Das Minol-Geheimnis: Warum die DDR nur EINE Tankstelle brauchte!

🎬 One brand. One network. One oriole. Fuel supply in East Germany was that simple—and it worked so well that 97 percent of East Germans knew and trusted Minol. A liter of regular gasoline for one mark fifty. For years. Consistent. Reliable. While prices at the pump skyrocketed in the West and car-free Sundays were declared, we filled up for the same price as before. Until the Treuhandanstalt (the agency responsible for privatizing East German state-owned enterprises) arrived. Eighty-eight million Deutschmarks in bribes flowed for the sale to the French corporation Elf Aquitaine. Thirty thousand employees lost their jobs. The oriole disappeared. And today, three foreign corporations control 37 percent of all German gas stations—none of them bears responsibility for supplying a region. Minol wasn't a miracle. But Minol belonged to us. That's the real secret. Minol was no miracle. 🔔 Subscribe to our channel for more videos about our GDR Sources (for video description): Wikipedia: Minol — History, Prices, Gas Station Network, Leuna Affair 🔗 https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Minol GDR Museum Berlin: Gasoline for the GDR — The Minol Brand and the Minol Oriole, October 2016 🔗 https://www.ddr-museum.de/de/blog/arc... Biene, Ulrich: The Oriole at the Gas Pump. Minol — History and Stories. Mitteldeutscher Verlag, 2025 🔗 https://www.l-iz.de/bildung/buecher/2... Wikipedia: Friendship Pipeline (Druzhba Pipeline) 🔗 https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Erdölle... Statista: Number of gas stations in Germany from 1950 to 2025 🔗 https://de.statista.com/statistik/dat... Federal Agency for Civic Education: The Leuna-Minol Privatization — Scandal or Success Story? Germany Archive, May 2020 🔗 https://www.bpb.de/themen/deutschland... Wikipedia: Leuna Affair — Bribery Payments Elf Aquitaine 🔗 https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Leuna-A... fragdenstaat.de: Privatization of the Leuna Works — Files in the Federal Chancellery, January 2021 🔗 https://fragdenstaat.de/blog/2021/01/... de.alt.folklore.ddr (Usenet Archive): Gasoline Prices in the GDR — Excerpt from a Contemporary Industry Report 🔗 https://groups.google.com/g/de.alt.fo... Culitzsch Museum of Historical Technology: Replica of a Minol Gas Station, Prices Normal 1980 🔗 http://victoria-rad.de/?p=6161 ___________________________________________________________________________ Disclaimer: This video is for educational and documentation purposes. 📎 Legal Notice This video contains excerpts from other sources. These are used within the scope of the right to quote under Section 51 of the German Copyright Act (UrhG) for the purpose of substantive discussion, analysis, and commentary. It is an independent work expressing its own opinion. 📎 Fair Use: This video may contain copyrighted material, the use of which has not always been expressly authorized by the copyright holder. We make this material available to promote the understanding of historical events. We believe this constitutes "fair use" of the copyrighted material as defined in Section 107 of the U.S. Copyright Act (fair use).