The East German Dictatorship

Author : Corey Ross
Publisher : Bloomsbury Academic
Page : 232 pages
File Size : 42,8 Mb
Release : 2002-03-29
Category : History
ISBN : 0340762667

Get Book

The East German Dictatorship by Corey Ross Pdf

When the Berlin Wall came down, historians found themselves unexpectedly challenged to reassess the nature of the German Democratic Republic. The period since the transformational changes of 1989-90 has seen feverish activity in the archives, as historians have sought to deepen understanding of how the regime functioned and to move beyond earlier views inescapably conditioned by Cold War antagonisms. No historical consensus has emerge and the controversy about the GDR is undiminished, in part because of the continuing importance of interpretations of the GDR's history to German political culture. The proliferation of published research has shifted the contours of debate and given rise to new issues, not always in clear-cut fashion. This study of the East German dictatorship is the first detailed mapping of the area, identifying key interpretational issues, describing the evolution of different approaches to them, and providing the author's own evaluation. A wide range of themes is covered, from state/society relations to the role of opposition to the GDR's place in the longer sweep of German history, and central aspects of the regime's foundation, internal organization, social and economic system, collapse, and 'after-life' receive close attention.

Author : Corey Ross
Publisher : Unknown
Page : 128 pages
File Size : 42,8 Mb
Release : 2002
Category : Electronic
ISBN : OCLC:1056047821

Get Book

The East German Dictatorship by Corey Ross Pdf

Author : Mary Fulbrook
Publisher : Yale University Press
Page : 470 pages
File Size : 41,8 Mb
Release : 2008-12-02
Category : History
ISBN : 9780300176384

Get Book

The People's State by Mary Fulbrook Pdf

What was life really like for East Germans, effectively imprisoned behind the Iron Curtain? The headline stories of Cold War spies and surveillance by the secret police, of political repression and corruption, do not tell the whole story. After the unification of Germany in 1990 many East Germans remembered their lives as interesting, varied, and full of educational, career, and leisure opportunities: in many ways “perfectly ordinary lives.” Using the rich resources of the newly-opened GDR archives, Mary Fulbrook investigates these conflicting narratives. She explores the transformation of East German society from the ruins of Hitler's Third Reich to a modernizing industrial state. She examines changing conceptions of normality within an authoritarian political system, and provides extraordinary insights into the ways in which individuals perceived their rights and actively sought to shape their own lives. Replacing the simplistic black-and-white concept of “totalitarianism” by the notion of a “participatory dictatorship,” this book seeks to reinstate the East German people as actors in their own history.

Author : Konrad Hugo Jarausch
Publisher : Berghahn Books
Page : 404 pages
File Size : 45,6 Mb
Release : 1999
Category : History
ISBN : 1571811826

Get Book

Dictatorship as Experience by Konrad Hugo Jarausch Pdf

A decade after the collapse of communism, this volume presents a historical reflection on the perplexing nature of the East German dictatorship. In contrast to most political rhetoric, it seeks to establish a middle ground between totalitarianism theory, stressing the repressive features of the SED-regime, and apologetics of the socialist experiment, emphasizing the normality of daily lives. The book transcends the polarization of public debate by stressing the tensions and contradictions within the East German system that combined both aspects by using dictatorial means to achieve its emancipatory aims. By analyzing a range of political, social, cultural, and chronological topics, the contributors sketch a differentiated picture of the GDR which emphasizes both its repressive and its welfare features. The sixteen original essays, especially written for this volume by historians from both east and west Germany, represent the cutting edge of current research and suggest new theoretical perspectives. They explore political, social, and cultural mechanisms of control as well as analyze their limits and discuss the mixture of dynamism and stagnation that was typical of the GDR.

Author : Konrad H. Jarausch
Publisher : Berghahn Books
Page : 400 pages
File Size : 47,6 Mb
Release : 1999-10-01
Category : History
ISBN : 9781782384793

Get Book

Dictatorship as Experience by Konrad H. Jarausch Pdf

A decade after the collapse of communism, this volume presents a historical reflection on the perplexing nature of the East German dictatorship. In contrast to most political rhetoric, it seeks to establish a middle ground between totalitarianism theory, stressing the repressive features of the SED-regime, and apologetics of the socialist experiment, emphasizing the normality of daily lives. The book transcends the polarization of public debate by stressing the tensions and contradictions within the East German system that combined both aspects by using dictatorial means to achieve its emancipatory aims. By analyzing a range of political, social, cultural, and chronological topics, the contributors sketch a differentiated picture of the GDR which emphasizes both its repressive and its welfare features. The sixteen original essays, especially written for this volume by historians from both east and west Germany, represent the cutting edge of current research and suggest new theoretical perspectives. They explore political, social, and cultural mechanisms of control as well as analyze their limits and discuss the mixture of dynamism and stagnation that was typical of the GDR.

