Making sense of East Germany’s 1968: Multiple trajectories and contrasting memories

2013 ◽  
Vol 6 (1) ◽  
pp. 53-69 ◽  
Author(s):  
Anna von der Goltz
Keyword(s):  
German Democratic Republic ◽  
Democratic Republic ◽  
Life Story ◽  
The Other ◽  
Iron Curtain ◽  
Making Sense ◽  
Prague Spring ◽  
East German ◽  
The Subject ◽  
Life Story Interviews

This article investigates contrasting memories of East Germany’s 1968 based on a sample of six life story interviews. Given the iconic events of West Germany’s 1968, there has been a growing interest in the events happened on the other side of the Iron Curtain. In unified Germany, however, commemorations of 1968 in the German Democratic Republic have focused on a particular type of 68er biography: those who broke with the regime as a result of the Warsaw Pact’s invasion of Czechoslovakia on 21 August 1968 and chose to pursue various forms of opposition in its wake. This article lends more nuance to the subject by examining three individuals who chose this path alongside three others who followed a different trajectory. The crushing of the Prague Spring and their own imprisonment for protesting against it led the latter to shun open opposition in favour of pursuing change from within official structures. By highlighting the plurality of East German experiences and memories of this period, this article seeks to make a contribution both to the study of the international 1968 and to the thriving scholarship on how the East German past is remembered in united Germany.

The Meanings of Labor: East German Women's Work in the Transition from Nazism to Communism

1995 ◽  
Vol 28 (3) ◽  
pp. 301-342 ◽  
Author(s):  
Elizabeth H. Tobin ◽  
Jennifer Gibson
Keyword(s):  
German Democratic Republic ◽  
Rolling Mill ◽  
Democratic Republic ◽  
The Other ◽  
Government Agencies ◽  
Large Piece ◽  
Heavy Machinery ◽  
Paid Labor ◽  
East German ◽  
Ideological Commitment

In Christoph Wetzel's 1988 painting, An Everyday Story, the divided canvas proudly depicts women's accomplishments in the German Democratic Republic (Figure 1). On one side, a woman operates a large piece of heavy machinery in a rolling mill, cool and competent behind the enormous mass of metal and gears. On the other side, the same woman helps her two children prepare for school in the morning. In the act of combing her daughter's hair, she looks out directly at the viewer, her expression asking: “And what are you surprised at?” This painting, displayed as part of a 1995 exposition on art commissioned by government agencies in the GDR, graphically displays that government's ideological commitment to women's paid labor, especially in jobs that, in capitalist societies, are often thought to be inappropriate for women.

East German Conversions to Islam after the Collapse of the Berlin Wall

2014 ◽  
Author(s):  
Esra Özyürek
Keyword(s):  
High School ◽  
German Democratic Republic ◽  
Democratic Republic ◽  
Life Story ◽  
Authoritarian Regime ◽  
Communist Regime ◽  
Berlin Wall ◽  
German State ◽  
East German

This chapter analyzes the conversion and life-story narratives of two East Germans who both grew up during the closed, authoritarian regime of the German Democratic Republic (GDR). When the wall fell, Zehra was a twenty-year-old woman from a family of regime opponents just about to begin her life after graduating from high school. Usman was a thirty-year-old man with an established position as a chemist at an East German state-run factory. The fall of the wall transformed both their lives radically, recasting them as second-class citizens with no foreseeable way out in the united Germany. Both Zehra and Usman converted to Islam shortly after the collapse of the East German Communist regime in 1989.

Judging the Past: The Prosecution of East German Border Guards and the GDR Chain of Command

1999 ◽  
Vol 61 (2) ◽  
pp. 303-330 ◽  
Author(s):  
Peter E. Quint
Keyword(s):  
German Democratic Republic ◽  
Democratic Republic ◽  
Deadly Force ◽  
German Unification ◽  
Berlin Wall ◽  
Old Regime ◽  
The Past ◽  
Chain Of Command ◽  
East German ◽  
The Subject

