Postcards From Berlin #4: Gaming in East Germany

By Jeff Allers

German word of the month: Ostalgie = Nostalgia for the former East Germany

Charlie has always seemed to me to be an odd name for a place that holds so much historical drama.  Brandenburg Gate, on the other hand, was always the grand entrance into Berlin when it was the capitol of an empire.  But for almost 30 years it was blocked off by the East German government, encircled by a barricade of concrete and barbed wire referred to simply as the Berlin Wall.  Instead, a tiny checkpoint called “Charlie” became the main gateway for foreigners into East Berlin, the capitol of the communist German Democratic Republic (GDR).

Now that the downtown has been built up again, and chunks of the wall have been auctioned off to museums around the world, the Checkpoint Charlie Museum is all that remains there.  Inside are exhibits detailing the now-legendary escapes of easterners who jumped through windows over the wall or tunneled under it. Some of the most daring took place at the checkpoint itself, as some westerners were able to smuggle their eastern friends out in secret compartments carved out of relatively tiny automobiles.

In the other direction, coveted western goods were smuggled into the east by friends and family members taking the 1-day-only pass to pay a visit.  They brought with them western chocolates, coffee, books, and, of course, board games.

When I first arrived in Berlin in the mid-90’s straight out of architecture school, my first job was designing museum exhibitions.  My very first project was to work on an exhibition on the history of toys and games in Germany called SpielZeitGeist—what now seems prophetic of my current interest in gaming.  And the earliest game on display there was none other than our very own Monopoly.

Mass-produced in the USA in 1935, it only took a year before the grandfather of modern board games was on the market in Germany.  The original version used street names from Berlin, the capital of the new German Reich.  After the war, however, when Germany was divided by the allies into eastern and western states, the marketing of the game changed dramatically. 

In the west, the capitol city was shifted to Bonn, a small unassuming town in a rural area, where there would be no more temptation or outside suspicion that Germany would attempt a new rise to military power.  Likewise, the street names in the new versions of German Monopoly were changed from Berlin streets to completely made-up ones.  Of all the Monopoly versions around the world, the West German version is the only one not to include street names from its capitol city (Kruse, p. 60).

The sale of Monopoly in Soviet-occupied East Germany, however, was banned as a „dirty game” that embodied the “principles of the wolves of the capitalist market economy” (Kruse, p.61). Many East Germans, however, found a way to acquire their own copies from the west.  An East German friend recounted to me how his uncle smuggled a Monopoly game for him in the false bottom of a gym bag.  It was missed by the border guards, and soon my friend was buying hotels and putting other players out of business, all under the watchful eye of the neighborhood Stasi, or secret police.

Those who couldn’t get their own copies constructed home-made versions.  One of these on display in the SpielZeitGeist exhibition even used slips of paper with American Dollar signs on them as currency, instead of the German Mark.  Monopoly exposed a fascination among East Germans for the capitalist system from which they were “protected.” And it also revealed their desire for other freedoms:  one of the home-made “Chance” cards reads, “You Travel to the USA - pay the Travel Agent $3000” (Kruse, p.61).

After Monopoly, West Germany enjoyed a resurgence of the family game, beginning with 1959’s Memory.  The game appealed to parents and their children because it was much quicker to play than Monopoly, and, as most of us know, children have more than a fighting chance to win when playing against adults (Glonegger, p. 19).  Even today, the game continues to hold a strong influence on the Kinderspiel des Jahres, as many of the recent nominees include memory elements.

Twenty years after Memory, the Spiel des Jahres awards were begun. The classic Hase & Igel, a revolutionary race game, was the first winner.  During the next ten years before the Wende, the “Turning Point” when the Berlin Wall came down, game authors in the west were busy developing innovations in board game design.  None were available officially on the East German market, but as with Monopoly, that did not stop some of them from making their way into households behind the Wall.  A friend from my gaming group said he was able to get Hase & Igel on a trip with his family to West Germany.  Special permits to travel were given more frequently in the later years of the GDR, and the game’s apolitical theme created no special problems at customs on their return trip.

