Suchergebnisse

This extensively researched empirical analysis of the GDR in the years 1971-1989 challenges current historical interpretations of GDR history. It focuses on four social groups - youth, women, writers and Christians - to highlight the stability of this socialist society until 1987. The strength of the regime is shown to have been based on a continuously negotiated process of give-and-take involving major parts of the population.

Cover -- Half Title -- Series Page -- Title -- Copyright -- Dedication -- Contents -- List of figures -- List of tables -- Acknowledgements -- Abbreviations -- Introduction: medical memories and experiences -- 1 Treating the past: narratives of the medical profession after 1945 -- 2 Treatments from the past: continuities in treating venereal diseases -- 3 Treatments for the past? 'War children' and the new state -- 4 Institutionalised treatments of the past: the Fürsorgeheim Leuben in postwar Dresden -- Epilogue -- Appendix -- Index.

During the past ten years it has become increasingly clear that the reunification of Germany constitutes one of the major issues which must be settled before there can be a real understanding between the Western powers and the Soviet Union. The Iron Curtain which divides our two worlds has necessitated the establishment of two separate German states. The past decade has witnessed the growth of radically different political and economic policies of the two halves of Germany. In almost every field of human activity, independent and unrelated institutions have had to develop in the West German Federal Republic and the East German Democratic Republic.

"This book examines the paradox of collective identity in eastern Germany in the wake of German reunification. Following the fall of the Berlin Wall, citizens of the former German Democratic Republic were left wondering whether they were already Germans without qualification, like their compatriots in the West, or whether they remained "East Germans" for the time being with an identity tied to their distinct past, as if they were foreigners who had migrated without leaving home. How Memory Divides shows that these questions remain unresolved even today, less because of any 'incomplete unity' between Germans in West and East, than because of the contradictory ways in which "easterners" themselves have remembered their past. Drawing on a unique study spanning two decades, the author reveals how divergent biographical memories have given rise to life stories with a diverse array of genres and storylines at odds with official accounts of the GDR and its demise. Over time, efforts to effect unity between West and East have reproduced divisions within the East. This book will appeal to scholars and students of sociology and politics with interests in memory, heritage and identity"--

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.