Talk:Intershop

Spelling of Beryozka

I changed the spelling of the USSR's similar store from "Berezka" to "Beryozka" so that it would conform with the Wikipedia conventions on the romanization of Russian. This was a relatively minor change as, amazingly, no article has yet been written on Beryozki. BenA 19:28, 1 September 2007 (UTC)

How could DDR citizens shop there

East Germans could not legally exchange East German marks for hard currency. The only legal ways for East Germans to acquire hard currency were either gifts from relatives living in the West or wages earned for work in Western countries.

Surely the majority of East Germans lacked either the generous western relatives, the Western job (wasnt working in the West itself illegal for an East German citizen not to mention the little matter of the wall) or the job in an intershop which would have been necessary to acquire sufficent currency (or forum cheques) to buy anything in an Intershop ? 213.40.122.111 (talk) 19:52, 12 September 2008 (UTC)

For the above-mentioned reasons, the majority of East German citizens did not shop in Intershops. --92.206.27.73 (talk) 07:51, 28 April 2013 (UTC)

Having lived through the GDR until the end, here some ways of obtaining Western currency:

- Working for the Interflug airline or the merchant navy or fishing fleet got you some Western currency for your daily needs. However, those workers rather took some sandwiches from home than spending their money unnecessarily.

The fishing fleet operated also in the south of the Atlantic and the fishermen used South American airlines to get to and from the ships, which stayed in these waters for years.

- Inventors were participating in the profits from patents licensed to Western companies.

- Writers and photographers received their royalties for works published in the West. This does not only include highest levels artists. I have in my possession a "Baedeker DDR" and some of the listed photographers were ordinary colleagues of my father, a freelance photographer from Dresden.

- Similar to writers and photographers, musicians also received their royalties from the West. This covers not only bands like Karat, City etc. It also includes a large number of musicians in classical music such as Kurt Masur and the Gewandhaus Orchester, the Thomanerchor, the Kreuzchor etc. Here the large number of singers or orchestra musicians received their daily allowances when they were touring the "financial" West, which could have been Japan, South Korea etc as well.

- The GDR planning economy was not so good in the small things but did better in large projects. As example, my former company (Funk- und Fernmelde-Anlagenbau) created the Telex network for the whole of Greece. Other projects consisted of the building of whole towns for ca 50,000 inhabitants. People participating in these projects by working in the Western or, more often, oil rich third-world countries, also received Western currency. This group includes quite large numbers of quite ordinary workers.

Consequently, the number of people shopping on occasion in the Intershop is rather large. I personally do not know anyone that did *NOT* shop there. However, this shopping was generally limited to special occasions like buying music records, computer parts or clothing. 2A02:A03F:664D:9C00:1CCF:FAAD:9110:936B (talk) 12:19, 9 November 2024 (UTC)

There's something mentioned in the article, as the only remark for comperable retails in the former eastern block, " An unintended consequence was that ordinary East Germans had some insight into the selection of goods available in the West, which they could then compare with the rather limited offerings available in their own country.[1]" That matter was in EVERY country of the Warsaw Pact in this way happened! Please, take it as a real concern!

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