listening to the description of Ellis's Christmas tree I have since learned about the Welsh tradition of Mary Lloyd Am I pronouncing that right? Yeah, yeah.

Mary Lloyd's, yeah. Maybe this is why Ellis is less and ashamed of his tree as nothing can be more haunting than the Mary Lloyd as a child a possible trauma response question mark. An episode on scary Christmas traditions would on reflection be a fun episode.

Keep up the great work, it's my favourite podcast. Oh, thank you, Louise. Louise from Edinburgh. So what is this, Elle? Why is it scary? The Mary Lloyd, tell us. What's this thing.

It's featured in an episode of Oh, what a time top. It is. I think it is the horse's skull on a stick outside the door. Is that wrong? It is. It's a whistling folk custom. A South Whaling, we're sailing folk custom.

Now then, we did an episode where I talked, we talked about Fort Customs, and I did the Marley Lloyd or a Valli Lloyd. And there's a very, very similar tradition in Derbber. And it's called, they're called the Geysers. And Izzy remembers it from when she was a kid, because she grew up in Derbyshire. She remembers being very frightened by it as a child in this one in 1980s. And she's just in a documentary for Radio 4 where she's gone and met some geysers.

Because with the geysers, the script doesn't change for hundreds of years. Oh, wow. And it's the same. So she met them and she watched them. And she interviewed them about why they, you know, why they do it. Because it's a really, really strange thing. So it's a horse I mean the Welsh one

The Mary Lloyd It's a horse's skull That's decorated with ribbons And it's stuck to a pole And on the back of the skull There's a white sheet And then that sort of drapes down And it conceals the pole

And the person The hide the only bit that's not scary Yeah yeah yeah And you know Very briefly to say The reason I was confusing idea It's been triggering It wasn't I didn't remember it

I assumed it was something That had finished a long time ago or wouldn't have been part of your childhood? Well, they were, I don't remember it when I was a little kid. Like, they were still doing it in the sort of 50s. It's been brought back. People are like, do you know what? I think we should scare the shits of our children

in a traditional way. And it's been, it's kind of made a comeback a very rude. Whereas I think that in the guises in Derbysia, it is something that is, you remember, from the little kids, from when she was a little kid. So then there would be a leader who sort of carried

you know, the pull with the horse's skull on it. And then, you know, and they would turn up and they would knock on the door and often not tap at a window and then people would sing songs to each other. Yeah, it's a very, very odd tradition. It's really, really weird. I think the real scare is the horse's head

coming through the cat flap. That's the one. That's really going to scare the people inside. The little flap opening. Yeah. In comes the skull. Yeah, for Marie Lloyd, can actually open a patio door,

then it really is time to shit yourself, isn't it? With its sort of teeth, just pulls the handle down. Oh my God. A final question on it. The sense of fear, it is wrapped up in fun, obviously. It's not a genuine attempt to scare. It's that sort of Halloween and that sort of, yeah, yeah. Well, this is part of his programme in that she interviewed a psychologist

who talked about fear. So the psychologist talked about the part that fear plays in childhood and being scared in a safe environment is quite good for kids and they love it. It's exciting. Obviously, you don't want to genuinely frighten people because it can be very traumatic. Absolutely. But then I suppose you see that in storytelling, don't you? Yeah, absolutely, yeah.

And kids are drawn to a little bit of grim fairy tales, all these sort of Harry Potter as an element of horror that even my six-year-old now, it does find exciting, but it's safe, I suppose. I watched the kids watched the Polar Express yesterday. Have you seen this? No. I thought it was like an innocent kid's film. It's terrifying.

There's like ghosts in it and like real jeopardy. There's moments where like the kids need plunge to their death at the North Pole. Very scary guy on top of the train. Yeah, that guy. What is this? It's a bit creepy. So creepy. But kids love it.

Roll Dar was creepy. All these things are creepy. You know, they're popular for a reason. So there you go. That's Marie Lloyd. Thank you very much for getting contact, Louise. Now, today, Louise, you are a wonderful subscriber. Thank you very much for being a subscriber.

