The exhibition “Foreign Friends. International Friendship between Ideal and Reality” at the Museum Utopia and Everyday Life takes a critical look at the much-cited concept of international friendship in the GDR. Friendship was a frequently used term in official language — an expression of a socialist utopia that was both an ideology and a promise in the years following the Second World War. The young GDR sought transnational alliances, especially with countries that were able to free themselves from colonial dependence. Political, economic and cultural ties — with Vietnam, Egypt and Cuba, for example — were made tangible in everyday life through state-organised expressions of solidarity at school, at work and during leisure time.
However, the exhibition also shows the dark side of these ideals: racist images and exclusion were often little questioned, even when attacks on people with foreign labour agreements increased in the 1980s. Using museum collections — from imported luxury goods, children’s books and paintings to teaching materials and badges — the show visualises the contradictions between reality and ideal. Everyday life mostly reflected the perspective of a society thought of as white; the voices and positions of people with a history of immigration are barely present. The exhibition is complemented by workshops and discussion rounds that offer a space for open exchange and updating perspectives.
“Foreign Friends” encourages visitors to critically reflect on the friendship between nations that was practised in the GDR — between appeals for solidarity and concrete approaches to overcoming marginalisation, but also in awareness of its limitations and blind spots.
