Ostalgia enters the English language

I can’t imagine WordSpy’s latest word, ostalgia, has a big future outside German (Ostalgie), but quotes from The New Republic (see below), Newsweek, and the International Herald Tribune back it up.

bq. “Die DDR Show” and at least three other retro programs like it are riding an unprecedented wave of nostalgia for all things East. Communist-era products that had long disappeared from German supermarket shelves are enjoying rapidly rising sales. Reissues of East German films and music are selling like hotcakes, as are a slew of new books by young authors telling tales of their childhood in the East.

It would probably be better to watch these TV programs with someone from the east. For a more in-depth view (in German), see Ostblog.

I sometimes translate texts about reunification, and I have acquired Das große Lexikon des DDR-Alltags.

2 thoughts on “Ostalgia enters the English language

  1. Thanks for the Lexikon tip.

    The ‘Goodbye Stalin’ film has recently been on gen. release in Austria, as have long been the GDR DEFA film co.’s fairy-tale films that have extremely popular with children since the 1960’s.

    Reminds me of the joint London Goethe Inst./DEFA film festival I went to at CEGS – the Centre for East German Studies set up in 1994 at Reading Uni. back in England and still going strong on Website: http://www.rdg.ac.uk/German

  2. The Reading centre is great – I had no idea about it. Thanks very much. I have a pile of judgments relating to reunification to translate.

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