East Germany’s secret businesses: Commercial Coordination

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Although East Germany was a communist country, it earned billions on the capitalistic market. For this purpose. secret division Commercial Coordination (‘Kommerzielle Koordinierung’) had been established in the sixties. This video tells you all about the division’s main activities, which were sometimes far from honest and morally acceptable.
Note: For the sake of simplicity, in the video I mention amounts in Deutsche Mark (D-Mark or DM), which is not completely correct. I should have said ‘Valutamark’ (VM), which was the convertible currency on the international trade market (1 DM = 1 VM). And 1 DM = 1 VM = 4,4 M the local GDR currency in 1989)
By the way: Keep in mind that due to inflation the amounts today would be at least five times as high.
And for the sake of completeness: 1 USD was roughly worth about 2 DM. And 1 GBP was worth roughly 4 DM.
Used abbreviation: GDR - German Democratic Republic (DDR in German)
Books used for preparing this video (unfortunately only available in German):
Der Bereich Kommerzielle Koordinierung - M. Just
Die Schalck Papiere - W. Seiffert & N. Treutwein
Wer verkaufte die DDR - Klaus Blessing
Sources and credits of the pictures:
Schalck-Golodkowski photo: Bundesarchiv, Bild 183-1988-0317-312 / Brüggmann, Eva / CC-BY-SA 3.0, CC BY-SA 3.0 de, commons.wikime...
Chruschtschow auf dem V. Parteitag der SED in der Werner-Seelenbinder-Halle in Berlin, 1958. By Bundesarchiv, Bild 183-57000-0139 / Horst Sturm / CC-BY-SA 3.0, CC BY-SA 3.0 de, commons.wikime...
Das Eisenhüttenkombinat Ost in Stalinstadt. Aufnahme vom 10. November 1952. By Bundesarchiv, Bild 183-17138-0003 / CC-BY-SA 3.0, CC BY-SA 3.0 de, commons.wikime...
Lebensmittelgeschäft der HO (1950). Bundesarchiv, Bild 183-08328-0006 / CC-BY-SA 3.0, CC BY-SA 3.0 de, commons.wikime...
Franz Josef Strauss (By: Bundesarchiv, Bild 183-1990-0226-315 / Mittelstädt, Rainer / CC-BY-SA 3.0, CC BY-SA 3.0 de, commons.wikime...)

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3 окт 2024

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Комментарии : 146

@chromelemon Год назад

I’m so happy that a channel like this exists. There is so much material out there on the DDR but it’s all in German. Thanks for putting in the effort!

@NandiCollector Год назад

*So true. Being from an ex-communist country like Albania, it always fascinated me to learn more about the East Bloc countries, especially the DDR.*

@danielryan9126 2 месяца назад

Agree. I like cold war history of Germany and am in USA.

@frankchan4272 24 дня назад

Yes. This is great channel how each “communist” country dealt with financial, political, human & other things and this channel the DDR.

@KomradZX1989 7 месяцев назад

This story is ABSOLUTELY INSANE!!! CoCo sounds more like a state-sanctioned mafia than a “commercial coordination committee” 😂🤯

@duitseles9687 Месяц назад

The State IS the mafia, no matter where you live. Taxes are protection money.

@yoloswaggins2161 Месяц назад

Communism is mafia

@scfan7231 Год назад

German here. Learned about all these things on RU-vid some 3-4 years ago. It's great that there is now an English-language channel, and my feeling is that you cover things with just the right depth.

@pr0methian 24 дня назад

I was a member of British Army of the Rhine and lived in Germany for 4 years. I learnt German whilst there and I wish to congratulate you on your video's as they are so imformative for people such as me... well Done.. Gut gemacht.

@oldmanc2 Год назад

Absolutely fascinating. I met a former DDR Political prisoner on a tour of Hochenhausen Prison in Berlin. She had been sold to West Germany in the early 80s.

@DiegoSilva_88 Год назад

I’ve discovered this channel in the last few days! Having a lot of curiosity about GDR, your videos are very helpful. Thank you

@Love.life.ashigzoya Год назад

Thank you very educative and refreshing . Times have changed since then but Germany is still not a free country This holds Germans hostage to economic forces in service of Washington .The energy crisis is hostage to this. Time Germans take to deciding about their destiny on own not by Atlanticists. Maj gen IA veteran

@Hongaars1969 Год назад

Once more…most detailed and probably the only English language channel specialising in all matters DDR related. Fascinating insights abound not least of all, the hypocrisy inherent within the deeply flawed system with blatant corruption, nepotism, and downright lies.

