The article never defines GDR, but I looked it up in case you were also unfamiliar:
The German Democratic Republic (GDR), commonly known as East Germany, was a socialist state in Central Europe that existed from October 7, 1949, to October 3, 1990
I'm always confused when someone uses GDR, because to me East Germany is DDR, so GDR must be West Germany, which is it not. West Germany didn't like using BRD (Bundesrepublik Deutschland) and almost no one ever used the English version FRG (Federal Republic of Germany) so using the English version of DDR always seems confusing.
Side note: I find it amusing that countries that have a need to put "Democratic" in their official name are never democratic. DR Congo, Democratic People's Republic of Korea and Deutsche Demokratische Republik. Why even bother, it's not like anyone is looking at the name and go: Yup, that's a democracy.
It's even funnier: Having both "democratic" and "republic" is redundant - by definition, a republic is democratic. Only non-democracies feel the need to double down on the democratic part.
I was just in Hanoi, and some of their roasters are incredible value for money.
Lots of co-fermented specialty Vietnam-grown Robusta and Liberica at incredible prices, far cheaper than what people would find from roasters that import their beans from Colombia or any of the other big coffee-growing countries.
I was just in Hanoi! A thing I learned is that Vietnam is today the second largest producer and exporter of coffee, behind Brazil of course. And per capita, Vietnam produces and exports more than Brazil.
And as for taste - I love the rough and tough flavours of Vietnamese Robusta coffees! The Australian roasted Arabicas are mild and gentle, almost to the point of blandness in comparison.
I've driven motorbikes through Dak Lak a few times. Really beautiful area. Just south of there is Da Lat and close by, there is one tiny coffeeshop run by some kids that live there that was my favorite... https://maps.app.goo.gl/PPy3c3T1oreRrDDR6
One aspect of the story that is glossed over here is that there were very few Vietnamese people in Dak Lak prior to 1975. The OP is a story of forced displacement against the Ede and Mnong people.
There is a film called "Thung Lũng Hoang Vắng" (Silence Valley) about teachers who got posted at one of these minor communities, set in Northern Vietnam. There were programs that aimed to improve literacy and integration of these communities into modern society and it's all good in intents but the film raised questions (at least to me) on how the communist government implemented them.
You brought up the people being displaced by settlements, but the film focuses on school teachers who get sent there against their will which completely changed the course of their lives. Back then almost everyone worked for the government and teachers, like soldier, can be assigned to such outpost if they didn't have connections.
The 1977 GDR coffee dilemma is wellknown. Everyone had a different name for the cheap fake coffee then. Even in West Germany the prizes made people try the fake one.
But what is not wellknown to me, why both parties forbid cross partnerships, where they agreed to a longterm economic partnership.
> West Germany attempted to isolate East Germany with the so-called Hallstein Doctrine, which amounted to a pretty solid trade embargo.
The first sentence is true, and is what I know. The second economical leg of this sentence is new to me.
Basically, Hallstein Doctrine was what "One China" politics is. The BRD assume that is is the sole legitimate (since democratically elected) government. For example, someone from east germany fleeing to west german already had the (west) germanship citizenship, no paperwork needed to get it.
However, Hallstein doctrine had --- to the best knowledge ... very unspecified reactions. Germany e.g. stop diplomatic relationships with Cuba. But not economical ties, I know that my father continued to smoke Havanna cigars (eeeek!). They stopped diplomatic ties with Yugoslavia ... but all the Winnetou Films were recorded there, and it even became a holiday destination for west germans. Also all payments continued, it was not an economical embargo.
In the case of Egypt it could be seen like that. When Egypt accepted the state-hood of east-germany, then West-Germany broke it's diplomatic ties AND stopped its economical aid. I'm not aware of it stopping buying oil from Egypt, thought.
Fan fact: there is also two inverses of the Hallstein doctrine. The first one is the Ulbricht Doctrine. That doctrine mandated that socialist countries mustn't normalize their diplimatic ties to west-germany until it recognized east-germany.
And the second inverse is that other countries only saw west-germany as the legal succession of the 3rd Reich and even the german empire. So it was West-Germany had hat to fulfill contracts of that time. Except for the reparations. The USSR took (or stole) more stuff from East Germany than the western allied forces took from West Germany. About 30% of the industrial infrastructure was removed, e.g. 11800 km of railway tracks. And even after they stopped removing the infrastructure itself, they still demanded a percentage of the production.
