Rereading East Germany

Rereading East Germany
Title Rereading East Germany PDF eBook
Author Karen Leeder
Publisher Cambridge University Press
Pages 279
Release 2016-01-14
Genre Literary Criticism
ISBN 1316462390

Download Rereading East Germany Book in PDF, Epub and Kindle

This volume is the first to address the culture of the German Democratic Republic (GDR) as a historical entity, but also to trace the afterlife of East Germany in the decades since the fall of the Berlin Wall. An international team of outstanding scholars offers essential and thought-provoking essays, combining a chronological and genre-based overview from the beginning of the GDR in 1949 to the unification in 1990 and beyond, with in-depth analysis of individual works. A final chapter traces the resonance of the GDR in the years since its demise and analyses the fascination it engenders. The volume provides a 'rereading' of East Germany and its legacy as a cultural phenomenon free from the prejudices that prevailed while it existed, offering English translations throughout, a guide to further reading and a chronology.

Rereading East Germany

Rereading East Germany
Title Rereading East Germany PDF eBook
Author Karen Leeder
Publisher Cambridge University Press
Pages 279
Release 2015
Genre History
ISBN 1107006368

Download Rereading East Germany Book in PDF, Epub and Kindle

The first volume in English about the German Democratic Republic (GDR) as a cultural phenomenon, with essays by leading scholars providing a chronological and genre-based overview along with close readings of individual works. It addresses the history and context of GDR culture, including the two decades since its decline.

Rereading German History (Routledge Revivals)

Rereading German History (Routledge Revivals)
Title Rereading German History (Routledge Revivals) PDF eBook
Author Richard J. Evans
Publisher Routledge
Pages 275
Release 2015-06-05
Genre History
ISBN 1317541898

Download Rereading German History (Routledge Revivals) Book in PDF, Epub and Kindle

In Rereading German History, first published in 1997, Richard J. Evans draws together his seminal review essays on the political, economic, cultural and social history of Germany through war and reunification. This book provides a study of how and why historians – mainly German, American, British and French – have provided a series of differing and often conflicting readings of the German past. It also presents a reconsideration of German history in the light of the recent decline of the German Democratic Republic, collapse of the Berlin Wall and the reunification of Germany. Rereading German History re-examines major controversies in modern German history, such as the debate over Germany’s ‘special path’ to modernity in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, and the discussions in the 1980s on the uniqueness or otherwise of Auschwitz. Evans also analyses the arguments over the nature of German national identity. The book offers trenchant and important analytical insights into the history of Germany in the last two centuries, and is ideal reading material for students of modern history and German studies.

East German Film and the Holocaust

East German Film and the Holocaust
Title East German Film and the Holocaust PDF eBook
Author Elizabeth Ward
Publisher Berghahn Books
Pages 259
Release 2021-04-01
Genre History
ISBN 1789207487

Download East German Film and the Holocaust Book in PDF, Epub and Kindle

East Germany’s ruling party never officially acknowledged responsibility for the crimes committed in Germany’s name during the Third Reich. Instead, it cast communists as both victims of and victors over National Socialist oppression while marginalizing discussions of Jewish suffering. Yet for the 1977 Academy Awards, the Ministry of Culture submitted Jakob der Lügner – a film focused exclusively on Jewish victimhood that would become the only East German film to ever be officially nominated. By combining close analyses of key films with extensive archival research, this book explores how GDR filmmakers depicted Jews and the Holocaust in a country where memories of Nazi persecution were highly prescribed, tightly controlled and invariably political.

Postsocialist Memory in Contemporary German Culture

Postsocialist Memory in Contemporary German Culture
Title Postsocialist Memory in Contemporary German Culture PDF eBook
Author Michel Mallet
Publisher Walter de Gruyter GmbH & Co KG
Pages 264
Release 2024-08-06
Genre Social Science
ISBN 3110730871

Download Postsocialist Memory in Contemporary German Culture Book in PDF, Epub and Kindle

Scholarship on Eastern Europe after 1989 often focuses narrowly on the socialist past as authoritarian, dictatorial, or totalitarian. This collection, by contrast, illuminates an additional dimension of post-socialist memory: it traces the survival of hopes and dreams born under socialism and the legacy of the unrealized alternative futures embedded within the socialist past. Looking at contemporary German-language literature, film, theater, and art, the volume analyzes reflections on everyday socialist realities as well as narratives of opposition and dissent. The texts discussed here not only revisit the past, but also challenge the present and help us imagine alternative futures. Rather than framing the unrealized futures envisioned in the pre-1989 era as failures, this collection probes post-socialist memory for its future-oriented potential to rethink issues of community, equity and equality, and late-stage capitalism. Foregrounding the complexities of Eastern European legacies also helps us reimagine the relationship between East and West both in Germany and in Europe as a whole.

In Times of Fading Light

In Times of Fading Light
Title In Times of Fading Light PDF eBook
Author Eugen Ruge
Publisher Graywolf Press
Pages 395
Release 2013-06-11
Genre Fiction
ISBN 1555970737

Download In Times of Fading Light Book in PDF, Epub and Kindle

An enthrallingly expansive family saga set against the backdrop of the collapse of East German communism, from a major new international voice * Over 450,000 copies sold in Germany alone * Rights sold in 20 countries * Winner of the German Book Prize * A PW "First Fiction" pick * In Times of Fading Light begins in September 2001 as Alexander Umnitzer, who has just been diagnosed with terminal cancer, leaves behind his ailing father to fly to Mexico, where his grandparents lived as exiles in the 1940s. The novel then takes us both forward and back in time, creating a panoramic view of the family's history: from Alexander's grandparents' return to the GDR to build the socialist state, to his father's decade spent in a gulag for criticizing the Soviet regime, to his son's desire to leave the political struggles of the twentieth century in the past. With wisdom, humor, and great empathy, Eugen Ruge draws on his own family history as he masterfully brings to life the tragic intertwining of politics, love, and family under the East German regime.

Don't Need No Thought Control

Don't Need No Thought Control
Title Don't Need No Thought Control PDF eBook
Author Gerd Horten
Publisher Berghahn Books
Pages 268
Release 2020-06-05
Genre History
ISBN 1789207347

Download Don't Need No Thought Control Book in PDF, Epub and Kindle

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.