Cooking is fun again!

11 April to 11 May 2014
Böttchergäßchen 3, 04109 Leipzig

While the “Cooking is fun again” advertising poster from 1952 primarily emphasises the improvement in living conditions as against the situation prevailing after the war, the advertisement for convenience food under the slogan “Mum will be home in 10 minutes …” from 1955 takes us directly into the sphere of day-to-day family life in the early GDR era. As exemplified in these examples, the Konsum and HO advertising posters from the 1950s give an entertaining insight into day-to-day life in the GDR - within the sometimes contradictory objectives of satisfying basic needs as well as increasing demands, along with the longing for an ideal family, a comfortable, relaxed life and the idyll of an ideal world.
Compared with the situation today, the lack of individual brand names or products (which is typical of the economy of the GDR) is striking. As a result, the advertisement covered either entire product groups – such as jams, processed foodstuffs in general, biscuits, wine or household goods, seasonal goods (such as for Easter, Christmas, the summer or the winter) – or individual retail outlets, such as the HO department stores in Petersstraße or in Merseburger Straße.
The exhibition shows a selection from the poster collection of the Museum of City History (which comprises approximately 20,000 posters).