Considering that the GDR was a little bit known for a more liberal attitude towards nudity with all their nude beaches it comes off as a bit surprising that pornography was actually forbidden in former East Germany. Obviously this didn’t stop the people from shooting porn in their own homes and illegally distribute the material along with copies from porn magazines and photos smuggled in from the West amongst each other.
On the public front the GDR had an almost obsessive urge to portrait the healthy and fit bodies of the people of their country, especially their soldiers, in the newspapers and magazines, and did this quite often in a very revealing fashion. These type of photographs became a bit the common material for masturbation for the youth who otherwise had few sources for sexual content of any kind.
Charlotte von Mahlsdorf, iconic figure of the queer scene of Berlin in the time of the GDR and founder of the Gründerzeitenmuseum, was one of the few collectors of erotic and pornographic material that was distributed in the former East that made it to the museums. We have some of the material for you after the jump. Enjoy!
And here the collector herself as a little statue, Charlotte von Mahlsdorf, photographed by one of the curators of the exhibition “Porn That Way”, Kevin Clarke:
