The Trabant at 50

It is surprising that there are so many Trabants still running. I wonder how they manage to pass pollution tests? Their popularity is part of Ostalgie or nostalgia for East Germany.



The Trabant at 50
Rattletrap cars are a link to the past for hobbyists throughout Europe
Mark Landler





ZWICKAU, Germany–East German flags fluttered proudly in the wind. A cheerful young man showed off his black-and-red T-shirt, stamped with the name of the once-feared spy agency, the Stasi. Behind a souvenir table was a portrait of the Communist boss Erich Honecker.

And everywhere – wheezing, sputtering and belching clouds of smoke – were Trabants, the rattletrap cars that have become an enduring symbol of the former East Germany.

The first "Trabi" rolled off the assembly line in this old industrial town in 1957. To celebrate the car's 50th anniversary, about 2,000 Trabant owners converged here Friday determined, for a weekend at least, to put the Berlin Wall up again.

"You can't just sweep the past under a table," said Roger Dietzel, 52, whose his family owns five Trabants. He recalls registering his name on a waiting list for a new Trabant in 1973 and never getting one. The wall fell, Germany was reunified and production of the Trabant ceased in 1991 before his car was ready.

While they view the cars as mainly a hobby, the Trabis are a link to the past and a gesture of defiance against the prosperity and plush living standards of reunified Germany.

Germans have a word for this: Ostalgie, or nostalgia for East Germany ("ost" means "east" in German). It has been stoked by popular films like Good Bye Lenin!, by museum exhibits about life in East Germany, and by the Trabant, which, like many icons, has grown larger in death than it was in life.

This meeting of Trabant owners – the car's name translates as "escort" or "satellite" – has drawn visitors from Poland, Hungary, Romania, the Czech Republic, Denmark and the Netherlands.

With a body made of fibre-reinforced plastic, known as Duroplast, the Trabant has more in common with a lawn mower than with a modern car. With its two-stroke engine, it accelerates from zero to 100 km/h in a leisurely 21 seconds.

The car's plastic shell led many wags to say it was made of cardboard. But Duroplast has its advantages. The Trabant is resistant to rust, as the mint-condition models here showed.

The engine is so simple that virtually anyone can make sense of it. Because East Germany produced only two main models of the Trabant over 30 years – more than 3 million cars in total – the parts are easy to find and interchangeable.

Many Trabant owners were too busy haggling over spare parts to discuss the place of their car in eastern German history. For some, the allure of the Trabant is simple: It is a pop-culture icon.

While western Germany remains richer and has fewer people out of work than the east, the gap between them is no longer so stark. Comfortably ensconced in their BMWs or Volkswagens, people here are more apt to remember the Trabant as an example of romantic pluck than of Communist ineptitude.

Sorin Antochi, from Romania, has owned Trabants for 30 years. He turned his latest one into a pink convertible, with a Pink Panther on the hood. Inside is a top-of-the-line stereo and electronic navigation system. Someone offered him $13,000 for it, he said.