@memesthatmakeyouwannadie3133 8 месяцев назад

The GDR did not do a single bad thing besides things every other state does. “Ohhh they spied on people. They tortured people.” NSA wiretapping and Guantanamo Bay also exist.

@danielecompangoni Месяц назад

Thanks for this video, it's very difficult to find valuable material about this part of history that is not strictly related to political focus or purposes

@mrgarypettit 4 месяца назад

American here. I lived in the DDR from late summer 1989-July 1990, after the “Wende”. I received an official response from the German Government a couple of years ago that my Stasi file had been destroyed a long time ago, and cannot be sent to me. Were many people successfully able to get theirs, or did most get destroyed? Thanks in advance for any knowledge on the matter.

@cunningplan9049 4 месяца назад

I suppose you have seen the fantastic TV Series Deutschland 83/86/89 ? In the 86 Series the scandalous affairs of KoKo were also mentioned.

@buckwylde7965 Год назад

Thanks! You are right, there are no in-depth channels exploring the DDR in English. I 've been fascinated with this country since when it still was a country. The more I know about the DDR the stranger it seems. Mach weiter so!

@eastgermanyinvestigated Год назад

Thank you!

@PascalGienger 7 месяцев назад

West Berliners had an easy access to an Intershop to buy their alcohol and tobacco: S-Bahn Station Alexanderplatz. It was in Eastern Berlin but trains to and from West Berlin called there, too - so an Intershop was on a platform in the tightly controlled "West Berlin" section.

@A_10_PaAng_111 8 месяцев назад

In the East it was called CoCo, in the West they called it Mafia. Loan sharking, money laundering etc.

@DebatingWombat Месяц назад

Some of these activities are not particularly unique to the DDR. The main things standing out to me is the sale of political prisoners and squeezing the churches. Using loans for leverage is a very old trick (the old “gunboat diplomacy” was usually about enforcing loan repayments) and the IMF’s “structural adjustment programmes” are basically another form of this. Another example is how various Gulf states’ sovereign wealth funds extend loans via cash up front deals on public infrastructure (such as purchasing the rights to parking meter fees for several years from a city for a lump sum). I was actually surprised at how low the proceeds from arms sales seemed to be, especially considering that the Iran-Iraq War was a bonanza for international arms dealers (two oil rich states slugging it out for the most of a decade in mainly conventional warfare) and it’s far from unknown to have arms dealers selling to both sides in a war. Dumping trash and hazardous waste in third countries for a pittance is also very much still happening (e.g. the ship breaking in Alang or the massive textile dumps in the Atacama Desert springs to mind, not to mention cases from Africa).

@DevynCairns Год назад

I was most surprised by the fact that they were lending money to the state for high interest rates. That just sounds like an unnecessary level of corruption that I can't really fathom why the state would accept that

@donquixote3927 Год назад

I imagine the Directors became so wealthy from these activities they began to dictate or bribe policy to their liking.

@thomasvandevelde8157 Месяц назад

Because they provided kickbacks to the GDR Elite ofcourse! Why else do you let corrupt companies continue to exist? Because they bribe you!

@EuropeanQoheleth Год назад

Prisoners donated blood in the 80s...ugh this reminds me of the tainted blood scandal in the 1980s (which in Ireland was the SECOND tainted blood scandal; the first one was about hepatitis from the 1950s).

@cv990a4 4 месяца назад

Literally squeezing blood from its population to sell. The system was rotten to the core.

@relo999 3 месяца назад

"Fun" fact, the DDR's blood had a similar scandal. The DDR claimed nobody in the DDR had HIV and claimed they tested the blood, guess how much those claims were worth when loads of people got HIV in west Germany after surgery or otherwise needing blood. They didn't test any blood for HIV even when people in the DDR tried to get tested themselves.

@199019852007 25 дней назад

We got that tainted blood here too in the united kingdom awful

@lunabouch 7 месяцев назад

Thanks again for the continued interesting history of the DDR. I appreciate your direct and thoughtful facts and best of all in English! Danke

@RazzerKFG 2 месяца назад

Am glad to learn something new, history is a favorite subject of mine, grand channel! - one of the other incomes, not just for DDR, but for the eastern blok in general was postage stamps, known in the west as "Wallpaper", pretty images printed by the millions and send to western collectors, funny when you think of the dislike that the socialists had of stampcollectors early on due to being an "upper class" hobby.

