Brofaromin OST

performances: June 17, 18 and 19, 2022 in the former Stasi headquarters,
Ruschestraße 103, Haus 22

Since the 1960s, international pharmaceutical companies such as Bayer, Pfizer and Ciba Geigy conducted drug studies in GDR hospitals.

In addition to circulatory drugs, antidepressants such as the drug BROFAROMIN were also tested, often without informing the patients.

This “immaterial export” (Schalck Golodkowski) was organized by the Department for “Commercial Coordination” (KoKo) and with the help of the State Security.

In the cultural memory of the reunited Germany, the medical test series between East and West are hardly present. “Brofaromin OST” recalls the drug trials and their side effects between East and West Germany.

We bring the chemical connections between capital and Real Socialism to the former Stasi canteen in Berlin-Lichtenberg.

Were GDR citizens used as guinea pigs to improve the economic plight of the GDR?

Did East German patients desire the Western “miracle pills”?

What are the side effects of the West and how do socialist placebo effects feel?

Get down with us!

Molotov Soda “Lab Rat” (2000)

I got a new job, testing drugs.
It’s really easy, you don’t need any talents.
I lose a few teeth, my hair falls out, for that I take home 200 marks!
It’s really cool that they pay me to take the latest pills!
My eyes are watering, blood is running from my nose, my head is mushy, but otherwise I’m fine!
I love being a test subject at the pharmaceutical research station!
Hard work, fair wages at the pharmaceutical research station!
You may say I live dangerously, but I am indispensable for science!
Personally, I really enjoy my job and at some point we bite the dust anyway!
I have problems to concentrate and I can’t control the strange twitching!
I am slowly losing my vitality, but that is the price of science!
I love to be a test person at the pharmaceutical research station!
Hard work, fair wages, I am a lab rat from passion!

The project is funded by the Hauptstadtkulturfonds, in cooperation with the Stasi-Unterlagen-Archiv, the Theater Thikwa and the Senior:innen-Chor der Stillen Strasse 10.