You may have to Search all our reviewed books and magazines, click the sign up button below to create a free account.
The first full-scale analysis of the history of German reunification, with a particular emphasis on social policy, showing how the transfer of the West German social policy framework to the East intensified the crisis of the German welfare state.
The fall of the Berlin Wall is typically understood as the culmination of political-economic trends that fatally weakened the East German state. Meanwhile, comparatively little attention has been paid to the cultural dimension of these dramatic events, particularly the role played by Western mass media and consumer culture. With a focus on the 1970s and 1980s, Don’t Need No Thought Control explores the dynamic interplay of popular unrest, intensifying economic crises, and cultural policies under Erich Honecker. It shows how the widespread influence of (and public demands for) Western cultural products forced GDR leaders into a series of grudging accommodations that undermined state power to a hitherto underappreciated extent.
History is replete with examples of scientists and social scientists working under the yoke of oppressive regimes. In The Closed World of East German Economists, Till Düppe tells the story of a generation of economists whose entire careers coincided with the forty-one-year existence of the German Democratic Republic (GDR). In a micro-historical fashion, he examines the world of East German economists through the formative episodes in the lives of five different economists from this “hope” generation. Using both the perspective of the actors as expressed in interviews and archival material unknown to the actors, the book follows East German economics from the early days of the acceptance of Marxism-Leninism through to its interaction with Western economics and its eventual dissolution following the collapse of the Berlin Wall. It is fascinating insight into the challenges faced by economists in a unique period of European history.
Rudolf Bahro, Wolfgang Harich and Robert Havemann were probably the best-known critics of the DDR’s ruling Socialist Unity Party. Yet they saw themselves as Marxists, and their demands extended far beyond a democratisation of real socialism. When environmental issues became more important in the West in the 1970s, the Party treated it as an ideological manoeuvre of the class enemy. The three dissidents saw things differently: they combined socialism and ecology, adopting a utopian perspective frowned upon by the state. In doing so, they created political concepts that were unique for the Eastern Bloc. Alexander Amberger introduces them, relates them to each other, and poses the question of their relevance then and now.
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.
Widely praised in its first edition, the second edition of The GDR was updated to cover events through the spring of 1988, examining in particular the impact of new leadership in both Bonn and Moscow and of the changing world economy on the prospects of the GDR.
Markus Gloe gibt einen Überblick über die gesamte Entwicklung des "Forschungsbeirats für Fragen der Wiedervereinigung Deutschlands beim Bundesministerium für gesamtdeutsche Fragen" von seiner Gründung 1952 bis zu seinem Ende 1975. Er arbeitet die Vielschichtigkeit seines Wirkens heraus. Außerdem nimmt er einen Vergleich zwischen den Arbeitsergebnissen des Forschungsbeirates und den tatsächlichen Entwicklungen 1989/1990 vor. Wenn auch die Ergebnisse und Erkenntnisse aus der Arbeit des Forschungsbeirates veraltet und in manchen Bereichen durch die politischen, sozialen und wirtschaftlichen Entwicklungen überholt waren, hätte ein Heranziehen der Ergebnisse den Blick für Probleme der Wiedervereinigung schärfen können.