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Ten years have now passed since the political changes in the GDR which led to unification. A central feature of the past decade has been the discussion concerning the process of historical evaluation of the GDR's 40-year existence. This volume takes as its main focus the official process of 'Geschichtsaufarbeitung', as represented by the two Enquete Commissions set up by the Bundestag which completed their work in 1994 and 1998 respectively. Several of the contributions are by leading participants in the Commissions, such as Dorothee Wilms, the last CDU Minister for Inner-German Relations and Markus Meckel MdB (SPD), the last Foreign Minister of the GDR and the original proposer of the Commi...
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 true story of the Gestapo - the Nazis' secret police force and the most feared instrument of political terror in the Third Reich.
In Stories without Borders, Julia Sonnevend considers the ways in which we recount and remember news stories of historic significance. Focusing on the Berlin Wall and on subsequent retellings of the event in a variety of ways - from Legoland reenactments to slabs of the Berlin Wall installed in global cities - Sonnevend discusses how certain events become built up into global iconic events.
The series publishes monographs and edited volumes that showcase significant scholarly work at the various intersections that currently motivate interdisciplinary inquiry in German cultural studies. Topics span German-speaking lands and cultures from the 18th to the 21st century, with a special focus on demonstrating how various disciplines and new theoretical and methodological paradigms work across disciplinary boundaries to create knowledge and add to critical understanding in German studies. The series editor is a renowned professor of German studies in the United States who penned one of the foundational texts for understanding what interdisciplinary German cultural studies can be. All ...
Concepts of totalitarianism have undergone an academic revival in recent years, particularly since the breakdown of communist systems in Europe in 1989-91: the totalitarian paradigm, so it seems to many scholars today, had been discarded prematurely in the heat of the Cold War. The demise of communism as a social system is, however, not only an important cause of the recurring attractiveness of the totalitarian paradigm, but provides at the same time new evidence and, correspondingly, new problems of explanation for all approaches in communist studies and totalitarianism theory in particular. This book contains articles by philosophers, social scientists and historians who reassess the valid...
Relaunching Titanic critically considers the invocation of Titanic heritage in Belfast in contributing to a new ‘post-conflict’ understanding of the city. The authors address how the memory of Titanic is being and should be represented in the place of its origin, from where it was launched into the collective consciousness and unconscious of western civilization. Relaunching Titanic examines the issues in the context of international debates on the tension between place marketing of cities and other alternative portrayals of memory and meaning in places. Key questions include the extent to which the goals of economic development are congruous with the ‘contemplative city’ and especia...
In "Endkampf," Stephen G. Fritz offers a gripping portrait of the collapse of a society that "chillingly narrates the last desperate days of Nazi Germany, illustrating the terror of the last weeks of World War II" (Jerry Cooper). 32 photos. 6 maps.
German Catholicism at War explores the role Roman Catholicism played in shaping the moral economy of German society during the Second World War. Drawing on previously unused source materials, German Catholicism at War examines the complex relationship between Catholics and Nazi authorities and religious responses to the war.
This five-year review of the changing political scene in (West) Germany stresses interpretations and perspectives of sympathetic outside observers. Given the dramatic unification of the country and its painful aftermath, the emphasis is on the changing elements of German identity and on postunification problems. Today's emerging perspectives are seen simultaneously in their domestic, including East-West German, and in their international context, with regard to Germany's role in Europe and the world.