This video was made possible by Curiosity Stream.
When you sign up at the link in the description you’ll also get access to Nebula—the streaming
video platform that HAI is a part of.
1990 was a big year in history: the Hubble Telescope was launched into space, the Game
Boy was introduced to Europe, MC Hammer told us that we couldn’t touch this, and of course,
the country of East Germany ceased to exist—well, except that maybe it didn’t.
Now, many of you probably already know a decent amount about East Germany and how and why
it fell, because, like all Half as Interesting viewers, you’re a highly educated and sophisticated
person, but on the off chance you forgot, let’s do a quick review, starting at the
beginning.
About 13.8 billion years ago, the universe underwent a sudden expansion, changing from
an extremely small, dense collection of matter into everything.
This would eventually lead to World War Two, at the conclusion of which Germany was simultaneously
occupied by a number of the Allied powers who had just picked up the W—the US, the
UK, France, and the Soviet Union.
The areas that the US, UK, and France had occupied were unified into a country called
the Federal Republic of Germany, or as it was more commonly known, West Germany.
The area that the Soviets had occupied became the German Democratic Republic, or East Germany.
For the next 51 years—a period also known as the Cold War, or as I like to call it,
the Chilly Conflict—things stayed that way.
West Germany was a capitalist state that had independence and made the song 99 Luftballons,
and East Germany was a communist state that was mostly run by the Soviet Union, and because
of its struggling communist economy, could only afford 47 luftballons that it had to
evenly divide among its citizens.
But then, in 1989, the Berlin Wall fell, and East Berlin and West Berlin all had a big
party together and for some reason David Hasselhoff was there, and soon after, in 1990, East Germany
rejoined West Germany and together they became the Germany we know and love today—the one
with Angela Merkel and giant mugs of beer and most of the EU’s economy and impressive
failures of infrastructure projects, and with the reunification of the two Germany’s,
the country of East Germany was no more.
Except, that is, for Ernst Thalmann Island.
It’s a tiny strip of land—10 miles or 15 kilometers long and only 1,600 feet or
500 meters across—located off the southwest coast of Cuba in the Gulf of Calzones, which
I have to imagine is the cheesiest, sauciest part of Cuba.
Oh wait damn it’s the Gulf of Cazones.
Anyway, this tiny island just might be the last remaining piece of the East German empire.
See, back during the Cold War, East Germany and Cuba were really good friends, like Joe
Biden and Barack Obama, or like Joe Biden and a cone of ice cream, or like Joe Biden
and the Amtrak Northeast Corridor.
East Germany was communist, Cuba was communist—they were like two communist peas in a communist
pod—and in 1972, during a state visit to East Germany, Fidel Castro, then the leader
of Cuba, promised that he would donate a Cuban island to his friends in East Germany, which
was definitely a better gift than what the East Germans had gotten for him, which was
a teddy bear.
Seriously, that’s not a joke—look it up, they actually got Fidel Castro a teddy bear.
I mean, technically they did give them a gift, but only bear-ly.
An island might seem like a big gift, but Cuba contains about 4,000 small islands, so
giving up just one wouldn’t be too big of a deal, and it was a nice show of support
that would strengthen ties between the two nations, plus give East Germans a little vacation
getaway spot during the cold German winter months.
Soon after his announcement, Castro held an event to make things official—during a state
visit by an East German diplomat, Castro took the tiny, uninhabited island that had previously
been known as Cayo Blanco del Sur, and gave it the equally tropical-sounding name of Ernst
Thalmann Island, after a German communist named, you guessed it, Ernst Thalmann, who
had been the leader of the German Communist Party from 1925 to 1933.
Ernst Thalmann Island had never been populated, but in 1972, the iguanas and birds who lived
there were joined by a new friend—a massive stone bust of Ernst Thalmann himself.
Things stayed mostly quiet there until 1975, when the East German government sent a singer
to the island to record some footage for a music video, because after all, nothing says,
“hip new music,” like government-backed communist propaganda.
Despite these efforts, Ernst Thalmann Island never really took off—it was kind of like
Google+: nobody ever went on it, and before long it was completely and totally forgotten.
So forgotten, in fact, that in all of the documents that were signed when East Germany
rejoined West Germany, there was no mention of Ernst Thalmann island, which means that
it never officially rejoined West Germany, which in theory, would make it the last remaining
part of East Germany.
But, as countless memes have taught us, there’s often a difference between what happens in
theory and what happens in reality.
In 2001, a German newspaper suddenly remembered Ernst Thalmann Island and contacted Cuba to
see what the deal was, and the Cubans responded that actually, the transfer of the island
had only been, “symbolic.”
Whether this is actually the truth is up to interpretation which is why we say this island
just might be a bit of East Germany.
When the current German government was also asked to comment, they agreed—presumably
because at that point, they had much bigger fish to fry than disputing the claim over
a tiny island in Cuba that may or may not have belonged to a country that doesn’t
exist anymore, and it feels unlikely they’ll change their mind, especially considering
that these days, there’s another island that’s giving them plenty of headaches.
But you know what gives me plenty of headaches?
The inherently unstable nature of existing online video platforms that disincentivizes
experimentation.
That’s why a bunch of creators, including myself, got together and founded Nebula.
It’s built by us to fulfill all our hopes and dreams of a video platform so that we
can make the best stuff we can in an ecosystem that supports us.
The best part about Nebula is that you can get it essentially for free.
Curiosity Stream and Nebula have partnered so that, when you sign up for a Curiosity
Stream subscription, you get a Nebula subscription included at zero extra cost.
That means you get Nebula, the platform built by creators home to all of our existing content
plus plenty of originals, and Curiosity Stream, the well-established platform home to thousands
of documentaries and non-fiction titles, for just $20 a year by signing up at CuriosityStream.com/HAI.
At that cost, it’s really a no-brainer, but keep in mind you’ll also be supporting
HAI and so many other independent creators by signing up.