This is a subscriber special. And it's a bit of an unusual episode, isn't it? Elle, do you want to explain what we're doing today for our lovely subscribers? It is. I'm going to take over. I did a Welsh language stand-up tour in September, October, November. Culminating a show that's been recorded for S4C. They'll be available on I player with subtitles.

if you want to watch it if you don't speak Welsh just let it run because I don't mind if you don't watch it but do do play it and then do something else which will be on over Christmas and on tour

one of the things I used to really look forward to after the gigs was reading Beyond the Wall East Germany in 1940 1990 by Katia Hoyer which was recommended to me by friend of the show Josh Whitakum

who said you have to read this book because most people would finish their gig they'd go home they'd then hone them to say, how can I improve for the next one? Well, what I would always do is I would get home and I think to myself, all right, I think to myself, okay, I need to hone it. But how can I bring in more references to East Germany?

And then I would head to the set text. So, Josh had a similar experience. I think he was reading it when the last leg was being filmed in Paris for the Paralympics. Right, yeah. So that was what he was reading before going to bed. And he said he's got to read this book. Oh, you absolutely love it. it. So I picked up a copy. The reviews, certainly in the British press, were absolutely

sensational. Like I read a lot of the reviews last night, across all, you know, the political spectrum, especially across all the broadsheets, you know, The Guardian Telegraph Times, you know, New Statesmen, spectator, all unanimously positive. It is a revisionist history of East Germany. So it does, I would say, reject or at least question traditional interpretations of East Germany but Katja Hoyer did grow up in East Germany so she was four when the wall came down. She was very vague memories

of the wall coming down and the reunification of Germany. So obviously her parents grew up in East Germany. Another person who grew up in East Germany Angela Merkel. Yeah. Which I didn't realize. Yeah, yeah, yeah. She was born in the 1950s

so she was an adult by the time the wall came down and so of 89. 90. I mean, I think she was born in 1950. So, yeah, her sort of, you know, she was in her mid-30s, which is very, very interesting because it really, really did shape Angela Merkel. Now, I've never been to Berlin. Berlin's one of those cities that I'm absolutely fascinated by it and would love to go to. Have the two of you been to Berlin? Several times. Okay, talk to me. As recently as the summer. And as a student, I've read a lot of Nazi books in my life because I'm just absolutely fascinated with it. You need to clarify what you mean by that. But it's such an insane period of history.

The Second World War, but focusing on what were the Germans thinking? But of course, it all comes down. The end, the final chapter of the Nazi era happens in Berlin. So there's actually an incredible book I read, actually, Tom, that I told you to go read. And actually, yeah, the final scene in the story of the Nazis is the Battle of Berlin. There's an incredible book about it by Anthony Beaver called Berlin, which I recommended to you, Tom. and I think we should do a book review of that one day. It's several incredible scenes in it

as the kind of the Nazi area just collapses in on itself. And I read all these books and the first time I went to Berlin, there's so much history there. Every single corner you move. There is a plaque on the wall or a famous thing happened there. It's so richly steeped in histories,

particularly obviously at the end of the Second World War. It's just absolutely fascinating. But also, that's really. This period you're about to talk about, Elle, I find this equally interesting where you've got the kind of a Soviet state being built in the middle of Europe and this construction that is East Germany in a completely different way of life to what we recognise now. Not just that for years, because I vividly remember the Berlin Wall coming down and I vividly remember the end of the Soviet Union because I was born in 1980. So I remember during the Romanian revolution My dad coming into the bedroom and saying you're about to see your first revolution

Because obviously he'd seen them Wake up, wake up, wake up Yeah, yeah My dad never woke me up when there was a revolution Oh, my dad loved it He was like, come on! They're getting rid of Chochewski Come on have a look at this! So I vividly remember it

And I was allowed to stay up to watch it on the news because my dad thought this is really, really significant. Yeah, so I vividly remember the wall coming down. I remember the wall coming down, but I just did not understand it. I didn't really understand it until I was in my mid-20s and I read enough about it. Yeah. How different those two societies were and the nature of that separation.

The thing I didn't realize until probably five or six years ago was, obviously, I knew that East Germany was a communist country and that, you know, West Germany was, you know, a liberal Western. capitalist country, I thought that the split happened in Berlin. What I didn't realize was that Berlin is right in the middle of East Germany. And West Germany was this strange capitalist outpost in the middle of a communist country, which now makes me even more fascinated by Berlin. I didn't realize that until embarrassingly recently, probably five or six years ago.

