Photo Gallery East Germany, Up Close and Personal
West German photographer Karlheinz Jardner took fascinating photos during a trip through East Germany in the spring of 1990, capturing a world that would soon disappear forever. A toast to German unity: Three men have an early drink in a town in the Mecklenburg Lake District in eastern Germany just after reunification in October 1990.
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East Germany, Up Close and Personal
Picking up their heating coal: Children with a wagon collect coal bricks, the main source of heating fuel in the former East Germany.
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East Germany, Up Close and Personal
A bedroom and TV room with a sleeper sofa in front of shelves in the so-called "Gelsenkirchen Baroque" popular in East Germany, photographed in 1990.
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East Germany, Up Close and Personal
Sweet home: The former Erich Honnecker Suite at the Cliff Hotel on the German Baltic Sea island of Rügen. Named after the former Communist leader of East Germany.
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East Germany, Up Close and Personal
Breakfast on the balcony: Jardner says he experienced nothing but friendliness as he travelled the Mecklenburg Lake District and Baltic Sea in spring 1990, just months after the fall of the Berlin Wall.
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East Germany, Up Close and Personal
A girl sitting next to the window: On the outside, these wooden villas in the Baltic coast resort town of Sellin on Rügen were rundown at the time. Inside, though, they exuded German comfort.
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East Germany, Up Close and Personal
A stairhouse with linoleum flooring, trim, creaky stairs and and a wornout hand rail -- an East German entry way in 1990.
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East Germany, Up Close and Personal
An electronics store: The electronics on sale in 1990 in Mecklenburg were already woefully outdated by Western standards. They would soon be replaced by modern components.
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East Germany, Up Close and Personal
The heroes of the Soviet army: The small city of Neustrelitz in Mecklenburg was the location of a Soviet base -- a fact made obvious by this outsized memorial to the heroes of World War II.
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East Germany, Up Close and Personal
A Sunday stroll in the East German city Eisenach: During another trip, the photographer visited the southern parts of East Germany and found charm in the decay.
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East Germany, Up Close and Personal
East German goods for sale: ATA Fein cleaning and scouring agents could be had for just cents at the time.
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East Germany, Up Close and Personal
Fast food arrives on the resort island of Rügen: A Pizza King stand in front of the rundown Sonneck beach villa in Sellin.
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East Germany, Up Close and Personal
Standing at the garden fence: A neighborhood idyll on Rügen Island.
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East Germany, Up Close and Personal
This kiosk sold sausages, mulled wine and hot lemon -- just not during the break between 1:30 p.m. and 2:30 p.m.
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East Germany, Up Close and Personal
In East Germany, many apartments didn't have their own bathrooms -- you had to share a corridor toilet like this one in Neustrelitz.
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East Germany, Up Close and Personal
Abandoned: Many East Germans rushed to West Germany as soon as the Wall fell, and after just months, many apartments were deserted and trashed. It was a phenomenon that would come to be known as shrinking cities and continues to this day.
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East Germany, Up Close and Personal
An East German semi-truck.
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East Germany, Up Close and Personal
Food on offer at an East German supermarket in Neustrelitz.
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East Germany, Up Close and Personal
"Skinheads -- piss off!": A scene in downtown Eisenach, taken in 1990.
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East Germany, Up Close and Personal
Children became more consumer oriented as Western products came onto the market.
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East Germany, Up Close and Personal
A man stands above a Trabi, the standard car that most East Germans could purchase. What would happen in the future?
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East Germany, Up Close and Personal
A West German Tschibo coffee shop opens up in Eisenach in East Germany: The new stores from the West were a curiosity for locals.
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East Germany, Up Close and Personal
A typical East German shop window before the onslaught of Western products.
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East Germany, Up Close and Personal
Sweating it out: Coal bricks were the main heating element used across East Germany.
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East Germany, Up Close and Personal
The last of their generation: East German televisions in a shop window in Eisenach.
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East Germany, Up Close and Personal
An all-inclusive unit with a tile stove, television set, refrigerator and two beds. Jardner came across this bedroom in Sellin on the island of Rügen in 1990.
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East Germany, Up Close and Personal
East German knicknacks line these shelves.
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East Germany, Up Close and Personal
A typical East German living room.
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East Germany, Up Close and Personal
A man stands on the balcony of a rundown old villa in Sellin on Rügen.
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East Germany, Up Close and Personal
Trash cans are lined up for collection in the town of Baabe on Rügen.
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East Germany, Up Close and Personal
A young girl pushes a baby wagon with a doll in Eisenach.
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East Germany, Up Close and Personal
At this apartment in Sellin on Rügen, washing clothes was still done by hand.
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East Germany, Up Close and Personal
Coal at an East German "Intershop," where Western currency still wasn't accepted at the start of 1990.
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East Germany, Up Close and Personal
An entry way with mailboxes, an electric meter, a ladder and a stroller.
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East Germany, Up Close and Personal
Ubiquitous gray: A playground and apartments in Neustrelitz in May 1990.
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East Germany, Up Close and Personal
Taking a break on the edge of a field: Workers at a state run agricultural enterprise in East Germany.
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East Germany, Up Close and Personal
Stairs with socialist elegance: The stairs of Rügen's exclusive Cliff Hotel in 1990.
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East Germany, Up Close and Personal
The Cliff Hotel Rügen: This was one of the most glamorous hotels in East Germany. To stay there, you had to be a functionary with the SED Communist Party. Entry was banned for normal people.
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East Germany, Up Close and Personal
Baker sought: an East German bakery advertises for a new hire.
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East Germany, Up Close and Personal
Night time in East Germany: Trabbis in a parking lot in 1990.
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East Germany, Up Close and Personal
Talking a stroll along the beach: When this picture was taken, it was still cold enough that a jacket was needed on the Baltic Sea resort town Binz on Rügen.
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East Germany, Up Close and Personal
The famous chalk cliffs of Rügen.
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East Germany, Up Close and Personal
Hans Knospe, a beach photographer, spent his entire life in the city of Sellin on Rügen.
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East Germany, Up Close and Personal
Cliffs straight out of a painting: These Rügen chalk cliffs were the motive for one of painter Caspar David Friedrich's most famous works. Jardner says he knew that nature would stay the same "but the people were about to face great changes."
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East Germany, Up Close and Personal
