scholarly journals Distancing From the Past – Longing for the “Heartland”: Reflections on the East German Teachers’ Subjective Perception of the Wende

2021 ◽  
Vol 40 (4) ◽  
pp. 77-93
Author(s):  
Dobrochna Anna Hildebrandt-Wypych
Keyword(s):  
Subjective Perception ◽  
The Past ◽  
East German

scholarly journals 106 Self-Reported Sleep and Resilience

SLEEP ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 44 (Supplement_2) ◽  
pp. A43-A44
Author(s):  
Michelle Persich ◽  
Sara Cloonan ◽  
Michael Grandner ◽  
William Killgore
Keyword(s):  
Sleep Quality ◽  
Sleep Time ◽  
Self Report ◽  
Subjective Perception ◽  
Psychological Resilience ◽  
Cross Sectional ◽  
Sleep Quantity ◽  
The Past ◽  
Resilience Scale ◽  
Longitudinal Effects

Abstract Introduction Psychological resilience is the ability to withstand setbacks, adapt positively to challenges, and bounce back from the adversities of life. While the construct of resilience is broadly understood, the specific individual factors that contribute to the ability to be resilient and persevere in the face of difficulties remain poorly understood. We recently showed that psychological resilience during the COVID-19 pandemic was associated with a number of factors, including fewer complaints of insomnia, and others have suggested that sleep is an important contributor. We therefore tested the hypothesis that sleep quality and acute sleep quantity would combine to predict measures of psychological resilience and perseverance (i.e. “grit”). Methods We asked 447 adults (18–40 yrs; 72% female) to report the number of hours of sleep obtained the night before their assessment session (SLEEP), and complete several questionnaires, including the Pittsburgh Sleep Quality Index (PSQI), the Connor-Davidson Resilience Scale (CD-RISC), Bartone Dispositional Resilience Scale (Hardiness), and the Grit Scale. Sleep metrics were used to predict resilience, hardiness, and grit using multiple linear regression. Results For resilience, PSQI (β=-.201, p<.00003) and SLEEP (β=.155, p<.001) each contributed uniquely to prediction of CD-RISC (R2=.08, p<.00001). Hardiness was also predicted (R2=.08, p<.00001) by a combination of PSQI (β=-.218, p<.00001) and SLEEP (β=.128, p=.007). Interestingly, worse sleep quality over the past month on the PSQI (β=.13, p=.008) in combination with more SLEEP the night before the assessment (β=.137, p=.005) each contributed uniquely to higher Grit (i.e., perseverance; R2=.03, p=.003). Conclusion Self-reported sleep quality and quantity were both independently associated with greater self-reported resilience, hardiness, and grit. While better sleep quality and more sleep the night before testing each uniquely predicted greater resilience and hardiness, a different pattern emerged for Grit. The combination of lower quality sleep over the past month followed by greater recent sleep duration was associated with increased perseverance. Whereas sleep quality appears to be more important for general resilience/hardiness, recent sleep time appears more important for the subjective perception of perseverance. Because these data are purely self-report and cross sectional, future work will need to determine the longitudinal effects on behavior. Support (if any):

Out of the Closet behind the Wall: Sexual Politics and Social Change in the GDR

Slavic Review ◽  
1990 ◽  
Vol 49 (4) ◽  
pp. 585-596 ◽  
Author(s):  
Raelynn J Hillhouse
Keyword(s):  
Social Change ◽  
Cultural Values ◽  
Democratic Republic ◽  
Gay And Lesbian ◽  
Evangelical Church ◽  
Protestant Church ◽  
The Past ◽  
Gay And Lesbian Movement ◽  
East German ◽  
The Republic

The search for avenues to express changing cultural values has shaped recent politics in the German Democratic Republic (GDR). During the past decade tens of thousands of GDR citizens became involved in new social movements that included issueoriented groups within both the Protestant church and such mass organizations as the Kulturbund (League of Culture) and the Freie Deutsche Jungend (Free German Youth, FDJ). The rise of these issue-oriented movements evoked reactions from the former government ranging from repression to accommodation. Perhaps the most striking example of the old regime's response to social change can be seen in the emergence of a very visible gay and lesbian movement. Beginning with a handful of activists within the Evangelical church, the East German gay and lesbian movement expanded into state and party institutions throughout the republic. In 1985, partially in response to the growing movement, the state began a campaign to end discrimination on the basis of sexual and emotional orientation.

