EINS ZU EINS is a festival for theatre, performance, visual arts, film, music and discourse on the site of the former mint of the GDR, ALTE MÜNZE BERLIN. Based on its historical venue, the festival deals with the uncovering, documenting, unwinding and rewriting of GDR history(ies) and focuses on the diverse confrontations of contemporary artists, especially the so-called post-reunification generation and the last generation East. What perspectives do they use to look at GDR history 30 years after 1990? Which narratives still dominate the historiography of German reunification today and how is the concept of reunification understood?
With the title EINS ZU EINS, the festival refers to the exchange rate (GDR Mark to DM) and emphasises the relentless attempt to compare, adapt and balance, as well as the impossibility of relating two states, their inhabitants and their histories in a simplified way. From the summer of 1990, cash transporters from the Bundesbank transported 460 tons of DM to the East, while at the same time the destruction of the GDR mark was initiated. From then on, the ALTEN MÜNZE Berlin minted DM, and later €.
For the past 15 years, coin production has ceased. The festival EINS ZU EINS is thus also centred around a specific historical event of disappearance. With the widespread introduction of the DM as the sole means of payment in East Germany in 1990, not only the GDR mark disappeared, but also the economic system of which it was an instrument. In a figurative sense, the introduction of the DM not only symbolises the disappearance of a currency, but also of a realm of experience.
