Further Media
This photo shows Christian Reichl (center) in his kindergarten group in the 1980s. He grew up in Schwarzenberg, Saxony, in a typical East German prefabricated housing complex. Like most children, he attended a daycare center from the age of three. Since the 1970s, the well-developed childcare system had been considered an important pillar of socialist family policy — it was intended to enable mothers to work and to educate children from early on in line with the state's ideology. At the same time, kindergarten was a place of communal learning that many children remember with mixed feelings.
In an interview Christian Hoffmann, who was still named Reichl at the time, recalls his kindergarten days:
"The May Day demonstrations were typical. These were mandatory events where everyone got a carnation and then went to demonstrate. Orderly demonstrations, so to speak."