The economy of the DDR was a basket case. It was the USSR that did them in when the Soviets stopped selling them oil and gas for cheap in the 1970s.
Moscow was surprisingly capitalist. They noticed they could sell their resources to the West for dollars or give them away to their communist "allies".
Might have to do with the fact that East Germany's Uranium deposits dried up sometime between the late 60s and early 70s. In the early days the GDR provided most of the Uranium for the Soviet nukes, and there was constant haggling about who pays what and how much profit the GDR was allowed to take. Cheap oil and gas might have been a part of the deal, until West Germany also discovered that the Soviets were willing to sell cheap oil and gas to the "class enemy" (e.g. that problem of (the whole of) Germany becoming dependent on Russian resources started much earlier than most people realize today.
« unreliable trade partner for Germany » — How so? Russia never threatened sanctions and always delivered, out of strategic interest, of course. So implying it was a problem for Germany is objectively wrong. But I think you know that that there are other parties with their own interests, you're maybe just dodging the question.
« Remember: it was Russia which tried to blackmail Germany by shutting down the pipelines » — I do not remember. I've never heard of that. What I do remember is there was maintenance work being carried out, for which gas flow had to be reduced; some said it was routine work, others pretended there was a political motivation. There were also unprecedented and illegal seizures of Russian assets before that.
« the Ukrainians settled the matter » — This is the yacht story, which I think you're too smart to honestly fall for. The decision to carry out an act of sabotage that constitutes a casus belli was taken in London or Washington (whomever you give precedence in this matter). Biden loudly and openly bragged about "putting an end to it" on February 7, 2022 in the White House, in presence of Scholz. And US companies stood to profit from it, as did "Nine Eyes" members Norway and the Netherlands.
There was no need for any Ukrainians to be involved in any way. The story is seized upon in Germany to deflect from an embarrasing and discomforting reality:
Germany's alleged friends aren't, and Germany's leadership has been collaborating with them against Germany's national interest and continues to do so. And while I don't know whether there was blackmail involved I do know that there was terrorism involved (the GermanWings crash on 3/24/15, ridiculously blamed on "pilot suicide").
> And while I don't know whether there was blackmail involved I do know that there was terrorism involved (the GermanWings crash on 3/24/15, ridiculously blamed on "pilot suicide").
What his parents and friends say. And what has been been technologically feasible for decades. Ever heard of drone technology? Ever heard of an analogous "bus driver suicide", of which statistically there should be hundreds or thousands for every alleged "airliner pilot suicide"?
To return the "compliment", consider whether it rather applies here … 49386949. And remember to "flag".
The west had a ton of products manufactured in the GDR. Check your Privileg washing machine - it was made in the DDR! Same goes for IKEA furniture. That was the bitter end of the utopia, that it was basically a capitalist labour camp at the end to survive.
As recently as the late 90s (which, yes was 30 years ago, not all that recent) in the UK we were getting tractor tyres coming in stamped "MADE IN DDR".
Although I don't know if that was more a case of "we really ought to take the grinder to that mould and stick something else on", or what.
Pretty sure it would have been "Made in GDR" ;) Must have been leftovers from before 1991, or maybe Pneumant (the former GDR tyre company) indeed never cared to update the original molds until Goodyear bought them in 1999.
> For example, someone from east germany fleeing to west german already had the (west) germanship citizenship, no paperwork needed to get it.
Mind that that didn't only matter for GDR, but also East Prussia etc. which was important for all the displaced people from now-Poland, Sudeten Germans etc.
How does that work, are people from East Prussia today entitled to come and live and work in Germany? Or was that right dropped at some point? Or only ever available to those of German descent (which seems uncomfortably close to the values of the previous German regime, and surely would require some paperwork to establish)?
The region that was once East Prussia has now mostly been ruled by Russia since longer than almost anyone there has been alive.
This became stricter with a big reform in 1999 and then further changes.
Till then (West) Germany had quite inflspecific wordi g. The constitution says "German citizen is, who is German" and they kept the old Empire's citizen law to have continuity.
That's one of the reasons why reunification between East and West bad go be done so quickly (from falling Wall No. 9th 1989 to reunification October 3rd 1990) as East Germans could migrate to West easily as soon as the Wall fell and promise of quick unification was a key promise to prevent even bigger migration.
Heh, it's funny how the article calls it an "embargo" when the west didn't sell coffee to the GDR, but when the Soviet Union didn't do it, it's just "decided".