And then if you look at a map of East Germany as it was, prior to the war coming down and then you see that Berlin is right in the heart of East Germany but then there's the you know the capitalist bit yeah you just think what was life like for them yeah and that's that's another interesting thing yeah well West Berlin was like an enclave essentially the Berlin wall wrapped around West Berlin and it's interesting as well when they're I don't know whether they cover this in the book but there was this thing called the Berlin airlift where the Soviets basically tried to choke off West Berlin. They're They stopped food going in, they stopped supplies going in,

and the Allies started flying in supplies, like hundreds of tons a day, and the pilots would famously throw sweets at the East Berliners on the way in. But the Soviets bet that the West would give up on West Berlin, but they basically maintained it until they were able to kind of use trains to supply the city again. So it was kind of the West really held onto West Berlin in the face of Soviet aggression. Believe it or not, even though the three of us are complete armamented, who just find history fascinating, there are plenty of historians

who actually listen to this podcast. So I don't want to upset or antagonize or irritate anyone because the thing would be on the wall by Katia Hoyer, East Germany, 1914, 1919191990. He's had fantastic reviews in the UK. It's had far more mixed reviews in Germany, actually. Oh, that's interesting.

Where it is seen slightly differently. But I think this sums it up for me, right? Forget everything you thought you knew about life. in the GDR, in the Sunday Times. And it's very, very colourful, and it's very, very rich. It's very easy to read because also it talks about normal people's experiences. Yes. Now, by 1988, the average East German drank 142 litres of beer a year, right?

Which does sound fantastic. 142 litres a year. Double the intake of the average West German. Really? So the obvious explanation is that they drank to escape, you know, how unbearable life in the German Democratic Republic was, you know, with the Starzy and, you know, the travel restrictions, etc. Yeah.

In fact, they weren't free elections. But Katia Hoyer was East German, born, says, no, they didn't drink to forget their worries, but they drank because they had so little to worry about. Wow. So she writes, for those who wanted a quiet life for the small comforts of home, East Germany was actually a stable place with few concerns. concerns or worries. So by the late 1980s, it is true. Of course it was, the level of surveillance

carried up with the Stasi was at an all-time high. But often it didn't do very much or did very little with the information it gathered. Oh, really? Yeah. Because I imagine it was a place of fear and like suspicion and just, you know, anxiety. That's how I imagine it. I mean, you know, difficult to express it, obviously very, very difficult to express yourself and there was no freedom of expression. But as long as you were kind of willing to keep your head down and just do your job. According to the book, it was quite boring. That's such an interesting point. It was a sort of lack of adventure. It was a great place to bring up a family. For instance, right, this is, I read this in one review. Imagine a society with no unemployment, zero inflation, free healthcare, free

education, free childcare and virtually no serious crime, and where women and men are treated with absolute equality. Now, that is East Germany. So for 40 years after its creation in 1949, it was an attempt to create a genuinely egalitarian society where every person of the same opportunities and rights. But obviously there was this incredibly dark side with the Starzy, the secret police, you know, the people were monitored, the population were monitored on a scale that had never been attempted before. You know, if you were brave enough to speak out, you could find yourself in prison or excluded from society. Now, at the end of the book, there's a thing that I found very, very poignant, right? Because what Katja Hoyer

does, because it is a revisionist history of East Germany, there's a sort of takedown of Western hubris because I must admit, growing up, they had a fantastic, they had fantastic sporting achievements, didn't they? Like we all think of the sort of, you know, the East German gymnastics team, for instance. Yes. And they're in tremendous success in the Olympics, which obviously when you think... Or those roided up athletes in the 80s. Well, exactly. When you think of the sort of, well, when you think of the endemic doping and systematic doping, you know, Obviously, it's some awful things we've done to those gymnasts. Obviously, there's, you know, there's a far darker side.

Because the thing, that was an enormous source of prestige, East German sporting success. Right, yeah. But, you know, she uses, Hoyer uses the example of East Germany to sort of highlight shortcomings in the West, in, you know, or the old West in social mobility and when it comes to women's rights in particular. So if you take childcare, so in 1989, East Germany, one of the highest rates of female employment in the world because state nurseries were open from 6am to 6pm

and they admitted children from birth. Oh, wow. So women were able to follow their careers. Yes. And then when the wall came down, because they couldn't continue to provide these very, very expensive egalitarian services, East German mothers who'd been, you know,

mothers who'd been born in the old East Germany, found it very difficult to square parenting with a career. But they were also baffled as why they're to just, why they wanted both. That's so interesting. Well, you can see that today. The childcare is so inaccessible. Inaccessible.