The National People's Army as an Object of (Non) Remembrance: The Place of East Germany's Military Heritage in Unified Germany

2008 ◽  
Vol 26 (4) ◽  
pp. 150-163 ◽  
Author(s):  
Nina Leonhard
Keyword(s):  
Military Service ◽  
Early Retirement ◽  
Democratic Republic ◽  
Armed Forces ◽  
German Society ◽  
Politics Of Memory ◽  
General Attitude ◽  
The Past ◽  
East German ◽  
Examination Process

On 3 October 1990, the National People's Army (NVA) of the German Democratic Republic, in which about 2.5 million East German citizens served their country, was dissolved. Its personnel either was removed from military service, placed into early retirement, or integrated into the Bundeswehr after a two-year selection and examination process. Since then, the NVA has turned into an object of history with no immediate significance for contemporary German society—despite efforts of former NVA officers to change the official interpretation of 1989-1990. This article examines the processes of remembering and forgetting with regard to East Germany's military heritage since 1990, contrasting the Bundeswehr's politics of memory and “army of unity” ethos not only with the former NVA soldiers' vision of the past, but also with the East German population's general attitude towards their former armed forces.

Retrieving a Redemptive Past: Protecting Heritage and Heimat in East German Cities

2009 ◽  
Vol 27 (3) ◽  
pp. 1-27
Author(s):  
Jason James
Keyword(s):  
Historic Preservation ◽  
Urban Renewal ◽  
The Past ◽  
Cultural Legacy ◽  
Moral Boundaries ◽  
East German ◽  
German Cities ◽  
The City

In the years following unification, East German cityscapes have been subject to fierce contention because historic preservation and urban renewal have served as a local allegory of national redemption. Using conflicts over preservation and renewal in the city of Eisenach as a case study, I argue that historic cityscapes have served as the focus of many East Germans' efforts to grapple with the problem of Germanness because they address the past as a material cultural legacy to be retrieved and protected, rather than as a past to be worked through. In Eisenach's conflicts, heritage and Heimat serve as talismans of redemption not just because they symbolize an unspoiled German past, but also because they represent structures of difference that evoke a victimized Germanness—they are above all precious, vulnerable possessions threatened with disruption, pollution, or destruction by agents placed outside the moral boundaries of the hometown by its bourgeois custodians.

History, Politics, and East German Film: The Thomas Müntzer (1956) Socialist Epic

2006 ◽  
Vol 39 (1) ◽  
pp. 30-55 ◽  
Author(s):  
Robert Walinski-Kiehl
Keyword(s):  
German Democratic Republic ◽  
Democratic Republic ◽  
Historical Narrative ◽  
Political Values ◽  
Essential Requirement ◽  
German Film ◽  
The Past ◽  
State History ◽  
East German ◽  
Scientific Laws

Historians in the former German Democratic Republic (GDR), unlike their western counterparts, could never allow themselves the luxury of studying the past for its own sake because, in this Marxist-Leninist state, history and politics were always inextricably linked. The GDR's leaders were committed communists who had long recognized history's apparent political power. They were convinced that, for the new “Workers' and Peasants' State” to acquire legitimacy among its own people, a German historical narrative, based on the ascertainable “scientific” laws of Marxism, was an essential requirement. East German citizens had endured twelve years of anti-communist Nazi rule and, consequently, the task of integrating them into a republic, where an entirely different set of political values predominated, was a fairly daunting undertaking.

Colonial Pasts in Germany's Present

2019 ◽  
Vol 37 (4) ◽  
pp. 58-73
Author(s):  
Jonathan Bach
Keyword(s):  
The State ◽  
National Socialist ◽  
Normative Model ◽  
Colonial Era ◽  
The Past ◽  
Contemporary Politics ◽  
The Status ◽  
The Face ◽  
East German ◽  
New Phase

This article examines how colonial reckoning is belatedly becoming part of the German memory landscape thirty years after reunification. It argues that colonial-era questions are acquiring the status of a new phase of coming-to-terms with the past in Germany alongside—and sometimes in tension with—the memory of the National Socialist and East German pasts. This raises new and difficult questions about what it means for the state and citizens to act responsibly in the face of historical wrongs and their lasting consequences. Given deep disagreements over what responsibility for the past means in practice, these questions also raise the stakes for the future of Germany’s global reputation as a normative model for democratic confrontations with difficult pasts. It provides an overview of the circumstances after reunification in which colonial memory issues came to the fore, and analyzes a 2019 Bundestag debate on colonial heritage as an example of how the main contours of colonial memory are being configured within the context of contemporary politics.

Das Geschichtsbild Walter Benjamins und die Inszenierung von Erinnerung in Regina Scheers Roman Machandel

2021 ◽  
Vol 57 (2) ◽  
pp. 155-174
Author(s):  
Christoph Seifener
Keyword(s):  
Cultural Memory ◽  
Direct Access ◽  
The Novel ◽  
Personal Memory ◽  
The Past ◽  
East German

The following article discusses Regina Scheer’s novel Machandel (2014) and the approach to personal memory and historical perception that Scheer develops by drawing on Walter Benjamin’s famous essay On the Concepts of History, published in 1940. The article examines formal and narrative aspects of the novel, which tells the story of a family and an East German village from the 1930s until the present day, in order to demonstrate how Scheer rejects the possibility of direct access to history and the reconstruction of the past. Special attention is devoted to the specific meanings of different forms of silence and the role of literature in the process of cultural memory.

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