Visiting the GDR fragrance museum
Perfumes are fluid memories, unfortunately very volatile. On November 9, 2014, the fall of the Berlin Wall celebrated its 25th anniversary. And soon, hardly anyone will know how they smelled, the toilet waters of the GDR. It was, but not everyone got it. Often they were traded as "Bückware", herausorgeirat under the counter. Often they were only available in the big cities. Or with "Vitamin B," relationships. The most sought-after fragrances were called "Black Velvet", "Unter den Linden" or "Casino de luxe", also called "Fragrance of Chief Secretaries".
Good that there is Kerstin Zimmermann - and her small private DDR fragrance museum in Radebeul near Dresden. Between vineyards, Elbe villas, Art Nouveau villas and ostrich farms lies this gem. Only a few, even in Radebeul, know it. Anyone who calls in advance or sends an e-mail can come. Admission is free. On this day we are the only one and wonder: a room, 100 brands, 1000 bottles, all protected behind glass. The blinds are lowered, always. Sunlight alters perfumes, and the GDR would completely dissipate. There are 44 years of fragrance history in 14 showcases. Here is the noblest, most original and most revolutionary in cosmetics, what the former workers 'and peasants' state had to offer - laboriously captured by Kerstin Zimmermann at flea markets, at budget releases and auctions. Years ago, she converted the former room of her children into a museum. Actually, her perfumes are dizzy. She does not use a single one, but she collects bottles, DDR bottles. She was born in East Germany, here in Dresden: "Above all I want to preserve the design, that was much more creative than his reputation." Their biggest treasure is a lined suitcase, in it: noble soaps and perfume bottles of the series "black velvet" of "Florena".
Look at: The fragrance museum in Radebeul you can visit after registration (Tel. 03 51/880 05 88, kontakt@ddr-parfum.de), the entrance is free - and Mrs. Zimmermann is happy about donated DDR bottles. click: The virtual "DDR Duftmuseum 1949-1989" by Monika Jürgens-Winefeld can be found at ddr-duftmuseum-1949-1989.de To buy: at "Casino Parfum Saxonia Fritzsche & Enders" (Dorfstrasse 22, 09496 Marienberg, Tel. 037 35/66 80 55, casino-parfuem.com)
© Sonja Tobias"Florena" - that was the most famous cosmetic brand of the East and a hit in the socialist foreign countries. Today she belongs to the Hamburg Beiersdorf Group. They delivered to Cuba, Angola, Syria, Afghanistan. Just not in the West, of course. At first the company from the Erzgebirge was only called "VEB Florena Waldheim", later it became a combine with others. Almost all fragrances were now called "Florena", the name moved.
And the suitcase "black velvet"? He used to belong to Hildegard Knef. Was a gift to the "The murderers are among us" premiere in 1946. The actress could apparently do nothing and gave it to her cleaning lady. "It sold it to the collector I own it from - most of the bottles were attractive gifts that ended up in the linen closet and are so well preserved," the collector explains. "Women in the GDR were independent, went to work, did not need to please men and put on fragrance."
Nevertheless, the party wished: The comrade should be well-groomed and beautiful, the woman at the workbench, the tractor-driver, the agronomist, athletic, sweat-free. Good looks showed the superiority of the system. There was no shortage of skin care. Barber visits were mandatory, were often even in the employment contract, make-up and perfume, however, expensive.
West fragrances were copied
"We were so beautiful too," says East Berliner Meike Haagen, 49, half in jest. She owns the hairdressing salon "Haarscharf" in Berlin-Mitte, once a Soviet sector, now the catchment area of doctors, lawyers and architects. Often from the west. Like many women in the GDR, she used to stand for West fragrances for a long time. For West Mark you could buy those in the "Intershops" - as long as stocks lasted. Overpriced, there was since 1961 for East Mark in "exquisite shops". "Lancôme's 'Magic Noire' was a long-awaited one, and if it was unlucky, it was over before it was tuned," she says. Haagen's first fragrance was "My Melody" by Mülhens from Cologne. "That smelled so flowery, after butterflies, summer meadow - West just." And the fragrances of the GDR? "They were always too much, too intense." Surprisingly, however, that a socialist state, in which all should be the same, even produced luxury fragrances. Could that be?
It should. Because who was lucky, got regularly West packages with "Tosca" or "Chloé". The GDR was not an island.The SED state wanted to keep up and had to allow at least some freedom in consumption. And although the officials rejected the "showmanship" and the "hectic fashion change" of the class enemy in the West, they secretly focused less on Moscow than on Dusseldorf and Paris.
© Sonja TobiasBut that is history, and the story of an epoch, of a divided country, can also be retold with a soap, a bottle or a scent. Kerstin Zimmermann has set up her museum for this purpose. Before the construction of the wall, she says, fragrances smelled of freedom, wanderlust and the rest of the world - and they were also called "Chinaseide", "Tokoyo", "Japanese Cherry Blossom", "Indian Lotus", "Lahore" or "Moulin Rouge" Eiffel Tower as a bottle. "After the war, people wanted to offer some luxury," explains the Saxon. "There was still the hope that people would come out of this country."
When that changed and the citizens of the GDR had to be prevented from fleeing from the Republic with walls and wire mesh, perfumes smelled of lilies of the valley, violets, lilac, linden. They were simply called "poetry" or "Plauen lace". Or they had Russian names like "Alissa", "Meishov", "Baikal", "Russian cologne water", but that did not last long. "The more we got it, the more you looked over to the west."
The developers of the perfumes also had to react to that. The SED commissioned a youthful fragrance: "Action" was his name, pink-black metallic tin, 80s chic. If you did not have western perfume, you wanted to at least smell like that in the disco, fruity-animal, a daring mix. The deodorant was a hit - and is being reissued today. By Gabriele Fritzsche in Pobershau in the Erzgebirge. She owns a perfumery, "was a model student in chemistry" and actually wanted to study design. Now the 52-year-old brings cult scents from Saxony like "Action" or "Casino de luxe" in original recipe out. "Made in Saxonia" is on it, not "in Germany". They look like they used to - and smell like that too. You can order them z. B. Ossiladen.de. "Many think I'm crazy," says Gabriele Fritzsche, "but we've done so small, I wanted to bring back our self-confidence with the fragrances East, West, that's all directions for me." I would have done the same for '4711' "
"Action" was invented like almost all East German fragrances in the chemical combine Miltitz near Leipzig. Chief perfumer was Günter Feustel, 82 today and retired since 2004. He composed "Casino de luxe", "Action", "Fresh Breeze" and "Badusan", the legendary bubble bath of the East. "Like our fashion industry, we were always a bit behind," he says at MDR to documentary filmmaker Wilhelm Domke-Schulz. "We had to wait and see what was modern in the West." Often one did not even try to hide the fact that one copied copies, perfumes and packaging ideas - just as with Kerstin Zimmermann's curious bottle "Chanett". From afar, it reads like the most famous fragrance ever.
Whatever perfumers of the GDR fell into the hands of at trade fairs and otherwise on Western fragrances was analyzed and imitated as well as possible. But unlike the class enemy, Supernase Feustel could only work with 600 to 700 scents, just half. The paranoid SED regime, whose state security has even collected thousands of scent samples of its regimens in jars, must have always felt fashion and cosmetics as a threat. Day after day they showed him that many things could be controlled, planned, monitored - just not the taste.
Kerstin Zimmermann will continue to put on no perfume, while she loves fragrances: flowers, horses, even lubricating oil. And how, we ask in the end, do you think it smells in your museum? She laughs. "Honestly, like the handbag of an old lady in which many bottles have leaked."