So many people. It's so expensive. Oh, crippling inexpensive. Yeah, absolutely. So the thing with this book is it highlights positives that were never highlighted when I was young or when East Germany existed. And it does really make you think about East Germany in a completely different way. For instance, there was the FDR, which was the official youth wing of the German Democratic

Republic and the Socialist Unity Party of Germany. Now, if you're in East Germany, you were getting capitalist adverts from West Germany. So they were far more exposed to capitalism and to consumer goods. So, for instance, they realised by the sort of 70s, young people were desperate for Levi jeans and Wranglicians. Where were they seeing these adverts then? Well, they were hearing them on the radio and stuff. And also, they were aware of, you know, the Beatles and the Stones.

for instance, I'll come to that in a second. And they could see that they were like, bloody hell, there's going to be a revolt of a fucking jeans if we don't suppose that. So in the end, they made deals

with Levi's and Wranglers and Rangler because they couldn't make a decent Soviet communist jeans. They didn't look right. And they didn't feel right. Yeah.

So in the end, they were like, all right, fine, we'll get some Western genes, which is what the Americans, which is what these kids. want these American genes. By the sort of the end of the 80s, mostly these German teenagers had.

It was a real status symbol, but they had on average two pairs of decent jeans. Really? Because by this sort of 1980s, even by the late 60s, early 70s, when it came to things like fridge ownership and washing machine ownership and also car ownership.

Now, the Trebant. Yes, famous. So famous. What's the Trebant? It was a famous crap car. Even when you go Berlin now, you'll see people driving Trebantz. Yeah.

There's so much nostalgia caught up in it. The people are kind of cool now. Yeah. Well, that is, Chris has absolutely hit the nail on the head, right? Now, for years they were laughed at in the way that when I was little, Lardas were laughed at and Skodas were laughed at. Now, Scorders aren't laughed at anymore because they're owned by Volkswagen and then are really good cars.

But certainly, my God, when I was a kid, on the rare occasions you saw a Lada or a Skoda, you were like, bloody hell. I mean, where do they buy that? Yeah, yeah, yeah. And the thing with the Trabi or the Trabant, it was the East German car and it was noisy and it was slow and it wasn't very powerful. But the waiting list for them was huge and people loved them because they could use them to go on holiday and things. So people now have got really fond memories of Trabant. That's the thing with East Germany.

You know, they wanted reform by the end of the 80s, but they didn't want to get rid of the country. people are nostalgic for East Germany. That's the thing that I think is often forgotten. There's actually in Berlin, it's like a museum of East Germany. And in that museum, they've got like the different rooms of the flat you might have been living in with Trebantz in there. And you get a sense of what the lifestyle was like to have lived in East Germany. And actually, you're like, it's quite cool. And I remember them pointing out the, I can't remember one of the things I was reading that people are so nostalgic.

about that East German way of life now? Yeah. Obviously there's a German word for it. It's called nostalgia. And so they are nostalgic for the sort of scooters that they had in the 1980s and like the haircuts and stuff because it did disappear overnight.

And people are nostalgic, believe it or not, four aspects of life in communist East Germany. And the thing, because it's a portmanteau of the German words, Ost for East and nostalgia. For nostalgia.

Now, the thing, obviously, it wasn't, no one's seeing it's perfect. But I think Angela Merkel in the past has said, listen, you're writing off my childhood and my 20s and my 30s. You know, it sort of, it did shape me. It reminds me a bit of, Ellis. There was a fascinating documentary. I was messaging you about this quite recently, about the Miner's Strike, by the Thatcher in Wales. And they were interviewing kids who were brought up in Valley communities during the strikes, when times were really, really hard.

But a lot of them were saying that actually, at that point, although they didn't have much money, everyone had the same. So there wasn't a feeling of jealousy amongst the pupils in the class. Yeah, this is, yeah, yeah, yeah. It's not looked back on it as a time as wealth, but for them it was, there was a contentment that you weren't struggling, thinking, oh, I haven't got what that person's got, because everyone had the same, if that makes any sense.

