Within less than five decades we could witness the ascent and descent of a national project in East Germany. From the very start, the scope of this project was total, this resembling a kind of Gesamtkunstwerk. Various cultural themes, with which competing designs for a socialist nation on German soil resonated, gained or lost in force in accordance with historical trends. Such cultural themes, especially those relating to images of collective identity, are interpreted with regard to the aesthetic cum political efforts that went into the construction of a new nation and a new people.