No political agenda (kein Ostalgie) but simply appreciation for an icon that conveys meaning with clarity and gentle amusement - a design ethic worth following.

Ampelmännchen means "little lamp man"; the meaning specific to post-1989 Germany is the little lamp man of the old East German crosswalk signal. He was designed in 1961 - the year of the Berlin Wall. In the mid-1990s, a few years after Unification, the German government began replacing the Ampelmännchen with the ordinary, very dull West German crosswalk signal. This was not a political statement, but rather compliance with an EU directive requiring the standardization of traffic signals across Europe. Protest ensued. To many Ossis, this was one change too many. It smacked of Wessi imperialism. Our country has vanished, our cultural and social institutions have collapsed, our old, familiar consumer products have long since disappeared, and now you want to take away our Ampelmännchen, despite the fact that he is not only cute, but clearly superior from a design perspective. A "Save the Ampelmännchen" campaign succeeded in preserving the endangered indigenous traffic signal and today the hardy Ampelmännchen is much in evidence across the former East Berlin, a beloved icon of the new Berlin.