German officials warned Thursday against the romanticisation of communist East Germany at a time the far-right and Moscow-friendly AfD has sometimes expressed nostalgia for the fallen regime.
Speaking 65 years after the Berlin Wall first went up and weeks ahead of key regional elections in eastern Germany, political figures cautioned against revisionism about the Soviet-backed dictatorship.
Culture Minister Wolfram Weimer said that over three decades after the Berlin Wall fell in 1989, "left-wing and right-wing extremists alike are currently trying to downplay" the crimes of successive East German governments.
"Yet the regime was a brutal dictatorship -- devoid of free elections, freedom of the press and freedom of movement -- but characterised instead by the Stasi, torture chambers and the death strip along the Wall."
Evelyn Zupke, federal commissioner for the victims of the German Democratic Republic (GDR), similarly said that "East Germany seems more appealing to some people the further it recedes in history".
