A Five Year Plan for Geraniums: Growing Flowers Commercially in East Germany 1946-1989

The dubious experiment in political economy and social engineering known as socialism, which distorted the functioning of Russia and the Eastern European countries and did horrifying damage to their populations for much of the twentieth century, left its mark on many industries. One industry, which has not received as much attention as other larger ones, is horticulture, with its subsector of floriculture. In 1945, at the end of World War II, Germany was finally divided into two sectors—eas...