Author : J. Madarász
Publisher : Springer
Page : 206 pages
File Size : 40,7 Mb
Release : 2006-11-02
Category : History
ISBN : 9780230625662

Get Book

Working in East Germany by J. Madarász Pdf

Working in East Germany explores economic tendencies, political relationships and social situations that combined to create a specific socio-political habitat in East Germany after the building of the Berlin Wall. Conditions were peculiar to say the least, especially if compared to Western standards. Nevertheless, the majority of the population perceived their lives as part of a 'socialist normality' that most East Germans adjusted to successfully. This book writes the people back into the history of East Germany.

Author : Hubertus Knabe
Publisher : Unknown
Page : 0 pages
File Size : 52,6 Mb
Release : 2004
Category : Memorials
ISBN : OCLC:688821334

Get Book

Sites of the East German Dictatorship by Hubertus Knabe Pdf

Author : Mary Fulbrook,Andrew I. Port
Publisher : Berghahn Books
Page : 314 pages
File Size : 50,8 Mb
Release : 2013-09-30
Category : History
ISBN : 9780857459756

Get Book

Becoming East German by Mary Fulbrook,Andrew I. Port Pdf

For roughly the first decade after the demise of the GDR, professional and popular interpretations of East German history concentrated primarily on forms of power and repression, as well as on dissent and resistance to communist rule. Socio-cultural approaches have increasingly shown that a single-minded emphasis on repression and coercion fails to address a number of important historical issues, including those related to the subjective experiences of those who lived under communist regimes. With that in mind, the essays in this volume explore significant physical and psychological aspects of life in the GDR, such as health and diet, leisure and dining, memories of the Nazi past, as well as identity, sports, and experiences of everyday humiliation. Situating the GDR within a broader historical context, they open up new ways of interpreting life behind the Iron Curtain – while providing a devastating critique of misleading mainstream scholarship, which continues to portray the GDR in the restrictive terms of totalitarian theory.

Author : Dolores L. Augustine
Publisher : MIT Press
Page : 413 pages
File Size : 43,6 Mb
Release : 2007
Category : Engineering
ISBN : 9780262012362

Get Book

Red Prometheus by Dolores L. Augustine Pdf

This analysis of the relationship between science and totalitarian rule in one of the most technically advanced countries in the East bloc examines professional autonomy under dictatorship and the place of technology in Communist ideology. In Cold War-era East Germany, the German tradition of science-based technology merged with a socialist system that made technological progress central to its ideology. Technology became an important part of East German socialist identity--crucial to how Communists saw their system and how citizens saw their state. In Red Prometheus, Dolores Augustine examines the relationship between a dictatorial system and the scientific and engineering communities in East Germany from the end of the Second World War through the 1980s. Drawing on newly opened archives and extensive interviews, Augustine looks in detail at individual scientists' interactions with the East German system, examining the effectiveness of their resistance against the party's totalitarian impulses. She explains why many German scientists and engineers who were deported to the Soviet Union after World War II returned to East Germany rather than defecting to the capitalist West, traces scientists' attempts to hold on to some aspects of professional autonomy, and describes challenges to their professional identity on the factory floor. Augustine examines the quality of science and technology produced under Communist rule, looking at failed research projects and clashing cultures of innovation. She looks at technological myth-building in science fiction and propaganda. She explores individual career strategies, including the role played by gender in high-tech professions, and the ways that both enterprises and individuals responded to increasing state and party control of research during the 1980s. We cannot understand the economic choices made by East Germany, Augustine argues, unless we understand the cultural values reflected in the East German belief in technology as indispensable to progress and industrial development.

Author : Ned Richardson-Little
Publisher : Cambridge University Press
Page : 128 pages
File Size : 55,5 Mb
Release : 2020-04-23
Category : History
ISBN : 9781108564267

Get Book

The Human Rights Dictatorship by Ned Richardson-Little Pdf

Richardson-Little exposes the forgotten history of human rights in the German Democratic Republic, placing the history of the Cold War, Eastern European dissidents and the revolutions of 1989 in a new light. By demonstrating how even a communist dictatorship could imagine itself to be a champion of human rights, this book challenges popular narratives on the fall of the Berlin Wall and illustrates how notions of human rights evolved in the Cold War as they were re-imagined in East Germany by both dissidents and state officials. Ultimately, the fight for human rights in East Germany was part of a global battle in the post-war era over competing conceptions of what human rights meant. Nonetheless, the collapse of dictatorship in East Germany did not end this conflict, as citizens had to choose for themselves what kind of human rights would follow in its wake.

