When color television was a luxury in the East
Buying a color television was a special and expensive event in the GDR. But in Dresden you were given good advice – a find from the SZ archive.
Buying a color television in the GDR: A family gets advice at Güntzplatz in Dresden.
© Photo: SZ/Gunter Hübner
Dresden. For mom, it’s TV chef Kurt Drummer, for dad, it’s “Sport Aktuell”, the child is looking forward to the Sandman, on Saturday evenings when they watch “Ein Kessel Buntes” – and soon, in color in the truest sense of the word. In 1983, the young family in our photo by SZ photographer Gunter Hübner is getting advice on buying their first color television set in the newly designed Kontaktring radio and television sales outlet on Güntzplatz in Dresden.
“After its reconstruction, the Kontaktring radio and television sales outlet at Güntzplatz has acquired a boutique character,” wrote the Sächsische Zeitung. The sales area and warehouse were redesigned within seven weeks. “The sales culture has improved – there is now an individual consultation room when purchasing high-quality home electronics devices.”
Since 1969, GDR television programs have been broadcast in color, but a color television was expensive. A Chromat 2366 from the RFT factory in Staßfurt, which can be admired here in the specialist shop, cost 3,500 marks. If you wanted to enjoy Rudi Carrell’s “Am laufenden Band” or the Black Forest Clinic on western television in color, you had to pay an additional 600 marks for a PAL decoder. Over four million color televisions were sold in the GDR.
With the fall of the Berlin Wall, the tide also turned when it came to buying televisions: The Sächsische Zeitung newspaper wrote about this photo on December 19, 1990: “A PAL decoder, please, if I want to see the ARD cartoons in color at Christmas.”
© Photo: SZ/Gunter Hühner
Do you remember your first color broadcasts on the expensive TV set? Do you think back to when the Russian picture tube went colorless after just four years and the repair cost 1,000 marks? Or when the Raduga color TV, well installed in the Hellerau wall unit, caught fire because of overheating?
Were you there – write us your story:
- In the floods of 2002, many photos from the SZ archive were literally lost.
- In the series “Finds”, the SZ publishes historical photographs, accompanied by the appeal: “You were there – tell us your story!”
- We are interested in how the photo came about and what happened afterwards. What developments took place in the lives of the people that have already been reported on in the SZ? Or what other readers can say about the topic. We want to pass on these contemporary stories.
- Contact: [email protected]
