Training Future Comrades: Gender Pedagogy and Model Train Sets in the German Democratic Republic

This article investigates how model train sets became a medium for the marketing and development of East German technological utopianism, particularly in order to recruit women into the technical workforce. It begins by contextualizing the role of women in the GDR and their recruitment into engineering. From there, it explores the pedagogical power of East German train sets as well as its cultural impact on children. Finally, this article examines how technological utopianism shaped East German culture and how the model train was only one such effort on the road to the socialist utopia in East Germany.