Author : Ned Richardson-Little
Publisher : Cambridge University Press
Page : 287 pages
File Size : 46,5 Mb
Release : 2020-04-23
Category : History
ISBN : 9781108424677

Get Book

The Human Rights Dictatorship by Ned Richardson-Little Pdf

Richardson-Little exposes the forgotten history of human rights in the German Democratic Republic, placing the history of the Cold War, Eastern European dissidents and the revolutions of 1989 in a new light. By demonstrating how even a communist dictatorship could imagine itself to be a champion of human rights, this book challenges popular narratives on the fall of the Berlin Wall and illustrates how notions of human rights evolved in the Cold War as they were re-imagined in East Germany by both dissidents and state officials. Ultimately, the fight for human rights in East Germany was part of a global battle in the post-war era over competing conceptions of what human rights meant. Nonetheless, the collapse of dictatorship in East Germany did not end this conflict, as citizens had to choose for themselves what kind of human rights would follow in its wake.

Author : Mary Fulbrook
Publisher : Oxford University Press, USA
Page : 352 pages
File Size : 50,8 Mb
Release : 1995
Category : History
ISBN : UOM:39015038428341

Get Book

Anatomy of a Dictatorship by Mary Fulbrook Pdf

Anatomy of a Dictatorship analyses the emergence in the 1980s of oppositional cultures in the communist German Democratic Republic. This seemingly impregnable and stable dictatorship collapsed with startling speed in 1989.

Author : Mark Landsman
Publisher : Harvard University Press
Page : 311 pages
File Size : 41,5 Mb
Release : 2009-07-01
Category : History
ISBN : 9780674039926

Get Book

Dictatorship and Demand by Mark Landsman Pdf

An investigation into the politics of consumerism in East Germany during the years between the Berlin Blockade of 1948-49 and the building of the Berlin Wall in 1961, Dictatorship and Demand shows how the issue of consumption constituted a crucial battleground in the larger Cold War struggle. Based on research in recently opened East German state and party archives, this book depicts a regime caught between competing pressures. While East Germany's leaders followed a Soviet model, which fetishized productivity in heavy industry and prioritized the production of capital goods over consumer goods, they nevertheless had to contend with the growing allure of consumer abundance in West Germany. The usual difficulties associated with satisfying consumer demand in a socialist economy acquired a uniquely heightened political urgency, as millions of East Germans fled across the open border. A new vision of the East-West conflict emerges, one fought as much with washing machines, televisions, and high fashion as with political propaganda, espionage, and nuclear weapons. Dictatorship and Demand deepens our understanding of the Cold War.

Author : Gareth Pritchard
Publisher : Manchester University Press
Page : 258 pages
File Size : 53,8 Mb
Release : 2004-09-04
Category : History
ISBN : 0719069815

Get Book

The Making of the GDR, 1945-53 by Gareth Pritchard Pdf

The Stalinisation of East Germany from 1945 to 1953 is analysed in this text, which is based on research in East German archives. It also tells the story of how the aspirations of antifascists and socialists were ultimately betrayed by Stalin.

Author : Eli Rubin
Publisher : UNC Press Books
Page : 304 pages
File Size : 50,9 Mb
Release : 2012-09-01
Category : History
ISBN : 9781469606774

Get Book

Synthetic Socialism by Eli Rubin Pdf

Eli Rubin takes an innovative approach to consumer culture to explore questions of political consensus and consent and the impact of ideology on everyday life in the former East Germany. Synthetic Socialism explores the history of East Germany through the production and use of a deceptively simple material: plastic. Rubin investigates the connections between the communist government, its Bauhaus-influenced designers, its retooled postwar chemical industry, and its general consumer population. He argues that East Germany was neither a totalitarian state nor a niche society but rather a society shaped by the confluence of unique economic and political circumstances interacting with the concerns of ordinary citizens. To East Germans, Rubin says, plastic was a high-technology material, a symbol of socialism's scientific and economic superiority over capitalism. Most of all, the state and its designers argued, plastic goods were of a particularly special quality, not to be thrown away like products of the wasteful West. Rubin demonstrates that this argument was accepted by the mainstream of East German society, for whom the modern, socialist dimension of a plastics-based everyday life had a deep resonance.