I particularly associate that attitude with my grandparents, who grew up in that part of the world. My grandmother used to say all the time. I don't know less than anyone else and no one had more than me and I didn't know any different. Completely. I think the cruelest memories for me

in secondary school is that disparity for kids, kids who didn't have stuff, kids who were fully for the other wrong shoes on, all these sort of that aspects. So you'll see your grandparents really embrace that as something that they would... Yeah, yeah.

I mean, also it feeds into their or it sort of fed into their attitude towards materialism because they were so religious, you know, non-conformist chapelgoers twice on a Sunday. But yeah, like the, The youth wing of the GDR and the Socialist Unity Party of Germany

used to run discos where it was all East German music. Craft work. Well, I'm coming to that because by the 60s, no one who's going because it was Eastern German music and they don't want to have the Beatles and the Stones on the radio. It's like, shit. So then they're like, all right, fine. You can play sort of Western music,

but it's got to be a ratio of 40 to 60. I imagine those first discos everyone is in the terrible Soviet jeans listening to the terrible Soviet music and it's just awful. This is an interesting point. I remember watching a documentary about the Soviet Union because it was such a planned economy and they were explaining some aspect of it

where within the economy they have to have budget for jeans, the manufacture of jeans. And I'm just thinking now, do they have to set aside budget for the creation of East German music? Do you know, is there like... Yeah, it is odd, is it? It must be. But they were like, okay.

Okay, fine. You know, you can, you can do East German versions of it, and we will play some Beatles and Stones and Small Faces Records. Fine, but there has to be a ratio of 40 to 60s. Wow. Because there was a little bit more given take than in other communist countries, because it, you know, it was bordering Germany. Yeah, West Germany, I should say. So, you know, it was different. I wonder if that was, in part, an idea that the alternative was so close. and within reach, if you were going to keep people content to some extent. You have to have some concessions. Exactly. And I'm not for one second saying that it was a great society.

I mean, people were shot dead trying to escape. I mean, you know, that sort of when you think of people like Peter Fechdo tried to, you know, jump the Berlin Wall and was shot in the back. And, you know, no one could help him because these Germans weren't allowed to help him. And if the West Germans had gone to help him, it would have been regarded as an invasion. And this is in sort of 1961, so it was right at the, you know, when the Cold War is at its hottest. So if a West German soldier from the American side of Berlin and decided to go and save him, they could have started World War III. So, you know, he was left to die.

Like, it's some awful stuff happened, right? And obviously that is covered in the book as well. But because there's so much testimony of normal people's experiences in East Germany, I just found the book absolutely gripping. Like, I loved it, right? And certainly once the Berlin Wall goes up in 61, there's 60s, 70s and 80s, in particular the 80s, when you can see that the writing's on the wall, well, I wouldn't say that you could see the writing was on the wall, actually, but I mean, by the early 80s, they were getting far less economic help from the Soviet Union, because the thing with East Germany was, this is, this is, this sounds like pub history now, it was basically the ship bit in that it didn't have any of the industry or the industrial heartlands that West Germany had. So it didn't have oil reserves. The coal it had was brown coal, which is difficult to extract and not very good. So it didn't have a lot of the things necessary for a strong economy in the first place.

And they were paying reparations to the Soviets. So it was a really, really difficult economy to plan anyway. The industry in East Germany that they had in West Germany, and obviously West Germans were being helped by the Americans, all this kind of stuff. So obviously the West Germany economy was going to be this, you know, miracle of the mid to late 20th century. So it was much harder for the East German economy to thrive. And, you know, because it didn't have, you know,

it didn't have sort of steel in the same way that the West Germans had, etc. But once you get to sort of the 60s, 70s and 80s, and in particular the 1980s where you've got Perestroika and Glasnos in the Soviet Union, it's just so interesting because I was around then and I just found it so fascinating. that this was happening within living memory. Like, obviously I was a little kid. But the idea that people my age,

and I don't feel particularly old, I'm 44, there'd be 44-year-old Germans. German's my age, who grew up in East Germany. Well, I've vivid memories of it as a kid. And because it's such a human account, and that's what it is. I mean, she's writing in a second language as well. It is a very, very human account

of a kind of society that's now obviously very difficult to imagine. So do you think a lot of people, people who had their children there, they wouldn't have felt trapped per se. That wasn't something they would have felt. I don't think you would have done as a kid, as a little kid. Yes.