Transitions from dictatorship to democracy often raise the perplexing question of whether a new government may punish actions which, although reprehensible, were considered legal under the old regime. In these instances, the desire for condign punishment of evil acts confronts the principle that forbids retroactive criminal prosecutions. After German unification, problems of this type arose in trials of East German border guards for the use of deadly force at the Berlin Wall, along with prosecutions of military and civilian officials higher in the German Democratic Republic (GDR) chain of command. In this article, the author discusses these prosecutions and analyzes the response of the German courts to the difficult problems of retroactivity that the cases raise. In its concluding section, the article suggests that these cases may evoke issues concerning the legitimacy of the GDR that were the subject of bitter debates during Germany's divided past.

scholarly journals Yugoslavia and the German Democratic Republic, 1968-1974

2020 ◽  
Vol 60 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Jasper Klomp
Keyword(s):  
German Democratic Republic ◽  
Democratic Republic ◽  
Economic Cooperation ◽  
Time Interval ◽  
Political Relations ◽  
Prague Spring ◽  
East German ◽  
Set Up

Following the Warsaw Pact’s military reaction against the Prague Spring, quarrels between the leaderships of the SFRY and GDR soared too. Divergences between Yugoslav and East German socialism were once again emphasised. This resulted in a six-year pause concerning visits by both states’ leaders to the respective other state. The analysis of political and economic contacts between the SFRY and GDR in the period 1968-1974 nevertheless reveals that in this time interval, multiple remarkable forms of economic affiliations were set-up by Yugoslav and East German partners. In a period of complex political relations, Yugoslav and East German actors aimed for mutually beneficial economic cooperation and an alleged alternative to capitalist globalisation.  

The Principles of State Governance of the German Democratic Republic

2020 ◽  
Vol 1(21) ◽  
pp. 37-51
Author(s):  
Grzegorz Kuźnik
Keyword(s):  
German Democratic Republic ◽  
Democratic Republic ◽  
The State ◽  
State Of Emergency ◽  
State Institutions ◽  
German States ◽  
East German ◽  
State Governance ◽  
Council Of Ministers ◽  
National Defence

The aim of this article is to present the principles underlying the political system in force in the German Democratic Republic between 1949 and 1990, with a particular emphasis on the issue of the state of emergency law. The article describes the two Constitutions from 1949 and 1968 and the state institutions established under them, including the GDR People's Chamber, the Council of Ministers, the GDR State Council and the National Defence Council. It also discusses the constitutional solutions within the scope of the emergency law. The legal basis for the protection of the border between the two then existing German states was also considered. This article is based on the two East German Constitutions, other legal acts and on the principles of East German and Polish doctrine. The article consists of an introduction, three parts and a summary.

Everyday Communism: New Social History of the German Democratic Republic

2004 ◽  
Vol 13 (2) ◽  
pp. 233-247 ◽  
Author(s):  
SANDRINE KOTT
Keyword(s):  
New York ◽  
North Carolina ◽  
Cultural History ◽  
Social History ◽  
German Democratic Republic ◽  
Democratic Republic ◽  
Daily Life ◽  
Chapel Hill ◽  
History Of ◽  
East German

Konrad Jarausch, ed., Dictatorship as Experience. Toward a Socio-Cultural History of the GDR (New York and Oxford: Berghahn Books, 1999), 388 pp., £14.00 (pb), ISBN 1-57181-182-6.Thomas Lindenberger, ed., Herrschaft und Eigensinn in der Diktatur (Cologne, Weimar and Vienna: Böhlau Verlag, 1999) 367 pp., €39.90 (hb), ISBN 3-412-13598-4.Annegret Schüle, ‘Die Spinne’. Die Erfahrungsgeschichte weiblicher Industriearbeit im VEB Leipziger Baumwollspinnerei (Leipzig: Leipziger Universitätsverlag, 2001), 398 pp., €18.00 (pb), ISBN 3-934565-87-5.Patrick Major and Jonathan Osmond, eds., The Workers' and Peasants' State. Communism and Society in East Germany under Ulbricht 1945–71 (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2002), 272 pp., £15.99 (pb), ISBN 0-7190-6289-6.Joshua Feinstein, The Triumph of the Ordinary. Depictions of Daily Life in the East German Cinema 1949–1989 (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2002), 331 pp., £19.50 (pb), ISBN 0-8078-5385-2.

