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An examination of the roots of the reunification of Germany, arguing that Erich Honecker's rigid communist regime was undermined by the conflict between Moscow and East Berlin. In the end, Gorbachev's objective - a radical renewal of socialism - turned out to be unattainable.
On the night of November 9, 1989, an electrified world watched as the Berlin Wall came down. Communism was dead, the Cold War was over, and freedom was on the rise—or so it seemed. We Were the People tells the story behind this momentous event. In an extraordinary series of interviews, the key actors in the drama that transformed East Germany speak for themselves, describing what they did, what happened and why, and what it has meant to them. The result is a powerful firsthand account of a rare historical moment, one that reverberates far beyond the toppled wall that once divided Germany and the world. The drama We Were the People recreates is remarkable for its richness and complexity. He...
Using Nietzsche's categories of monumentalist, antiquarian and critical history, the author examines the historical and theoretical contexts of the collapse of the GDR in 1989 and looks at the positive and negative legacies of the GDR for the PDS (the successor party to the East German Communists). He contends that the Stalinization of the GDR itself was the product not just of the Cold War but of a longer inter-systemic struggle between the competing primacies of politics and economics and that the end of the GDR has to be seen as a consequence of the global collapse of the social imperative under the pressure of the re-emergence of the market-state since the mid-1970s. The PDS is therefore stuck in dilemma in which any attempt to "arrive in the Federal Republic" (Brie) is criticized as a readiness to accept the dominance of the market over society whereas any attempt to prioritize social imperatives over the market is attacked as a form of unreconstructed Stalinism. The book offers some suggestions as to how to escape from this dilemma by returning to the critical rather than monumentalist and antiquarian traditions of the workers' movement.
A consideration of twentieth-century German social history and the legacies of the two dictatorships
This study of contemporary German poetry represents the first attempt to examine comprehensively and at some length the lyric response to the unification period. It sets out to investigate, by means of close textual analysis, whether the German ‘Wende’ was also a turning-point for poetry, exploring how GDR poets responded both to the revolutionary events of 1989 and subsequently to the new, united Germany. An introductory chapter considers what is distinct about poetry as a genre, especially under censorship or amid historic change, as well as outlining the post-unification ‘Literaturstreit’. The following chapter offers a survey of the poet’s role in the GDR from 1949 until 1989. ...
Against the backdrop of one of the great transformations of our century, the sudden and unexpected fall of communism as a ruling system, Charles Maier recounts the history and demise of East Germany. Dissolution is his poignant, analytically provocative account of the decline and fall of the late German Democratic Republic. This book explains the powerful causes for the disintegration of German communism as it constructs the complex history of the GDR. Maier looks at the turning points in East Germany's forty-year history and at the mix of coercion and consent by which the regime functioned. He analyzes the GDR as it evolved from the purges of the 1950s to the peace movements and emerging yo...
Popular Protest in the East German Revolution is an incisive new study of dissent and protest in the German Democratic Republic, focusing on the upheaval of 1989-1990.
A collection of papers first presented at a colloquium for postgraduate students held at the Institute for German Studies, University of Birmingham 1998.
The collective biography of the only generation of economists who lived their entire professional life in GDR's socialism.
A source book of primary documents for students and scholars of Germany since World War II, revised from the 1984 Politics and Government in the Federal Republic of Germany to include new sections on the former German Democratic Republic (East Germany) and the process of German unification. Other sections include the 1944-49 origins of the country, Berlin, foreign policy, the armed forces, the Bundestag, political parties, officers, the judiciary, federalism, public opinion, and economic and social policy. Includes a glossary of untranslated German terms, without pronunciation. Paper edition (855-3), $24.50. Annotation copyright by Book News, Inc., Portland, OR