@edwardgaeth4399 6 месяцев назад

Thanks for your channel and good work. Incredibly interesting to me. Spent 6 weeks traveling throughout East Germany in early 2001. I had a personal tour guide. My x wife who was from the Saxony area. If I only had a fraction of the information I’ve learned from your channel back then. I was the first American/foreigner in the village she grew up in she said. Thank you again.

@agy234 7 месяцев назад

As an American I am very excited about this channel. There are not very many English sources about the GDR

@greenockscatman 2 месяца назад

Remarkable channel. I've been binge watching these videos today!

@santiagoarestegui Год назад

Speeaking of the GDR arms deals, there was a political scandal in Peru for the purchasing of assault rifles in the late 1980s. I remember it every time I see them still being used by police.

@zelphx 16 дней назад

New videos are always a welcome sight! Thanks for the hard work.

@fratercontenduntocculta8161 8 месяцев назад

I do know that one of East Germany's last commercial enterprises was a division of their firearms manufacturing and were planning on selling guns to American Civilians. They were AK clones given the trade name "Weiger". Would you do a feature on the Kampfgruppen der arbeitsklasse? I can't find any reliable info on them in English. Thank you!

@MlleLolaBelle Год назад

What a great idea to create content in english about DDR👏👏. Love your videos

@HansBezemer Год назад

Als landgenoot was ik blij je kanaal ondekt te hebben. Ik heb heel wat tijd in de DDR doorgebracht in mijn tijd (met name "Die Hauptstadt der DDR") en je videos zijn een feest van herkenning! Ik kan alleen maar stellen, dat waar andere kanalen regelmatig de fout ingaan, ik je nog niet heb kunnen betrappen op een foutje ;-) Klasse!

@eastgermanyinvestigated Год назад

Dankjewel voor je reactie, Hans. En mocht je me op een fout betrappen, dan hoor ik het uiteraard graag.

@supergilliar 10 месяцев назад

Great video. Super production, information and engaging.

@1joshjosh1 Год назад

I need to centrally planned economy for myself

@Sierra-Whisky Год назад

Not so long ago I saw a Dutch documentary about the history of Alpenkreuzer, a Dutch brand of popup campers produced in the DDR. Unfortunately I cannot find it again :(

@TylerDurden-pk5km Месяц назад

A lesser known activity of KoKo was: The importation of foreign workers into east germany. The relatively large number of Vietnamese that were working in the GDR in the 1980s, were brought to East Germany by KoKo on a commercial basis - to produce more goods for western exports in east Germany factories. This importation of foreign labor, was done explicitly to pay back the mentioned loan.

@GrahamJonesJr 7 месяцев назад

Fabulous. There is a German limited series called “BERLIN WALL” in the US with English subtitles that deals with KoKo on human level. It, too, is excellent; I found it on one of the major streaming services. And if that isn’t enough for your DDR habit, there’s “LINES OF SEPARATION” also available for streaming with subtitles. Both are very well-written and have absolutely fantastic acting. Enjoy.

@oesypum Год назад

You mention the appropriation of valuables from private ownership, and museums, subsequently sold in the west, but make no mention of the forgery that was undertaken by the state, this primarily affects philatelic material.

@MichaelK.-xl2qk Год назад

The toxic waste/trash dumping business sounds like a classic organized crime networking affair. How many bodies ended up under tons of industrial waste?

@AuntieTrichome 9 месяцев назад

There is a German mini series made on the subject called “Preis der Freiheid”. It’s worth a peep.

@MikeJT62 Год назад

Very informative, love your videos, thank you!

@sidm479 5 месяцев назад

My favorite channel. I'm fascinated with the DDR. I don't really know why lol.

@mariacuachon3906 Год назад

Very interesting, thank you😮

@cactussauce3452 2 года назад

Another great video. Extremely interesting!

@sandgroper1970 29 дней назад

I also read in a book where the Stasi with help from the Border Police, would create some pretense at various border crossings, whereby certain motor vehicles, were confiscated from western visitors. These vehicles were then re used as official vehicles in East Germany.

