East Germany theme park planned
'The aim isn't to make big joke'
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A West Berliner talks to an East Berliner over the wall in 1962.
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BERLIN (Reuters) - Hoping to capitalize on a wave of nostalgia for Communist East Germany, a Berlin company is planning to build a theme park that revives life behind the Iron Curtain in the country that disappeared nearly 13 years ago.
Massine Productions GmbH hopes to recreate a 100,000-square-foot replica of East Germany, complete with surly border guards, rigorous customs inspections, authentic East German mark notes, and restaurants with regulation bland East German food.
"The aim isn't to make big joke out of East Germany," said Susanne Reich, a spokeswoman for the company which is expected to invest several million dollars on the project, slated for the southeastern Berlin district of Koepenick.
"It was an important part of Germany's history and the period should be recreated as accurately as possible."
Nostalgia for what was called the German Democratic Republic has lingered ever since reunification in 1990. Known as "Ostalgie," a play on the German words for east and nostalgia, the spirit has given rise to scores of "GDR parties," books, songs and popular films.
A German film "Good Bye, Lenin," in which a man recreates East Germany in a 850-square-foot apartment to protect his ailing mother from the shock of reunification after she comes out of a coma, has surged to the top of the German film charts and more than a million people have been to see it.
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