Occupation, Reparations, and Rebellion: The Soviets and the East German Uprising of 1953

2021 ◽  
Vol 52 (2) ◽  
pp. 225-250
Author(s):  
Wayne Geerling ◽  
Gary B. Magee ◽  
Russell Smyth
Keyword(s):  
German Democratic Republic ◽  
Democratic Republic ◽  
East Germany ◽  
Internal Resistance ◽  
Military Bases ◽  
Local Production ◽  
Soviet Occupation ◽  
East German ◽  
Regional Factors ◽  
Local Companies

Abstract Analysis of the link between the Soviet occupation of East Germany and internal resistance within the German Democratic Republic reveals that ongoing payment of reparations by East Germans out of local production—via the Soviet’s ownership of prominent local companies—affected both the incidence and the intensity of unrest at the precinct level during the uprising of June 17, 1953. This result is robust when controlling for variation in the presence of Soviet military bases and deaths in Soviet nkvd Special Camps, as well as a host of regional factors potentially correlated with differences in unrest.

What oral historians and historians of science can learn from each other

2019 ◽  
Vol 52 (4) ◽  
pp. 673-688 ◽  
Author(s):  
PAUL MERCHANT
Keyword(s):  
Oral History ◽  
Critical Analysis ◽  
Life Stories ◽  
Life Story ◽  
The Other ◽  
British Library ◽  
National Life ◽  
Life Story Interviews ◽  
The One ◽  
The Way

AbstractThis paper is concerned with the use of interviews with scientists by members of two disciplinary communities: oral historians and historians of science. It examines the disparity between the way in which historians of science approach autobiographies and biographies of scientists on the one hand, and the way in which they approach interviews with scientists on the other. It also examines the tension in the work of oral historians between a long-standing ambition to record forms of past experience and more recent concerns with narrative and personal ‘composure’. Drawing on extended life story interviews with scientists, recorded by National Life Stories at the British Library between 2011 and 2016, it points to two ways in which the communities might learn from each other. First, engagement with certain theoretical innovations in the discipline of oral history from the 1980s might encourage historians of science to extend their already well-developed critical analysis of written autobiography and biography to interviews with scientists. Second, the keen interest of historians of science in using interviews to reconstruct details of past events and experience might encourage oral historians to continue to value this use of oral history even after their theoretical turn.

Der Poet als unbeugsamer Dissident

Daphnis ◽  
2018 ◽  
Vol 46 (4) ◽  
pp. 560-583
Author(s):  
Michael Hanstein
Keyword(s):  
Short Stories ◽  
German Democratic Republic ◽  
Small Volume ◽  
Democratic Republic ◽  
West Germany ◽  
Totalitarian Regime ◽  
English Edition ◽  
Original Source ◽  
German Press ◽  
East German

In 1977 the East German author Hans Joachim Schädlich published Versuchte Nähe (English edition Approximation published in 1980), a small volume of short stories. While the Western German press praised Schädlich’s first work as a literary reflection of the society in the German Democratic Republic (GDR), Schädlich was marginalized as a dissident in the GDR and had to move to West Germany. One of the short stories in Versuchte Nähe is about the last days of the German renaissance author Nicodemus Frischlin, who, arrested by German authorities, died in prison. The story was appreciated for its style using a “Luther-like language”. Schädlich’s story is mainly based on a biography of Frischlin written by David Friedrich Strauss, a famous and prolific 19th century German author and theologian. Schädlich’s modification of the original source includes a description of the conditions of imprisonment and the heroification of Frischlin as an uncompromising critic of a totalitarian regime.

Sports, Politics, and “Wild Doping” in the East German Sporting “Miracle”

2019 ◽  
pp. 126-142
Author(s):  
Mike Dennis
Keyword(s):  
German Democratic Republic ◽  
Democratic Republic ◽  
Internal Controls ◽  
Health Threats ◽  
East German ◽  
Elite Sports ◽  
Group Interests

Although the German Democratic Republic is well known for its highly centralized and clandestine doping program, the elite sports edifice was not the orderly mechanism associated with the Communist dictatorship. Recent research has uncovered intrinsic operational malfunctions, divergent group interests, and rivalries as clubs and national associations pursued status and material rewards. Despite elaborate internal controls, one of the outcomes was widespread “wild doping,” exceeding officially prescribed norms on the level and types of dosages administered to athletes who received unauthorized experimental steroid substances by coaches and physicians, posing potentially serious health threats to both youngsters and adults.

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