Two Car Cultures

German Cars & the Autobahn

Course 1 · Chapter 8 · Two Germanys, Two Car Cultures

From 1949 to 1990 there were two German car cultures. In the West, the boom of Chapter 7 made cars a mass possession. In the East, the German Democratic Republic (GDR) produced its own small cars in far smaller numbers, rationed them through waiting lists, and turned one of them, the Trabant, into a national joke and later a national symbol. This chapter describes the East German cars and the system around them, tells a famous anecdote about a Trabant that would only turn one way, and asks whether it is history or folklore. Names, dates and figures are from general knowledge and flagged "check".

The East German Industry

Trabant

Built by VEB Sachsenring in Zwickau from 1957 to 1991, the Trabant became the most common car in the GDR and was made for decades with few major changes (check). Total output is given as around 3 million cars (check; sources differ).

Wartburg

Built in Eisenach, in a factory that had earlier made BMW cars, the Wartburg was a larger and more expensive family car, made from the mid-1950s to 1991 (check). It was less common and harder to obtain.

Imports

The GDR also imported cars from other socialist countries, among them Soviet Ladas and Moskvichs, Czechoslovak Škodas and Romanian Dacias, usually through the same queues (check).

The Trabant

Feature (check each)	Note
Body	Panels made of Duroplast, a resin-reinforced material, with a steel frame. It was used because steel was scarce. The panels did not rust, and the car had a reputation for lasting a long time.
Engine	A small air-cooled two-stroke engine of about 600 cc and roughly 26 horsepower in the common 601 model, with a smoky exhaust because oil was mixed with the petrol.
Design	A simple, roomy-for-its-size four-seater with front-wheel drive, little changed in basic design from the 1960s.
Fuel	It had no fuel gauge in some versions, and drivers checked the tank with a dipstick (check which models).
Reputation	Mocked in the West as a joke car, and loved and mocked in the East as a faithful machine that could be mended with a spanner and a lot of patience.

The Waiting List

How it worked. Buyers put their names down years in advance and waited for an allocation (check the process).
How long. Waits of ten to fifteen years are often quoted, with variation by place and period (check; sources differ and one figure cannot stand for the whole country and era).
Used cars. Because new cars were scarce, a used Trabant could sell for as much as, or more than, a new one, which is often cited as a sign of the shortage (check examples).
Why. The GDR's planned economy gave priority to heavy industry and exports, and the supply of consumer goods stayed limited (check the explanation, which is debated).

The Car That Would Only Turn Right

A story, and what can be said about it The story goes that a man took delivery of a new Trabant after years of waiting, drove away from the dealer, and found that the car would not turn left, so that he had to plan his way home using only right turns. I searched for a source for it. I found no named person, date, newspaper report or other primary source, and none of the general Trabant histories I checked mentions it (check). The jokes about Trabants that do appear in collections run along other lines: slow acceleration measured with a calendar, a heated rear window "to keep your hands warm when pushing", and the waiting list. The honest label is therefore anecdote, probably a joke told as a true story. Stories of a new car with a fault are told of many makes and countries, and a car that only turns one way is also an old comic image. It could contain a grain of truth, since new cars did have faults, but nothing available to me documents it. If you find a source, a date and a name, that would change the verdict.

Trabi Jokes

A genre. East Germans told many jokes (Witze) about the system, and the Trabant was a favourite subject, along with the wait for it (check).
What jokes show. They are evidence of attitudes and humour, not of events. A joke can be true to the experience of waiting and faults without recording any single incident.
Method. Treat a funny story with no source as folklore until a primary source appears, and say so.

1989 and After

The image of 1989. When the border opened in November 1989, columns of Trabants crossed into West Germany and Berlin, and the pictures went round the world (check). The small smoky car became a symbol of the end of the GDR.
The end of production. After unification in 1990 East Germans quickly bought used Western cars, demand for Trabants collapsed and production ended in 1991. A version with a Volkswagen engine had been built in small numbers in 1990 and 1991 (check).
Nostalgia. Today, Ostalgie (nostalgia for the East) has made the Trabant a collectable and a tourist attraction, with Trabant tours in Berlin (check). Nostalgia and the memory of shortage coexist and should not be confused.

A British comparison The Reliant Robin, a three-wheeled plastic-bodied British car, has a similar comic reputation, and British jokes about it (about its tendency to tip over) are the nearest English equivalent to Trabi jokes (check). The British Leyland years of the 1970s, with strikes and quality complaints, also produced a genre of car jokes, though without a waiting list.

Check the details Production figures, waiting times and technical specifications are from general knowledge and differ between sources. Treat anecdotes and jokes as folklore unless a primary source is given, and separate the Western caricature of the Trabant from East German accounts.

Exercises

Exercise 1

Explain why a waiting list of many years existed for the Trabant and why a used car could cost as much as a new one.

→ Solution

Exercise 2

Apply the question "documented, claimed or unknown?" to the right-turns-only story, and say what evidence would change your answer.

→ Solution

Exercise 3

Explain the difference between a Western caricature of the Trabant and the experience of East German owners, and why both can be partly true.

→ Solution

Quick Reference

Cars: Trabant (Zwickau) and Wartburg (Eisenach), 1957 to 1991 (check)
Trabant: Duroplast body, small two-stroke engine (check)
System: long waiting lists, high used prices (check)
The story: right-turns-only: anecdote, no source found
After 1989: production ended 1991; Ostalgie (check)