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This is What Life was Like in Communist East Germany

Tim Flight December 18, 2019 25 min

Berlin Wall - Checkpoint Charlie — A man peers over the newly-built Berlin Wall in August 1961. The Guardian

29. Lots of ‘Red Westerns’ were filmed, with Native Americans as the good guys and cowboys as the bad guys

Still from the 1966 movie Sons of Great Bear. IFFR

The explosion in Western movies depicting cowboys fighting Native Americans in the mid-20^th century also reached behind the Iron Curtain. East German filmmakers capitalized on widespread interest in Native American culture by making their own Westerns. Known as Ostern (‘eastern’) or Red Westerns, these films depicted cowboys as villains and Native Americans as heroes. The most celebrated example of the genre, 1966’s The Sons of Great Bear, which is still hailed as a masterpiece. The Sons of Great Bear and its ilk were distributed across the Eastern Bloc and even West Germany.

Written by

Tim Flight

I am a freelance historical and literary writer based in West Yorkshire, UK. I read for a funded PhD in English at the University of Oxford (Magdalen College) and graduated in 2016. I am a former lecturer in Medieval English Literature at Royal Holloway, University of London. My publications include peer-reviewed articles in academic publications, and pieces in mainstream magazines such as History Today and Fortean Times. For more information, please see www.drflight.co.uk