Women's labor participation was much higher in the GDR than in West Germany, in part due to full childcare for all that covered working hours. After the GDR ended, most of these were closed down 🙁 Also interesting: women in the GDR had children about 7 years earlier than in West Germany. To me, this really challenges the idea that West Germany was more "advanced" - that seems obvious only if we think of "advanced" in terms of access to shiny consumer goods.

All education in the GDR had a mandatory vocational component, partially to make sure intellectual elites remained connected to manual laborers. You could, for example, choose between dairy production, train technology, or metalwork, and this would be part of your path to university.

The GDR ingeniously attempted to solve its sizable problems accessing coffee by funding the development of coffee production in war-destroyed Vietnam, "perhaps one of the most effective aid projects ever conducted," with Vietnam now being the world's second largest coffee producer. East Germany was going to get half the yields, but by the time the industry was operating, it wasn't a country anymore.

The state owned cruise ships and funded paid vacations to its workers, though the cruises had to eventually stop docking beyond the Iron Wall to stop passengers from simply leaving.

The book has a rosy perspective on the GDR, though it certainly also talks about the dark side (the Stasi etc.), as well as big geopolitics stuff (in an accessible way). The most striking thing for me, though, was the sense of a radically different life in the stories told, one with very reduced access to shiny consumer goods (some fun parts of the book focus on the governments attempts to e.g. get people US-style jeans), but with free housing for all, stable jobs, and gender equal structures.

I read it last summer and I liked it very much. Over all, it helped me to understand the resentment about the Wende in the east which powers very much the rise of the far right in what Germans still call “the new states”. It was a crappy life but for many, many East Germans was a stress-free life —based on the principle “keep out of trouble (meaning, conform) and trouble will keep out of you”.

Now, I believe the success of the far right has been to funnel this resentment to those who didn't and still don't conform (the liberal democrats and the foreigners): YOU pushed for change, YOU ruined our lives