@WINSTANLEYOBXa 2 месяца назад

Superb

@XxLIVRAxX 9 месяцев назад

Talking about socialism and hostage taking, the chavista regime in Venezuela also uses political prisioners as trading chips for negotiations with the USA.

@danielp157 11 месяцев назад

Very interesting! i did not know about this! Thanks!

@markavons3400 Год назад

Very well researched video and very interesting

@tmsrrr Год назад

Great videos, really happy I found your channel!

@luigishiroka5127 Месяц назад

You have got yourself a fan bravo👏

@OOCR96 3 месяца назад

Net het boek 'het dossier'(roman) gelezen, gaat ook o.a. over activiteiten van de KoKo, een aanrader.

@markotango54 7 месяцев назад

Your channel is truly fascinating, thank you so much for taking the time and efforts for your channel

@arthurroberts4504 10 месяцев назад

Very interesting RU-vid channel - I lived through years of the cold war but only had a sketchy knowledge of what was going on in East Germany.

@poissonpuerile8897 Год назад

The GDR's dire economic situation at the time was also due to (a) World War II, (b) the Soviet Union extracting unfathomably massive reparations from the GDR (which included disassembling almost every vaguely usable factory in the country and shipping it to Russia), and (c) the Soviet Union forcing the GDR to spend about 10% of its GDP on defense. I also believe the GDR had to finance its own occupation by the Soviet Union.

@eastgermanyinvestigated Год назад

There definitely is a lot more to tell about the economy of the GDR. The topic is on my list of future videos.

@BB-kt5eb Год назад

Those are all contributing factors, but problems were bound to arise either way. It probably could’ve lasted another decade or so without those problems, but even then, I’m not sure they could’ve held on in the face of all the other Soviet bloc nations turning away from communism.

@caezar55 Год назад

The main economic problem was a little thing called communism.

@jean6872 Год назад

@@BB-kt5eb Once Gorbachev took over the Soviet Union and introduced glasnost and perestroika and jettisoning the Warsaw Pact, the DDR was doomed.

@liliya_aseeva Год назад

The reparations claim and deindustrialization program was dropped almost immediately after DDR's formal inception, since the DDR was formally a friendly socialist state. But the claim about defence budget quotas is probably valid. I think that Soviet union did not claim any money for the defence of East Germany (unlike the US does), but of course Soviet forces were stationed there for free.

@2broketim479 Год назад

excellent work! keep the videos coming...

@joyce120860 9 месяцев назад

Goede docu’s, interessant, bedankt. Groet, Matty

@marcheprovencal592 Год назад

learnt a lot. thank u very much!!

@hantykje3005 Год назад

Great content! Im Norwegian, and I have found a set of dinner plates produced in East Germany.

@flowersofthefield340 Год назад

Always follow the money in an organisation .....

@Logosascha 3 месяца назад

You forgot to mention GENEX. Very good content, thank you!

@DebatingWombat Месяц назад

There was also a large a lint of more or less officially sanctioned cigarette smuggling to Denmark, though I don’t know if KoKo was involved. In an added irony, the actual cigarettes were not East German, but the usual Danish brands produced by Scandinavian Tobacco Group, leading to speculations about at least tacit collaboration between the cigarette producers and the DDR with the smugglers providing a convenient layer of plausible deniability while circumventing high, Danish taxes on cigarettes.

@chadwahl9085 Год назад

In the Deutschland TV series they had touched on this subject.

@displacedyankee7819 7 месяцев назад

I believe I got to visit an Intershop in 1987 when my high school exchange group took a bus from Hamburg to Berlin. I bought a big Toblerone

@bubba842 3 месяца назад

There is an excellent German TV show dram called "Berlin Wall" that is about a senior member of KOKO during the last days of the GDR. Its an excellent show and o hoghly recommend it to anyone interested in East German history. I saw it on PBS on Amazon Prime (Canada).

@abookmaker6344 Год назад

Excellent channel.

@LowSkillSurvival 3 месяца назад

It takes a Dutch to finally hear german words pronounced correctly. Figures.

@simonstergaard Год назад

Nice. I have never heard of CoCo, and i have seen ALL the available DDR docus from ZDF, RBB etc. etc.