As a Vietnamese, that sounds meaningless because Vietnam never had much of a "surveillance system" nor an effective population database well into the 2000s. I have no doubt the effort was there for them to control people, but a complete lack of competency invalidated it.
Vietnam has had a security apparatus all the way down to the neighborhood block level since the 1950’s. It was low tech and relied mostly on human surveillance but it did exist.
It has collected biometric information for a while and now has facial recognition in place for every single Vietnamese.
Public security cameras are not widely deployed, like, at all. However the police state in Vietnam (the current president came from the same position Putin held before presidency) has adopt this amusing practice of showing up & demanding security footage from private houses' cameras facing the street (which, turns out to cover much more than surveillance cams could ever).
More insane is them also passing a law that forbid usages of the same footages for citizen journalism purposes. This came out after someone posted a footage from their home cam recording that controversial accident when a congressman hit and kill a high-schooler unprosecuted. You can look it up.
I’ve been paying attention to the incident you speak of since it’s so interesting to see how an authoritarian system deals with it.
I was quite amazed when the father of the teenager made a statement about “maintaining harmony”. It’s right out of the stories you’d hear about life in the USSR.
Self censorship is the term I believe. As an Asian I definitely do have this part of my brain that tells me to handle everything in a pragmatic, locally optimal way, even when it's unjust.
>"So that only left socialist countries to source coffee from, but the Soviet Union had decided to stop its coffee exports to the GDR in 1954. So the GDR regime had to buy it wherever it could and whatever the cost, spending around 150 million West German marks a year to do so. They also relied on West Germans sending their eastern pals and relatives coffee, which covered around a fifth of demand. For a long time that worked sort of okay.
Coffee wasn’t always easy to get hold of. You might have to visit several shops or draw on some connections to get hold of some, but it was still proper coffee and by and large available. Then the coffee crisis of 1977 hit the world."
Compare (cf.) and contrast with the U.S. of 2026 -- there's like what, 7 competing coffee shops on every block of the downtown of every major city, and in Seattle that number is at least doubled, to at least 14... in other words, we have no shortage of coffee in the U.S., quite the opposite!
(Possibly we have too much coffee, if such a thing is possible, and apparently, it is! :-))
51 comments
[ 3.8 ms ] story [ 64.7 ms ] threadThe German Democratic Republic (GDR), commonly known as East Germany, was a socialist state in Central Europe that existed from October 7, 1949, to October 3, 1990
Side note: I find it amusing that countries that have a need to put "Democratic" in their official name are never democratic. DR Congo, Democratic People's Republic of Korea and Deutsche Demokratische Republik. Why even bother, it's not like anyone is looking at the name and go: Yup, that's a democracy.
Lots of co-fermented specialty Vietnam-grown Robusta and Liberica at incredible prices, far cheaper than what people would find from roasters that import their beans from Colombia or any of the other big coffee-growing countries.
And as for taste - I love the rough and tough flavours of Vietnamese Robusta coffees! The Australian roasted Arabicas are mild and gentle, almost to the point of blandness in comparison.
You brought up the people being displaced by settlements, but the film focuses on school teachers who get sent there against their will which completely changed the course of their lives. Back then almost everyone worked for the government and teachers, like soldier, can be assigned to such outpost if they didn't have connections.
But what is not wellknown to me, why both parties forbid cross partnerships, where they agreed to a longterm economic partnership.
The first sentence is true, and is what I know. The second economical leg of this sentence is new to me.
Basically, Hallstein Doctrine was what "One China" politics is. The BRD assume that is is the sole legitimate (since democratically elected) government. For example, someone from east germany fleeing to west german already had the (west) germanship citizenship, no paperwork needed to get it.
However, Hallstein doctrine had --- to the best knowledge ... very unspecified reactions. Germany e.g. stop diplomatic relationships with Cuba. But not economical ties, I know that my father continued to smoke Havanna cigars (eeeek!). They stopped diplomatic ties with Yugoslavia ... but all the Winnetou Films were recorded there, and it even became a holiday destination for west germans. Also all payments continued, it was not an economical embargo.
In the case of Egypt it could be seen like that. When Egypt accepted the state-hood of east-germany, then West-Germany broke it's diplomatic ties AND stopped its economical aid. I'm not aware of it stopping buying oil from Egypt, thought.
Fan fact: there is also two inverses of the Hallstein doctrine. The first one is the Ulbricht Doctrine. That doctrine mandated that socialist countries mustn't normalize their diplimatic ties to west-germany until it recognized east-germany.
