A collection of papers first presented at a colloquium for postgraduate students held at the Institute for German Studies, University of Birmingham 1998.

1977 (Replacement Copy/ Nov 2016).

The GDR Today promotes interdisciplinary approaches to East Germany by gathering articles from a new generation of scholars in a variety of fields. Exploring East German everyday life, cultural policies, memory and memorialisation, the volume aims to offer new impulses to the study of the GDR.

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 Commissions in the Bundestag. Other chapters look at the various independent initiatives in the area of 'Geschichtsaufarbeitung', the role of the Commissions in the context of the overall 'Geschichtsdebatte' in relation to the GDR and the attitude of the PDS to the official process of 'Geschichtsaufarbeitung'. Other topics include an analysis of the way in which Buchenwald was presented to the public after unification, a re-evaluation of the 'Zwangsvereinigung' of the KPD and SPD, an examination of the role of education in the GDR, the controversial way in which the Churches were treated in the work of the first Commission which led to the dissenting report by the SPD members and the legacy of GDR architecture. This is the first volume in English on the Enquete-Commissions and will be of interest to students and teachers of contemporary German politics and history. It contains thirteen contributions, seven in English and six in German.

This volume represents the efforts of fifteen scholars from Europe and North America to work through the complex and sometimes compromising past and the current struggles that together define eastern German identity, society, and politics ten years after unification. Their papers offer an exemplary illustration of the variety of disciplinary methods and new source materials on which established and younger scholars can draw today to further differentiated understanding of the old GDR and the young Länder. In a volume that will interest students of German history, cultural studies and comparative politics, the authors show how utopian ideals quickly degenerated into a dictatorship that provoked the everyday resistance at all levels of society that ultimately brought the regime to its demise. They also suggest how the GDR might live on in memory to shape the emerging varieties of postcommunist politics in the young states of the Federal Republic and how the GDR experience might inspire new practices and concepts for German society as a whole. Most importantly, the papers here testify to the multidisciplinary vitality of a field whose original object of enquiry disappeared over a decade ago.

The real life stories of eight East Germans caught up in the dramatic transition from Communism to Capitalism by the fall of the Berlin Wall - and what they feel about life after the Wall.