![\"The](\"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/dk\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/08\/RTQSWLAXG8GVQKZT1IBS.jpg\")
The infamous \u2018Trabant\u2019 car, labelled by Time magazine as one of the worst automobiles in modern history. Picture: iStock<\/p>\nInternational charity worker, Chris McIvor of Wick, ponders the nature of freedom after a visit to a darker museum in Berlin<\/p>\n
The infamous \u2018Trabant\u2019 car, labelled by Time magazine as one of the worst automobiles in modern history. Picture: iStock<\/p>\n
Berlin has an estimated 170 museums. Some of the larger ones, conveniently collected together in an area of the city known as \u201cMuseum Island\u201d, have exhibitions that span several centuries and cover several themes.<\/p>\n
Others are more specific and focused on either a narrower time period or a thematic niche such as a museum for old watches and clocks, or ladies fashions from a previous century.<\/p>\n
It is difficult not to get \u201dmuseumed out\u201d when visiting Berlin so that at the end of a few days all you can remember is a blur of artefacts from previous histories that leave you little time to understand in depth a particular period or issue.<\/p>\n
While there are museums that could be described as both interesting and entertaining, such as the ones that focus on ancient Greece or Rome or the period when German romantic art flourished, others are more disturbing, provocative and unsettling.<\/p>\n
There are several museums, for example, focused on the period of the Second World War, with exhibitions that commemorate the atrocities and executions carried out by the Nazi regime against Jews, Roma, people with disabilities and prisoners of war from Russia and Poland.<\/p>\n
One of the purposes of such museums is that they are designed not only to be informative but instructional \u2013 in other words that they aim to prompt among the audiences that visit them a commitment never to allow the events that are portrayed from ever happening again.<\/p>\n
One such is a museum at the centre of the city that explores the post-war history of eastern Germany when the dividing line between the so called capitalist West and the communist East ran right through the heart of Berlin. The DDR existed for some 40 years under Russian control until political changes and economic collapse across a range of former Soviet Bloc countries in the 1980s eventually led to the reunification of Germany.<\/p>\n
The museum is not one of Berlin\u2019s star attractions and, unlike the others I visited, there were no queues at the entrance to keep me waiting. I had something of a personal curiosity that pushed me through its doors, however, since my mother had left East Germany after the war and had never had any desire to return while it was under Russian control.<\/p>\n
![\"Chris](\"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/dk\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/08\/LAX70YE943HX0GUCMJTR.jpg\")
Chris McIvor.<\/p>\n
She had an irrational fear that if any of her children returned to visit, something bad would happen to us and so, respecting her wishes, we kept away.<\/p>\n
The museum hosts a generous exhibition of the kinds of limited goods and services that the 16 million people of the DDR had to make do with during the period of its existence. This includes an actual model of the infamous \u2018Trabant\u2019 car, labelled by Time magazine as one of the worst automobiles in modern history.<\/p>\n
Uncomfortable to sit in, filled with fumes because of its inefficient engine, extremely noisy and unsafe because of its flimsy exterior, for several decades it was pretty much the only vehicle available for purchase in the country.<\/p>\n
Meanwhile, senior leaders of the regime received, for marked down prices, imported vehicles from the iniquitous West. Ersatz chocolate, limited fruit and poorly canned vegetables, inferior cigarettes, newspapers that constantly praised the government and the happiness of the people. It is not difficult to imagine why most of the population wanted change.<\/p>\n
More from Chris McIvor:<\/p>\n
\u2022 Reflections from Warsaw: Are lessons from ghettos of the past being ignored by populist politics?<\/a><\/p>\n \u2022 \u2018Nothing is left of the communities we once belonged to\u2019: Ukraine refugees who cannot return home<\/a><\/p>\n