Museum Utopie und Alltag Beeskow

The Museum of Utopia and Daily Life unites the Documentation Centre of Everyday Culture of the GDR in Eisenhüttenstadt and the Beeskow Art Archive. In view of the collections’ scope and composition, with 170,000 objects of everyday culture and 18,500 works of visual and applied art, as well as amateur works, the museum preserves an exceptional inventory of GDR cultural history.

In Eisenhüttenstadt, one can also experience the GDR’s architectural and urban-planning heritage. The model city, which was once conceived as the “first socialist city” in the GDR, now forms the largest interconnected heritage area in Germany.

The Museum of Utopia and Everyday Life presents day-to-day culture, art and architecture in the field of tension between aspiration and reality, and between socialist designs and actual daily life. In the GDR, the promise of a better society contrasted with the reality of many people’s lives. The ideal was ideologically appropriated as a state utopia and discredited. The Museum of Utopia and Everyday Life is dedicated to that contradiction. It presents the interaction between everyday culture, art, architecture and the social system.

The Museum of Utopia and Everyday Life sheds light on history using the visual and material culture of the GDR, offering perspectives on contemporary themes such as upheaval in the working world, equality, the structural transformation of cities and the future of a society orientated towards environmental consumption and growth. The collections provide a wide range of historical stimuli on such contexts.