A museum chronicling life in the former East Germany recently opened in Berlin, and Richard Bernstein of the New York Times writes that it captures what it was like to live in the German Democratic Republic, aka the D.D.R., under the thumb of the Stasi. “By the time you leave the museum, you’ve been both a perpetrator and a victim,” museum founder and director Peter Kenzelmann told Bernstein. It’s not all about oppression and murder and eavesdropping. “Other exhibitions are on the East German mania for nude bathing, a freedom that was considerably reduced by new regulations after reunification,” writes Kenzelmann. “There are displays on East German rock bands, ordinary consumer products and on the press, with this barbed comment: ‘Despite 39 newspapers, two television channels and four radio stations, there was only one opinion.’”

The DDR Museum hopes to capitalize on ostalgia—defined by Word Spy as “nostalgia for the goods, symbols, and culture of the former East Germany.” The museum’s Web site points to the popularity of East Germany’s traffic light man and the 2005 movie NVA. I saw another fine ostalgia movie a couple years ago, Wolfgang Becker’s Good Bye Lenin! A woman falls into a coma before the collapse of the Berlin Wall, then awakens in a reunified Germany. Her son, in an effort to spare her more trauma—her doctor says any kind of excitement could be life threatening—hilariously recreates the collapsed country around her.