Because I suppose your parents might have been sheltering. Because your parents would have been in work. Yes. They had less, but they sort of didn't, I don't think they realised that they had less. And when you say going on holiday, so that would be just travelling to different parts of... Oh, you know, places say, like you were able to go to Czechoslovakia,

for instance. Yes, okay, yeah, yeah. In your shit, traband. Okay. Yeah. Fascinating. Yeah, do you know what I find, I'm trying to think back to, I went to that GDR Museum? You wouldn't have had the stress of kind of ambition in a way.

Do you mean like of trying to climb because you kind of, you are where you are, your flat is what it is, you don't, you can just kind of chill out on that from. I think there is a very, I don't think everyone has this, but there is a very human instinct to want to see the world and to want to do a bit and to want to explore. I think that is the thing that people found most difficult. It was that sort of, it was the fact that you didn't have freedom. Just that just that point, you wouldn't have freedom.

It reminds me of when in the Truman show, when Truman goes to the estate, the travel agent, and all the posters in the travel agent are, don't fly. Like, be scared of plane crashes. Like, it's basically, that is an East German travel agent. Why? Like, don't leave. when they first went to West Germany

after the wall came down they were absolutely amazed at the adverts and how colourful shops were and also just the amount of different consumer goods you could buy like they were absolutely amazed by it and you can't you can't dispute that I think you can have a more philosophical discussion about whether that's the important thing in life

one paragraph that vividly stayed with me and I had never ever considered this. I'll reason out. The willingness of most these Germans to live in a one-party state was because they valued stability and unity over pluralistic discussion. So it was also true in the West. Now, Germans were exhausted, she says,

and the majority wanted little to do with politics. This is directly after the war now. Since 1914, there'd been little respite from ideology, war, economic turmoil, and rapid political change. The German public wanted more than voting rights was full on the table, a restored roof of their head, because obviously the country had been flattened

by the Allies, and a future without war on economic disaster. So the appeal of a genuinely anti-fascist socialist Germany so shortly after the Nazis had been defeated, you can't underestimate that. And if you were middle-aged in

1949 when the GDR came into being, if you're a middle-aged German, you'd live through all the political systems. and it had been fucking chaos since you were a kid. The Weimar Republic which gave birth to the Nazis was turning over governments week to week. So you're like, all right, fine. Jesus, just let me get on with it.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. I get that. Let me get a job and look after my kids and let there not be a wall. And I don't want to be, you know, I don't want to be flattened by the bloody, by the R.E.F. Yes, can everyone fucking calm down, please? Yeah.

And that I'd never consider that. that because obviously Germany had been such a chaotic state since, you know, the turn of the 20th century. Absolutely. It's interesting what you were saying there about contentment and when they came out, they saw the goods on offer in the shops in Western malls and stuff in West Berlin. There was an interesting, my cousin is a psychologist and he was telling me about a study that was taken out and took place in Wales actually. about rates of depression. And do you know when the biggest spike was in depressions,

in depression in Valley Towns in Wales? What point marked the change in depression rates? Was it the close of coal mines? No, it wasn't. It was television being introduced into Valley Towns on mass, so people getting it because it... And not going to the pub and community centres and workmen's institutes and social clubs.

But it also changed the perception of wealth being pumped in, constantly on screen, this idea of London and all this sort of stuff, you know, and goods, good, good, there's, there are studies and it shows there's a sharp rise in dissatisfaction in your lot, in a feeling of, and feelings of depression related to that. Dissatisfaction with your lot is a horrible feeling. Absolutely, yeah. I think it's a ruinous feeling, isn't it really? It's so hard to get past and so understandable that it's something that people experience and I'm sure we all have at different times. But you can see that that aspect might have been lacking once again from life in East East. Yeah, I mean, you know, there are even anecdotally like a friend of mine,

his parents grew up in East Germany and they had the chance to defect and didn't take it. Like people were defecting, obviously, which speaks volumes, but, you know, others didn't. I just think the thing with this book is it exploded so many myths and I'm not saying that it's perfect because plenty of reviews in Germany have disputed the narrative of this book. It was actually, curiously, it was published in English first in the UK before it was published in Germany. But it's not particularly long. It's sort of 420-ish pages.

