Karl-Marx-Allee née Stalinallee

After its completion in the 1950s, the boulevard was very popular with Berliners and visitors alike. People crowded into the stores. “Taking the E line to the shops on Stalin Boulevard” was not only a catchy slogan, it was also characteristic of everyday life in the East German capital. People could find things they would not see elsewhere, and the shopping facilities set an example for the whole of the GDR. The shops offered great variety and were attractively decorated. People could relax in cafés such as Sybylle or at the Kokos cinema, and in the evening they could take their guests to one of the representative restaurants with such sonorous names as Warschau (Warsaw), Bukarest (Bucharest) or Budapest.^[2]

The boulevard soon developed into a shoppers’ paradise in the GDR, which was otherwise suffering from the deficits of its centrally planned economy. It also served the ideological function of introducing visitors to the culture of its “socialist sister states”.^[3]

Stalin’s Bathroom

In February 2009 an anonymous author edited the article “Karl-Marx-Allee” in the German language edition of Wikipedia, claiming that during the time of the GDR the road had garnered the nickname “Stalin’s bathroom” due to the buildings’ tiled facades.^[4] Subsequently, several media outlets reiterated this claim.^[5][6][7] No alternative verification for the term was given, making it a self-referential claim.

After a letter written in the Berliner Zeitung doubting that the term “Stalin’s bathroom” had actually been in common use during the GDR period^[8] Andreas Kopietz, a journalist at the newspaper, published an article admitting he had invented the phrase and was the original anonymous Wikipedia editor, allowing the record to be set straight.^[9]