This article centres on two East German museums exclusively dedicatedto the storage and display of everyday items produced in the German DemocraticRepublic between 1949 and 1989, locating both in the context of similar ‘memorymuseums’ of East German history, as well as history museums more generally. Examining these sites, the text investigates the types of relationships established with theseartefacts of the past, analysing their function as mediators between the inner and outerworld, and between memory and history. Taking nostalgia theory and specificallyOstalgie as a starting point for the analysis, it reflects on how the museums serve ascontainers for a multitude of objects both fantasmatic and material. The aim is to injectnostalgia theory, especially in its focus on materiality, with more distinctly psychosocialideas and concepts. In order to understand whether there is a finality to the psychic andpolitical transitions that took place after 1989, nostalgia’s link to a utopian politics ofthe future, rather than to a contested past, is addressed throughout.