@DeltaStar777 3 месяца назад

I can highly recommend the book The ideal world of dictatorship by Stefan Wolle

@frankchan4272 24 дня назад

Internshop is like old China’s friendship stores were only foreigners are allowed to buy with their unique foreign exchange certificates. The foreign exchange certificates were only for foreigners but interestingly the local Chinese people would congregate around those stores to “bribe” foreigners to buy things in those they couldn’t buy.

@sophiawisdom3429 7 месяцев назад

When you talk about CoCo loans you say they set up a lending business in the west, but typically that would mean a business lending money *to* the west, not a business borrowing money *from* the west.

@aidankerr1125 Год назад

There’s so few sources about Koko in English - both academic and commercial history - it is really bizarre.

@douro20 20 дней назад

MDR did an episode of "Zeitreise" (Journey Through Time) on the KuA GmbH and their dealings in the art world. Unfortunately it's only in German as far as I know.

@wertywerrtyson5529 Год назад

I’ve had some products made in East Germany. I always thought it was strange for a socialist country to sell products to capitalist countries.

@jean-pierrehugotin 8 месяцев назад

Excellent! Great job!

@baihui7349 9 месяцев назад

Similar things happened in Bulgaria

@daverin649 Месяц назад

Thanks!

@eastgermanyinvestigated Месяц назад

Thank you!

@petersandberg1061 8 месяцев назад

Interesting. I was involved in a project via RFT in 1989, which I suspect was intended to generate foreign currency...

@benediktmorak4409 7 месяцев назад

maybe a secret for you. but not for - us - . Politics was one thing. Business was another. - Messe Leipzig - was the best example for it...

@stevenbanks2938 25 дней назад

Thanks

@eastgermanyinvestigated 24 дня назад

Thank you!

@hazchemel Год назад

Many thanks. What was DDR government's attitude towards religious institutions, including the neighbourhood parish church?

@DerDop 29 дней назад

Ahahhaw, the same happened in Romania :))) Romanian secret services were dealing with drugs and we had the 4th biggest ocean fishing fleet on the planet. You might say, bro, but Romania doesn’t have any oceans near… Well yes, but countries buying arms from Romania had ports near oceans :))

@alepaz1099 8 месяцев назад

totally insane!🤯🤯

@chrism1102 5 месяцев назад

Does anyone know if East Germans could purchase items at the Intershops if they had foreign currency? If so, would they have to explain how they received it?

@WilhelmEley-s3y 28 дней назад

that was fairly common, it was also not too suspicious, it just meant they had relatives in the west, who would give them some money.

@simonf8902 Год назад

Maximal hypocrisy department. 😂

@theMOCmaster Год назад

Can you cover the bloc parteis, and what motivation citizens would have to join parties other than the SED? Did they really believe they could make the country more nationalist by joining the NDPD, or more liberal by joining the JDPD, or more Christian by joining the East German CDU?

@Deeeeeznuttttts 3 месяца назад

it’s almost like communism can’t survive without capitalism.

@RoniiNN 8 месяцев назад

Reminds me of North Korea and there office 7 or whatever is called. probably more beneficial for the NK regime than the GDR koko.

@blakelowe9079 24 дня назад

Loans, ransoms, firearms, waste management... sounds familiar lol

@REPOMAN24722 Месяц назад

Does any country really earn all their money by not doing shady business? The answer to that is no.

@blackthirt33n Год назад

Could you have or do you have in German

@160rpm 11 месяцев назад

Ok, they were the DDR Treuhand haha

@AIEnhanced-ts5ko Год назад

All socialist countries had more or less similar undercover buisneses.

@andred7684 Год назад

Yup. Even the USSR had kinda sorta undercover businesses prompted by the very own populace

@WilhelmEley-s3y 28 дней назад

Yeah but the GDR was a bit cheeky with the arms delaling: Soviet Union: Supplies weapons to Iran USA: Supplies weapons to Iraq GDR: Supplies weapons to BOTH sides 🤣

@bentobarreirinhas5702 2 месяца назад

I like videos about DDR. I would support your channel if you were favourable towards "east Germany". But your not, so I won't help. Most your videos are a balance between useful information and the rage your comments cause, so not positive

@sirfabyan Месяц назад

why would he be favourable to east germany?

@urtreehugginghippies Год назад

Great video! Love the economic stuff

@give_me_my_nick_back Год назад

As a kid i used to have a 10-12m high by 3-4m wide DDR flag, we used to make a tent using it and it eventually got all ripped apart. I have no idea where it came from but I'm so sad it got wasted...