As the beige car bounced up to the former Soviet barracks, the rattle of its half-century-old engine drowned out the noise of people setting up for the day’s festivities at a temporary fairground.
A man dressed in the dark green uniform of a 1950s policeman, complete with an old-fashioned leather cap, blew his whistle and waved the car—a well-preserved 1980 Wartburg, a classic despite the engine knock—into the parking lot.
The driver of the small sedan, once considered the Mercedes of Eastern Europe, slipped the clutch, jerking the car forward. The error earned a reprimand from a uniformed parking attendant.
“Go into the GDR now,” he shouted in mock anger, referring to the defunct East German state. “Leave your western ways behind!”
For more than a decade, the GDR’s Pirna Museum has hosted a May Day event in Pirna, just a few miles from the Czech border in eastern Germany, where people can celebrate communist-era cars.
Built after the war in state-owned factories, the cars are smaller, less powerful and less flashy than most Western cars of the same era. But for excited visitors to Pirna, who often dress in contemporary attire to match the vehicles they arrived in, the well-polished and manicured cars embody a local pride.
The hundreds of motorcycles, buses, trucks, cars and farm vehicles on display exuded the nostalgia many here feel for a vanished country that – despite its oppressive dictatorship – was home for decades.
“As a proud Easterner, I’m delighted to help revive this iconic car,” said Tom Grossmann, standing in front of the green 1985 Trabant, best remembered for a chassis made from a material similar to reinforced cardboard. “If that means there are more of these cars on German roads, so much the better.”
Born in 1989, the year the Berlin Wall came down, Mr. Grossmann expressed a typical sentiment on stage at Pirna.
For years, he disapproved of the old cars of the East, but in middle age, his opinion changed. In part, he was drawn to the community that had developed among people who own cars.
When he bought his sedan five years ago, he paid 3,000 euros, about $3,250, but then spent more than double that to restore its ride, adding a sunroof, wider tires and custom upholstery.
Uwe Röckler, 23, dressed in a GDR police uniform from the 1980s, paraded past the line of cars handing out fake parking tickets and posed for photos with passers-by. Mr. Röckler is a stickler for details: The tickets he carefully filled out and pinned under the windshield wipers were written on an exact reproduction of the form used by East German police in the 1980s.
“It starts with a belt buckle you’d find at a flea market,” she said. “And pretty soon, you’ll be wearing a full outfit,” he added, noting that he had several spares hanging in his closet at home.
For Mr Rockler, whose parents toiled under the Communist regime, the era holds a fascination. “It wasn’t all bad, it was just everyday life,” he said. Of the East German police, seen by many as one of the most visible manifestations of a repressive state, he said: “They were actually very good criminals — in many ways equal to those in the West.”
May 1 — officially known as the “International Day of Struggle of the Working Class and Oppressed Peoples of the World” — was one of the most important dates in the socialist calendar. Although it was a holiday and no one had to work, participation in state-organized parades was compulsory, and urban brigades of factory workers, socialist youth groups and politicians were expected to march with signs celebrating progress and socialism.
Waiting in line to board a carefully maintained bus from 1958 that would take him on a tour of Pirna, Thomas Herzog, 62, remembers well the demands of that time. “I’m here because nobody’s forcing me to be here,” he said with a laugh.
Among those in Pirna celebrating this May Day, 35 years after East Germans last celebrated it in a functioning communist state, many said the season was fraught with problems, including restrictions on speech and travel, with citizens living under the yoke of one of the most restrictive state security systems behind the Iron Curtain.
But as that time recedes into the past, memories of the communist country have become more appealing to many, especially as dissatisfaction with the current system grows.
According to a December poll, 82 percent of Germans nationwide are at least somewhat dissatisfied with the government under Chancellor Olaf Scholz. Given this level of dissatisfaction, it’s not surprising that some people are looking back.
In eastern Germany, where discontent is often strongest, many look to the far-right Alternative for Germany, or AfD, for solutions. In the state of Pirna, Saxony, where voters head to the polls in September, the AfD counts 30%, more than any other party on the ballot.
Conny Kaden, 60, the founder of the GDR Museum, said that despite the benefits of reunification, there were also disadvantages.
The socialist state, he noted, in addition to offering jobs in state-owned enterprises, had fostered a sense of community through mandatory meetings in youth, workers’ and community associations. “I’m not saying it’s about raising the flag of the GDR,” Mr Kaden said. “But we lost something, we lost cohesion.”
Mr Kaden built his museum dedicated to all things GDR in 2005 and said ticket sales have increased.
The May Day car meet has also become more popular. This year, he estimated he had welcomed as many as 3,500 visitors and hundreds of cars, possibly breaking last year’s record.
Some western cars were also presented at the meeting. Two customized Volvo limousines, used by the leaders of the East German regime, were parked in a prominent corner. Above the huge radio inside one, a tape of police chatter illegally recorded in 1989 played on a loop.
Mr Röckler, who played the bogus policeman who handed out fake tickets, grew up in West Germany, where his family moved after they lost their jobs after reunification. As an adult, he returned to the former East Germany, in part because he said his hobby of dressing up as a communist policeman was misunderstood in the West.
He wasn’t sure his father would have fully understood.
Gesturing to his carefully pressed suit, he said, “I wonder what my dad would say if he could see me wearing this.”