And the second inverse is that other countries only saw west-germany as the legal succession of the 3rd Reich and even the german empire. So it was West-Germany had hat to fulfill contracts of that time. Except for the reparations. The USSR took (or stole) more stuff from East Germany than the western allied forces took from West Germany. About 30% of the industrial infrastructure was removed, e.g. 11800 km of railway tracks. And even after they stopped removing the infrastructure itself, they still demanded a percentage of the production.
Moscow was surprisingly capitalist. They noticed they could sell their resources to the West for dollars or give them away to their communist "allies".
« Remember: it was Russia which tried to blackmail Germany by shutting down the pipelines » — I do not remember. I've never heard of that. What I do remember is there was maintenance work being carried out, for which gas flow had to be reduced; some said it was routine work, others pretended there was a political motivation. There were also unprecedented and illegal seizures of Russian assets before that.
« the Ukrainians settled the matter » — This is the yacht story, which I think you're too smart to honestly fall for. The decision to carry out an act of sabotage that constitutes a casus belli was taken in London or Washington (whomever you give precedence in this matter). Biden loudly and openly bragged about "putting an end to it" on February 7, 2022 in the White House, in presence of Scholz. And US companies stood to profit from it, as did "Nine Eyes" members Norway and the Netherlands.
There was no need for any Ukrainians to be involved in any way. The story is seized upon in Germany to deflect from an embarrasing and discomforting reality:
Germany's alleged friends aren't, and Germany's leadership has been collaborating with them against Germany's national interest and continues to do so. And while I don't know whether there was blackmail involved I do know that there was terrorism involved (the GermanWings crash on 3/24/15, ridiculously blamed on "pilot suicide").
Lol, ok wacko... whatever you say.
To return the "compliment", consider whether it rather applies here … 49386949. And remember to "flag".
Although I don't know if that was more a case of "we really ought to take the grinder to that mould and stick something else on", or what.
Mind that that didn't only matter for GDR, but also East Prussia etc. which was important for all the displaced people from now-Poland, Sudeten Germans etc.
The region that was once East Prussia has now mostly been ruled by Russia since longer than almost anyone there has been alive.
Till then (West) Germany had quite inflspecific wordi g. The constitution says "German citizen is, who is German" and they kept the old Empire's citizen law to have continuity.
That's one of the reasons why reunification between East and West bad go be done so quickly (from falling Wall No. 9th 1989 to reunification October 3rd 1990) as East Germans could migrate to West easily as soon as the Wall fell and promise of quick unification was a key promise to prevent even bigger migration.
Edit: as a massive fan of industrial and engineering history, the spotty nature of good Soviet documentation does my head in!
It's not explicit in the article, but I would guess the USSR didn't have a strong enough coffee industry to be helping anymore.
The West wouldn't trade (or let developing countries under its influence do it) and I bet the USSR couldn't procure enough for itself and the DDR.
Vietnams surveillance system, population database and use of biometrics were all adopted from the GDR.
It has collected biometric information for a while and now has facial recognition in place for every single Vietnamese.
More insane is them also passing a law that forbid usages of the same footages for citizen journalism purposes. This came out after someone posted a footage from their home cam recording that controversial accident when a congressman hit and kill a high-schooler unprosecuted. You can look it up.
I was quite amazed when the father of the teenager made a statement about “maintaining harmony”. It’s right out of the stories you’d hear about life in the USSR.
The GDR imported workers from Vietnam and even now there are sizeable Vietnamese communities e.g. in Leipzig.
I interviewed a few old men who fought in the Vietnam war as child soldier, for a school project I did as a kid.
Turned out: GDR did not treat this people well e.g. heavily encouraging abortion in case of a pregnancy, which was traumatic for the women.
https://www.projekte.hu-berlin.de/de/migrationddr/migration-...
I thought this was very clear already? Your link is "yet another cruel thing the gdr did" tho and is much appreciated.
Coffee wasn’t always easy to get hold of. You might have to visit several shops or draw on some connections to get hold of some, but it was still proper coffee and by and large available. Then the coffee crisis of 1977 hit the world."
Compare (cf.) and contrast with the U.S. of 2026 -- there's like what, 7 competing coffee shops on every block of the downtown of every major city, and in Seattle that number is at least doubled, to at least 14... in other words, we have no shortage of coffee in the U.S., quite the opposite!
(Possibly we have too much coffee, if such a thing is possible, and apparently, it is! :-))
There is a lot to learn and it's becoming more relevant in today's world about how states interact with each other.