It's very readable. If you're interested in the 20th century, I really cannot recommend it highly enough. I think it's a really, really good book. And it's very, very refreshing to have your opinion changed about something. I really, really like that. There's something you touched on there about when the East Germans went into West Germany and they were amazed at all the things they saw. One of the things I remember reading about this subject was that East Germany,

specifically East Berliners and East Germany more generally, were quite behind when it came to electronics. So people who lived in West Germany and the West more generally had quite modern electronics. and the East Germans were just never able to catch up. But the Soviet leadership wanted some of those electronics, whether that was high-fi, TVs, etc. They wanted those things from the West. And one of the guys in Dresden, in charge of importing of kind of buying up

these West German electronics on the black market and importing them was Vladimir Putin, who was in Dresden, who was a KGB agent. This isn't one of the, I've read this in a book, I can't remember which one in. There's a chapter on that stuff because they realized, people were hearing adverts for things like cassette players, and they were like, well, why can't we have cassette players? So then they were making German versions of cassette players and also they were importing some from Japan

and they were going over to Japan to work out how to make them, etc. But then when the war came down, they're going to West Germany. They're like, bloody hell, there's 20 different types of cassette player. Christ! Yeah. Probably you get your cassette player and you go, now what music do I put in there? And you go, oh dear.

It's more Soviet blinky-blocky. East German beat music, which is a parody of Western beat music. I was just going to say, Elle, you've got to go to Berlin. It's fat, like this kind of history, this East Berlin. The other thing that strikes you when you go to East Berlin, now you can still see in the architecture

what was East Berlin and what was West Berlin. Like you can walk from street to street and you can still today see the differences. And then the other thing is that I found fascinating was that you had this competitive architecture within the city. So in East Berlin, there's a big famous TV tower. I don't know if this comes up in the book.

A big kind of sphere on a massive pole. And that was the East Germans trying to project technological advancement into West Berlin to show the sophistication of East Germany and of East Berlin. So you've got competition around it. It's a fascinating area. I think Berlin is possibly my favourite city. I love it. I absolutely love it.

I think it's fantastic. Tell you what I love about Berlin. So we have a friend who he actually moved to Berlin literally as the wall fell. So he's Polish. And lots of young people, when the wall fell, it meant there was loads of these huge properties that were empty in Berlin, huge buildings. And there was like a real rush of squatters at this point.

And a lot of artists kind of flooded in and they took up residents. They had these huge squats and these massive buildings in East Berlin. He was one of these people who did that. And he was saying it was an amazing time. Young people were starting their own businesses. There was a real sort of artistic scene of nightclubs and all these things run by young people. Well, this is why David Bowie and Nick Cave and Lou Reed and Iggy Popple went there. Exactly.

And if you go there today, there's very much that spirit still. They try encourage young people to run things, entrepreneurship, especially in anything to do with the arts and music, stuff like that. And wherever you go, there's just loads going on, fashion, all these things. And it's so many young people doing their thing that is affordable there. And there's a society that supports that sort of thing. That's what I love about it. Oh, the music that was made in late 70s, Berlin is just, I mean, Bowie's best stuff was made in the late 70s in Berlin. Yeah, amazing.

Can you imagine you go to a nightclub and like Iggy Pop and Lou Reed and David Bowie? Nick Cave are all there. Hi, guys. Decent line up, to be fair. Yeah, yeah. You got any drugs in you? No. Speak to that spider in the corner.

He's on loads of them. Here's a question then. So you've read this book. Obviously, gives the point of view of people who are living their everyday lives there, it probably is more, you know, it gives a softer take on life there than other books probably would. Yeah. You then counterbalance that to stories of people having to tunnel

out, desperately trying to escape and get to the way. Like, where do you sit with it? Do you feel soul that this is possibly close? Or do you feel it's a take? At one take, it's a very complicated thing and it's person to person? What's your take having sort of read this? I mean, when you think about how many women were able to go to university, for instance, and you compare it to Britain, you know, in the same time, they were definitely doing some things, right? Women's place in the sort of work environment was a very, very, very different experience in East Germany to what it would have been in the UK at the same time. Things like the childcare and childcare is probably the main one actually. I remember thinking, bloody hell and full employment. There is a human instinct,

I think, to get out of your surroundings. And as I said, you know, not everyone has it. But I think if you did have that, like Angela Merkel, there's stories of her basically going to travelling and like blagging it and not having the right papers and thinking to herself, well, I'm not going to get in that much trouble. I think I can talk my way out of this, all that kind of stuff. Yeah, which is why I like the book so much, because it's very, very human. Like I studied, my degree was modern history and politics. And when we were studying the 20th century, it was often very, very, it could be quite dry.

