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As the beige car approached the former Soviet barracks, the clang of its half-century-old engine overpowered the noise of people preparing for the day’s celebrations in a makeshift amusement park.
A man in a 1950s traffic cop’s dark green uniform and old-fashioned leather hat blasted his horn and waved a well-maintained 1980 Wartburg into the parking lot, a classic despite its noisy engine.
The driver of a compact sedan, once known as the Mercedes of Eastern Europe, slipped the clutch and catapulted the car forward, an error that drew a rebuke from a costumed parking attendant.
“You are now stepping into East Germany,” he shouted with mock anger, referring to the defunct state of East Germany. “Forget Western decorum!”
For more than a decade, the East German Museum in Pirna, just a few miles from the Czech border in eastern Germany, has hosted a May Day event celebrating the iconic car of the communist era.
Built in state factories after the war, these cars are smaller, less powerful and less flashy than most Western contemporaries, but to Pirna’s excited tourists, who often dress up in period clothing to match their arrival, the polished, well-maintained vehicles are an expression of local pride.
The hundreds of motorbikes, buses, trucks, cars and farm vehicles on display exuded nostalgia for many here for a vanished country that was home for decades despite an oppressive dictatorship.
“As a proud Oriental, I’m happy to play a part in the revival of this iconic car,” said Tom Grossman, standing in front of a lime-green 1985 Trabant, best known for its chassis made from a material similar to reinforced cardboard. “The more of these cars we see on German roads, the better.”
Grossman, who was born in 1989, the year the Berlin Wall fell, expressed a sentiment typical of the Pirna scene.
For many years he had looked down on old Oriental cars, but in middle age his views changed, in part because he was drawn to the community that formed among car-owners.
He paid 3,000 euros (about $3,250) for the sedan five years ago, but has since spent more than twice that amount on refurbishing it, adding a sunroof, wider tires and custom upholstery.
Uwe Rockler, 23, neatly dressed in a 1980s East German police uniform, paraded in front of a line of cars handing out fake parking tickets and posing for photos with passersby. Rockler is a stickler for detail, and the tickets he carefully filled out and pinned under his windshield wiper were written on exact replicas of forms used by East German police in the 1980s.
“It starts with a belt buckle I found at a flea market,” he said, “and soon you’re wearing a full uniform,” adding that he has some spare buckles hanging in a closet at home.
For Rockler, whose parents struggled under Communism, the period is intriguing. “It wasn’t all bad, just bad everyday life,” Rockler said. Of the East German police, seen by many as one of the most visible manifestations of a repressive state, Rockler said, “They were actually pretty good criminal investigators. In many ways they were comparable to the West German police.”
May 1, officially known as the International Day of Struggle of the Working Class and Oppressed Peoples of the World, was one of the most important days in the socialist calendar. It was a public holiday when no one had to work, but participation in a state-organized parade was compulsory, in which civilian contingents of factory workers, socialist youth, and politicians were expected to march with signs celebrating progress and socialism.
Thomas Herzog, 62, remembers the scene well as he waits in line to board a carefully maintained 1958 bus for a tour of Pirna. “I’m here because nobody forced me to come here,” he says with a laugh.
Thirty-five years after East Germans last celebrated May Day in a functioning Communist state, many of those celebrating in Pirna said that time was fraught with problems, including restrictions on speech and travel, and that the people lived behind the Iron Curtain under the strictest national security system.
But as that era recedes into the distance, memories of communist countries are becoming more appealing to many people, especially as dissatisfaction with the current regime grows.
A December poll found that 82% of Germans across the country are at least somewhat dissatisfied with Chancellor Olaf Scholz’s government. With such high levels of dissatisfaction, it’s no wonder some are looking back.
In Germany’s east, where discontent is often more pronounced, many are turning to the far-right Alternative for Germany (AfD) for solutions. In Saxony, the state of Pirna, which goes to the polls in September, the AfD has 30% support, more than any other party.
Connie Kayden, 60, founder of the East German Museum, said that despite the benefits that reunification brought, there were also downsides.
As a socialist state, Germany fostered a sense of community through mandatory meetings in youth, workers and community clubs, as well as job opportunities in state-run companies, he noted. “I’m not saying this is about flying the East German flag,” Kaden said. “But we’ve lost something. We’ve lost unity.”
Kaden built the museum, a collection of all things East German, in 2005 and said ticket sales have been on the rise.
The Made in Japan car meeting is also growing in popularity: this year they estimate it will attract 3,500 visitors and several hundred cars, likely beating last year’s record.
There were also a few Western cars at the meeting: two Volvos, the custom-made stretch limousines used by East German regime leaders, were parked in a prominent corner, and one of them had a huge radio playing a tape of an illegally recorded police conversation from 1989 on repeat.
Rockler, who played the fake police officer distributing fake tickets, grew up in West Germany, where his family emigrated after losing their jobs after German reunification. As an adult, he returned to East Germany, in part because his hobby of impersonating Communist police officers was misunderstood in the West.
I wasn’t sure my late father fully understood that either.
“I wonder what my dad would say if he saw me wearing this,” he said, gesturing to his carefully ironed suit.
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