The paper focuses on East German aid policies in African countries during the 1950s and 1960s. It claims that, although rejecting in principle the practice of aid “western style” and describing its own assistance to backward countries and national liberation movements as solidarity, with no conditions attached, the GDR ended up adopting contradictory patterns of behaviour. It focuses on the failures of two myths, which were typical for the self-representation of East German solidarity, i.e. the myth of balanced trade and the myth of technology. Through the analysis of the case studies of Mali and of Guinea, it illustrates the limits of pursuing a more balanced trade with Africa. It then moves to describing the failures of GDR development aid, especially in Guinea and in Tanzania, which undermined East German credibility as a donor and seriously threatened its image as a model for modernity.