And you didn't feel always like you got to know people. I felt like I got to know people in this book. And that's, that's, it's really, really gripping. So I would, um, yeah, I would recommend it. Good on Merkel. She's brave. I once had a slightly out of date young person's rail card and I freaked out. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

And that's why you were never leader of Germany. Exactly. Exactly. And I don't speak German. And they kept mentioning that at the interview as well, but you don't speak German. There's one other fact I have about East Germany, which is that I'm sure this is right. This is half remembered. But in the 2006 Germany squad, only one of the players was from East Germany,

was born in East Germany, Michael Ballack. Oh, wow. There you go. That is a very good fact. That's a half-remembered fact. But that's discovered. After the reunification of Germany, was it Thomas Doll? Was he the one player who ended up in the German team?

I'm trying to think, where was he born? Yes, he was born in Malkin in East Germany in 19. I think he was the one player that they sort of took from these German side because obviously West Germany had won the World Cup in 1990 so they were a really, really good team anyway because Wales were the first team to beat Germany

since the 1990 World Cup we beat them in a Euro's qualifier and I think Thomas Dole might have been in the squad or he might have been in the team because I remember thinking bloody hell I mean they've already won the World Cup was West Germany I mean as Germany they're going to be absolutely unbeatable

that merged in two countries you know East Germany is it's it is poorer than it's than what used to be West Germany or the area of Germany it used to be West Germany and they've you know they've flirted with the far right as well in East Germany because I think people are looking for

answers that they don't feel are offered to them by mainstream politics there's this nostalgia for you know the communism of East Germany because it's I don't I it's certainly not an area without its problems. I mean, I don't know an enormous amount about the area, but I do know that. And so, yeah, I mean, the legacy of it is enormous. You know, it's a country hasn't existed since 1990, but the legacy of it is everywhere. So yeah, so if you fancy it, beyond the wall,

East Germany, 1940, 1990, 1990 by Katia Hoyer. There you go. You've read the book, now go to the place. In fact, I think that's quite an interesting thing to ask our listeners. I love Berlin. Chris loves it for its history. I think it's an amazing place. Ellis will no doubt go soon and will love it. Where have you been in the world that has really taken you in terms of its history? Great question. Where have you been? Why did you love it? What did you visit when you were there? And what was it that you found most arresting about that chance to be in that place? Do tell us about that. You can email the show with that, any suggestions of future episodes in many, many ways. And here's how.

All right, you horrible luck, here's how you can stay in touch with the show. You can email us at hello at oh what a time.com and you can follow us on Instagram and Twitter at Oh, what a time, pod. Now, clear off. I mentioned Rory Carroll's Killing Thatcher on the Ellison John podcast. This isn't an understatement. I have had hundreds of tweets from people to say, I bought that book for my holiday and I loved it, right?

To the extent that Rory Carroll tweeted me and said, thanks, man. I mean, I've never met you, but... That's so cool. Yeah, yeah. I'm about to read it. It is fucking unreal. Yeah, it's electric.

Do you know what? I've read the first chapter and I was like, this didn't happen. Did it? It did happen? Like, I was actually had to double think. Obviously, same sort of time as beyond the wall. So, you know, vivid memories of the troubles in Northern Ireland.

The thing with Killing Thatcher, as I said on the Alison Jump podcast, ruined my holiday. Because we were in Portugal and my kids were coming to me and say, coming to the pool, Dad. I'd say, no, of course not. I'm reading, killing Thatcher. No, leave me alone. You can learn to swim on your own. Yeah, yeah. It'll be fine.

Just vibe it. God's sake. Oh, I'm actually jealous of you. I'm jealous of you that you get to read it. What a book. Thank you so much for listening. We've got another subscriber special coming out for you this month. And more next month as well, to every month.

So thank you for subscribing. Thank you for being a oh, what a time, full timer. And if hundreds of you go out and buy Katja Hoyers beyond the wall, then that will make me. a book influencer because that'll be the second time I've done it then

the new Richard and Judy in 1996 I did the first ever podcast and I mentioned a book called Harry Potter and look how that went so yes

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