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Socialist Modern
This book explores the ways in which modernity shaped the relationship between socialist state and society in East Germany. The reunification of Germany in 1989 may have put an end to the experiment in East German communism, but its historical assessment is far from over. Where most of the literature over the past two decades has been driven by the desire to uncover the relationship between power and resistance, complicity and consent, more recent scholarship has tended to concentrate on the everyday history of East German citizens. experience of life in East Germany, with a particular view toward addressing the question: what did modernity mean for East German state and society? As such, th...
Power and Society in the GDR, 1961-1979
The communist German Democratic Republic was founded in 1949 in the Soviet-occupied zone of post-war Germany. This book looks at its history and how people came to terms with their new lives behind the Wall. In the 1960s and 1970s, a fragile stability emerged characterized by 'consumer socialism', international recognition and détente. Growing participation in the micro-structures of power, and conformity to the unwritten rules of an increasingly predictable system, suggest increasing accommodation to dominant norms and conceptions of socialist 'normality.' These essays explore the ways in which lower-level functionaries and people at the grass roots contributed to the formation and transformation of the GDR ? from industry and agriculture, through popular sport and cultural life, to the passage of generations and varieties of social experience.
The Miracle Years
Stereotypical descriptions showcase West Germany as an "economic miracle" or cast it in the narrow terms of Cold War politics. Such depictions neglect how material hardship preceded success and how a fascist past and communist sibling complicated the country's image as a bastion of democracy. Even more disappointing, they brush over a rich and variegated cultural history. That history is told here by leading scholars of German history, literature, and film in what is destined to become the volume on postwar West German culture and society. In it, we read about the lives of real people--from German children fathered by black Occupation soldiers to communist activists, from surviving Jews to T...
Gerhard Richter, Individualism, and Belonging in West Germany
This book reevaluates the art of Gerhard Richter (b. 1932) in relation to his efforts to achieve belonging in the face of West Germany’s increasing individualism between the 1960s and the 1990s. Richter fled East Germany in 1961 to escape the constraints of socialist collectivism. His varied and extensive output in the West attests to his greater freedom under capitalism, but also to his struggles with belonging in a highly individualised society, a problem he was far from alone in facing. The dynamic of increasing individualism has been closely examined by sociologists, but has yet to be employed as a framework for understanding broader trends in recent German art history. Rather than critique this development from a socialist perspective or experiment with new communal structures like a number of his colleagues, Richter sought and found security in traditional modes of bourgeois collectivity, like the family, religion, painting and the democratic capitalist state. The book will be of interest to scholars working in art history as well as German history, culture and politics.
Memory and Totalitarianism
Understanding Europe's past became an urgent matter with the events of August 1991 in Moscow, in the former Soviet Union. The invasion of Moscow's streets by Russian people rejecting an attempted coup d'etat was the culmination of a process that had been initiated years before and raised crucial questions: To what extent can these events be considered the end of an era stretching from World War I to the 1980s, when Europe experienced many forms of dictatorship? To what extent can the various forms of dictatorship Europe experienced in the twentieth century be grouped together? Can any sort of affinity be established between them? The new introduction to the paperback edition of this volume i...
The Oxford Handbook of the History of Consumption
The term 'consumption' covers the desire for goods and services, their acquisition, use, and disposal. The study of consumption has grown enormously in recent years, and it has been the subject of major historiographical debates: did the eighteenth century bring a consumer revolution? Was there a great divergence between East and West? Did the twentieth century see the triumph of global consumerism? Questions of consumption have become defining topics in all branches of history, from gender and labour history to political history and cultural studies. The Oxford Handbook of the History of Consumption offers a timely overview of how our understanding of consumption in history has changed in t...
Antifascism After Hitler
Antifascism After Hitler investigates the antifascist stories, memory sites and youth reception that were critical to the success of political education in East German schools and extracurricular activities. As the German Democratic Republic (GDR) promoted national identity and socialist consciousness, two of the most potent historical narratives to permeate youth education became tales of communist resistors who fought against fascism and the heroic deeds of the Red Army in World War II. These stories and iconic images illustrate the message that was presented to school-age children and adolescents in stages as they advanced through school and participated in the official communist youth or...
Critical Readings in the History of Christian Mission
This selection of texts introduces students and researchers to the multi- and interdisciplinary field of mission history. The four parts of this book acquaint the readers with methodological considerations and recurring themes in the academic study of the history of mission. Part one revolves around methods, part two documents approaches, while parts three and four consist of thematic clusters, such as mission and language, medical mission, mission and education, women and mission, mission and politics, and mission and art.Critical Readings in the History of Christian Mission is suitable for course-work and other educational purposes.
Sex, Thugs and Rock 'n' Roll
Living on the frontline of the Cold War, young people in East Germany were subject to a number of competing influences: the culture of their parents, the new official culture taught in schools, and new youth cultures. Fenemore presents an account of what it was like in the 1950s and 1960s.
Histories of the Aftermath
In 1945, Europeans confronted a legacy of mass destruction and death: millions of families had lost their homes and livelihoods; millions of men in uniform had lost their lives; and millions more had been displaced by the war's destruction, and the genocidal policies of the Nazi regime. From a range of methodological historical perspectives--military, cultural, and social, to film and gender and sexuality studies--this volume explores how Europeans came to terms with these multiple pasts. With a focus on distinctive national experiences in both Eastern and Western Europe, it illuminates how postwar stabilization coexisted with persistent insecurities, injuries, and trauma.
