Germany’s war on Barbie

‘I embrace Barbie because I’m not threatened by her,’ says my friend Pippa, an early 40-ish antiques dealer from London who lives in Berlin.

We are standing inside the ‘Barbie Dreamhouse Experience’, a 2,500-square metre Barbie museum; a pink monstrosity erected last month in a parking lot near Alexanderplatz. Inside, one can bake imaginary cupcakes, saunter down a fashion runway and gawk at the contents of Barbie’s hall of shoes. It’s a little out of place in the midst of the communist-era Plattenbau (pre-fabricated, council-style) apartment blocks that surround it. In 1989, East German activists gathered not far from this spot to welcome the downfall of socialist dictatorship. This year, topless feminists descended upon an ersatz doll’s house and shouted: ‘Burn it down!’

Before the Barbie Dreamhouse even opened its doors, it had already become a source of controversy. Michael Koschitzki, a member of the Left party (a descendant of the old East German communist Socialist Unity party), attacked the Dreamhouse for ‘present[ing] an image of cooking, primping and singing, as if it were in some way life-fulfilling.