Ostalgie Revisited: The Musealization of Halle-Neustadt

This article analyzes artistic, promotional, and theatrical efforts to musealize Halle-Neustadt in the 2000s, in an attempt to attract visitors and rejuvenate a shrinking city, by simultaneously displaying its socialist design as a desired object of observation and encouraging new creative activity. The article also asserts that this musealization may not simply be dismissed as popular Ostalgie. If musealization can be categorized as an example of Ostalgie in this instance, then only according to a more nuanced notion of the phenomenon than a simple desire for GDR commodity culture.