No. XXVII - The Grand Army of the Republic
Chosen specifically in commemoration of Memorial Day and the remembrance of our honored war dead.
Hollywoodland und Deutschland
I spent the afternoon in East Germany. That is, I watched two recent German films, The Tunnel and Good Bye, Lenin!, both set in the German Democratic Republic (GDR, 1949-1990), colloquially known as East Germany. And watching them back-to-back worked out very well, as they could be viewed as bookends to the Cold War. The Tunnel is set in 1961 and concerns a group of Berliners trying to tunnel under the then newly-constructed Berlin Wall and spirit their families to freedom in West Berlin. Good Bye, Lenin! is set in 1989-1990 and concerns a young East Berliner's good-natured attempt to maintain for his ailing mother the fiction that the Wall hasn't fallen, that the GDR isn't being subsumed into the Federal Republic of Germany (formerly West Germany, today Germany). The Tunnel is dark, Good Bye, Lenin! is light, and both are excellent. Wundervoll!
West Germany / Federal Republic of Germany / Bundesrepublik Deutschland
East Germany / German Democratic Republic / Deutsche Demokratische Republik
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