While gaming began to flourish as a pastime in the West, however, games manufactured in East Germany were clearly inferior on several levels.  First, the materials of the games were not up to West Germany’s world-renowned standards.  It was like comparing the GDR’s infamous Trabant—with its lawn-mower-like engine and tiny fiberglass body—to a BMW. 

Second, like the Nazi government before it, the communist administration saw games as a useful vehicle to promote its political ideology.  This resulted in boring game play that was snubbed by all but the most hard-core party members, much the same way east German television propaganda was rejected in favor of western TV, even at the risk of being “reported.”

And while war toys and games were hotly debated in the West, as politicians feared a “re-arming of the playroom,” military games in the east were used to carry the GDR propaganda message that they were the true “defenders of freedom” (Freytag, p. 54).

The effect of the Wall, though absent from the Berlin cityscape for almost 17 years, is still felt on every level of German culture.  There are, for example, still differences in the gaming cultures of east and west.  Many East Germans just aren’t familiar with the enormous scope of modern board games.  As with most consumer items after reunification, the selection is simply overwhelming. Unlike in America, German toy chains have aisles of board games to choose from, yet I often see the customers wandering around, completely puzzled, until they finally settle on the current Spiel des Jahres or even old standards like Risk or Monopoly.  It is likewise difficult to find gaming groups in East Berlin, unless you want to play traditional card and board games, like Chess, Go and Skat.  I find myself being the first to introduce the games to my neighbors and friends here as much as I do to my family when I am back in the United States.

Obviously, the differences that still exist between east and west extend far beyond gaming.  In fact, the high unemployment and higher cost of living has convinced many East Germans that things were possibly better for them in the GDR.  Ostalgie - or nostalgia for East Germany, has replaced the hope that a reunited Germany would provide a better future, as shown in the latest elections by the strong showing in the East Berlin districts for the Party of Democratic Socialists (PDS), the direct descendent of the GDR’s Communist Party.

It didn’t help that after reunification, almost everything that symbolized East German culture was taken down and replaced by the western equivalent.  I’m not just talking about statues of Lenin or desperately needed renovations—almost everything familiar to GDR citizens for 40 years suddenly disappeared.  One of the silliest changes was to replace all of the red and green men from East Berlin’s walk/don’t walk lights with the west’s version.  Apparently, the very cute, short and squat men—who almost resemble meeples - were inferior to the taller, thinner men in the West Berlin lights.  After an outpouring of complaints against the needless changes, the originals were restored, and ever since, the Ampelmännchen have become the mascots of Ostalgie, appearing on T-Shirts, postcards and other memorabilia.  In addition, Ostalgie quiz games are now available, as well as a kind of “Game of Life in the GDR” called Es geht seinen Gang.

And so the “Berlin Wall”, though no longer present in physical form, remains in the hearts and minds of two very different cultures that were so suddenly and dramatically fused together.  Still, in the Berlin gaming groups, it is encouraging to see those from the east and the west meet for friendly competition and community.  But when it comes to the themes of games, perhaps sensitivity to Ostalgie still plays a role.  Most German game companies stick with safe settings like fairy tales or the Middle Ages. They have as yet failed to explore the potentially rich themes of a divided Berlin - themes that have been interpreted through other cultural forms, such as writing and film, with great success.

After all, what could be more intense and rewarding than playing a game about the espionage, persecution, and dramatic escapes that took place here - many of them at a checkpoint named Charlie?

Bibliography:  “Vom ‘homo-faber’ zum ‘homo-ludens: Das Gesellschaftspiel in Deutschland im Spiegel der Zeit” by Erwin Glonnegger; “Die Sehnsucht nach Reichtum: Monopoly—das Spiel um Geld und Besitz” by Judith Kruse; „Kalter Krieg im Kinderzimmer: Kriegspiele und Weltraumspiele in Ost und West” by Claudia Freytag. All articles from the 1994 Prestel book SpielZietGeist, the book to the exhibition of the same name in the Haus der Geschichte, Bonn.

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