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The Firm
Based on previously classified documents and on interviews with former secret police officers and ordinary citizens, The Firm is the first comprehensive history of East Germany's secret police, the Stasi, at the grassroots level. Focusing on Gransee and Perleberg, two East German districts located north of Berlin, Gary Bruce reveals how the Stasi monitored small-town East Germany. He paints an eminently human portrait of those involved with this repressive arm of the government, featuring interviews with former officers that uncover a wide array of personalities, from devoted ideologues to reluctant opportunists, most of whom talked frankly about East Germany's obsession with surveillance. Their paths after the collapse of Communism are gripping stories of resurrection and despair, of renewal and demise, of remorse and continued adherence to the movement. The book also sheds much light on the role of the informant, the Stasi's most important tool in these out-of-the-way areas. Providing on-the-ground empirical evidence of how the Stasi operated on a day-to-day basis with ordinary people, this remarkable volume offers an unparalleled picture of life in a totalitarian state.
The Plans That Failed
The establishment of the Communist social model in one part of Germany was a result of international postwar developments, of the Cold War waged by East and West, and of the resultant partition of Germany. As the author argues, the GDR’s ‘new’ society was deliberately conceived as a counter-model to the liberal and marketregulated system. Although the hopes connected with this alternative system turned out to be misplaced and the planned economy may be thoroughly discredited today, it is important to understand the context in which it developed and failed. This study, a bestseller in its German version, offers an in-depth exploration of the GDR economy’s starting conditions and the obstacles to growth it confronted during the consolidation phase. These factors, however, were not decisive in the GDR’s lack of growth compared to that of the Federal Republic. As this study convincingly shows, it was the economic model that led to failure.
Behind the Berlin Wall
On 13 August 1961 eighteen million East Germans awoke to find themselves walled in by an edifice which was to become synonymous with the Cold War: the Berlin Wall. Patrick Major explores how the border closure affected ordinary East Germans, from workers and farmers to teenagers and even party members, 'caught out' by Sunday the Thirteenth.
Revenge of the Domestic
Revenge of the Domestic examines gender relations in East Germany from 1945 to the 1970s, focusing especially on the relationship between ordinary women, the Communist Party, and the state created by the Communists, the German Democratic Republic (GDR). The book weaves together personal stories from interviews, statistical material, and evidence from archival research in Berlin, Potsdam, Leipzig, Merseburg, and Chemnitz to reconstruct the complex interplay between state policy toward women and the family on the one hand, and women's reactions to policy on the other. Donna Harsch demonstrates that women resisted state decisions as citizens, wageworkers, mothers, wives, and consumers, and that...
Economic Nationalism in a Globalizing World
Is economic nationalism an outdated phenomenon in light of globalization? Economic Nationalism in a Globalizing World demonstrates the enduring, and even heightened, economic significance of national identities and nationalism in the current age. The volume's contributors, pioneers in the reinterpretation of economic nationalism, explore diverse ways in which national identities and nationalism continue to shape contemporary economic policies and processes. The authors examine the question in a range of geographical contexts and issues: European Union food politics, competitiveness strategies in New Zealand, East Asian development strategies, Japanese liberalization, monetary politics in Quebec and Germany, and post-Soviet economic reforms. Together, the cases explore the policy breadth of nationalism. It is not just a "protectionist" ideology but is in fact associated with a wide variety of economic policies, including support for economic liberalization and globalization.
The Human Rights Dictatorship
Richardson-Little exposes the forgotten history of human rights in the German Democratic Republic, placing the history of the Cold War, Eastern European dissidents and the revolutions of 1989 in a new light. By demonstrating how even a communist dictatorship could imagine itself to be a champion of human rights, this book challenges popular narratives on the fall of the Berlin Wall and illustrates how notions of human rights evolved in the Cold War as they were re-imagined in East Germany by both dissidents and state officials. Ultimately, the fight for human rights in East Germany was part of a global battle in the post-war era over competing conceptions of what human rights meant. Nonetheless, the collapse of dictatorship in East Germany did not end this conflict, as citizens had to choose for themselves what kind of human rights would follow in its wake.
Saving Nature Under Socialism
When East Germany collapsed in 1989-1990, outside observers were shocked to learn the extent of environmental devastation that existed there. Saving Nature Under Socialism introduces readers to environmentalism in Cold War East Germany and traces the evolution of environmental policy and protest in East Germany and central Europe from the 1960s.
The Berlin Republic
Since German unification in October, 1990, arguments have raged as to whether the integration process of the former East Germany into the western system has been a success. These essays offer fresh insight and perspectives explaining the effects of unification on Germany and the EU as a whole.
The Lutheran Church and the East German State
Robert Goeckel here explains why, despite the ideological antagonism between Marxism–Leninism and Christianity, a working relationship developed between East Germany's Communist rulers and the country's Evangelical Lutheran Church. By reconstructing how the church won a measure of autonomy and became a forum for dissent, The Lutheran Church and the East German State deepens our understanding of the popular forces that swept the Honecker regime from power in the fall of 1989.
2001
Annually published since 1930, the International bibliography of Historical Sciences (IBOHS) is an international bibliography of the most important historical monographs and periodical articles published throughout the world, which deal with history from the earliest to the most recent times. The works are arranged systematically according to period, region or historical discipline, and within this classification alphabetically. The bibliography contains a geographical index and indexes of persons and authors.
