scholarly journals Sounding like a Mad Hatter: Ernst-Ludwig Petrowsky and the Beginnings of Jazz Experimentalism in East Germany

2017 ◽  
Vol 11 (1-2) ◽  
Author(s):  
Harald Kisiedu
Keyword(s):  
Cultural Policy ◽  
Democratic Republic ◽  
East Germany ◽  
Policy Makers ◽  
German State ◽  
East German ◽  
Post War ◽  
The 1960S ◽  
The Cold War ◽  
State Socialist

This article illuminates the beginnings of jazz experimentalism in the German Democratic Republic (GDR) during the 1960s by focusing on one of its critically important proponents: multi-reedist and improviser Ernst-Ludwig Petrowsky. I situate Petrowsky’s engagement with jazz experimentalist practices within the context of politico-aesthetic debates surrounding jazz in East Germany that were decisively informed by the notion of socialist realism. Focusing on his work with pianist Joachim Kühn and Ensemble Studio 4, I explore the difficulties these jazz experimentalists faced under the ideological constraints imposed by GDR cultural policy makers during the height of the Cold War. Moreover, emphasizing the conditions in the East German state socialist system, I reconstruct the critical reception of post-war jazz in the GDR and discuss Petrowsky’s engagement with African-American experimentalism during the 1960s.

The Prelude to Nationwide Surveillance in East Germany: Stasi Operations and Threat Perceptions, 1945–1953

2003 ◽  
Vol 5 (2) ◽  
pp. 3-31 ◽  
Author(s):  
Gary S. Bruce
Keyword(s):  
Democratic Republic ◽  
East Germany ◽  
German State ◽  
Threat Perceptions ◽  
State Security ◽  
West Berlin ◽  
East German ◽  
Nationwide Surveillance ◽  
Vast Network ◽  
Socialist Unity

Many observers have been puzzled by the extent of the uprising that swept through East Germany in June 1953, given the legendary efficiency of the East German state security (Stasi) forces and their vast network of informants. Some scholars have even attempted to explain the Stasi's inability to foresee and prevent the uprising by arguing that the Stasi conspired with the demonstrators. The opening of the archives of the former German Democratic Republic has shed valuable light on this issue. Based on extensive research in the archives of the Stasi and of the former Socialist Unity Party of East Germany, as well as materials from the West German archives, this article shows that the Stasi did not fail its party superiors in being unable to foresee the uprising of June 1953. There was, in fact, no way that the organization could have foreseen the rebellion. Prior to 1953 the Stasi was not outfitted with a massive surveillance apparatus, nor was it mandated for broad internal surveillance. Rather, it primarily targeted well-known opposition groups at home and anti-Communist organizations based in West Berlin. The criticism directed against the Stasi after the uprising was attributable mainly to Walter Ulbricht's embattled leadership position and his need for a scapegoat.

THE FISCHER CONTROVERSY OVER GERMAN WAR AIMS IN THE FIRST WORLD WAR AND ITS RECEPTION BY EAST GERMAN HISTORIANS, 1961–1989

2003 ◽  
Vol 46 (3) ◽  
pp. 649-668 ◽  
Author(s):  
MATTHEW STIBBE
Keyword(s):  
Democratic Republic ◽  
First World War ◽  
World War ◽  
The First World War ◽  
East German ◽  
War Aims ◽  
Post War ◽  
The 1960S ◽  
First World ◽  
Socialist Unity

The Fischer controversy of the 1960s was a major landmark in post-war West German historiography. Surprisingly few historians to date have devoted their attention to the East German reception of Fischer's work, however. This article seeks to fill this gap by looking at some of the critical reviews published in East German academic journals and also at internal records from the Socialist Unity Party archive. Particular emphasis is placed on the period after 1965 when East German scholars began to explore the historiographical and national implications of the Fischer controversy with a greater degree of sensitivity but also with a greater degree of caution (for strategic political reasons). A mutually beneficial exchange of ideas between Fischer and German Democratic Republic scholars working on the First World War continued throughout the 1970s and 1980s, although ironically this was at a time when both sides were moving ever further away from the idea of a possible reunification of the two Germanies in the future.

The Cultural Center

2015 ◽  
Vol 74 (4) ◽  
pp. 464-484 ◽  
Author(s):  
Kenny Cupers
Keyword(s):  
Cultural Policy ◽  
Primary Sources ◽  
Cultural Institutions ◽  
Cultural Center ◽  
Policy Makers ◽  
Cultural Centers ◽  
Postwar Europe ◽  
1960S And 1970S ◽  
The 1960S ◽  
The Cold War

The Cultural Center: Architecture as Cultural Policy in Postwar Europe examines how culture became an explicit domain of state policy in postwar Europe and why the modern architecture of cultural centers and culture halls became central to such policy. Kenny Cupers uses a variety of archival and primary sources to analyze maisons de la culture in France and Kulturpaläste or Kulturhäuser in the German Democratic Republic during the 1960s and 1970s. Focusing on the roles of bureaucrats, policy makers, and designers, he reveals how architecture articulated cultural politics in which participation was harnessed to bolster the intervention of the state in everyday life—whether through unqualified support, as in France, or through often-oppressive regulation, as in the GDR. This premise is what shaped the design approaches of programmatic integration, polyvalence, and communication for new cultural institutions across the Cold War divide.

Women Agents in the East German State Security

2021 ◽  
Vol 2 (1) ◽  
pp. 61-84
Author(s):  
Thomas Wegener Friis ◽  
Helmut Müller-Enbergs
Keyword(s):  
Cold War ◽  
German Democratic Republic ◽  
Democratic Republic ◽  
German State ◽  
State Security ◽  
Controlling Images ◽  
Intelligence Studies ◽  
East German ◽  
Women's Role ◽  
The Cold War

In the communist camp during the Cold War, exercising power was a male domain. The Ministry of State Security (MfS) of the former German Democratic Republic (GDR) was no exception. Within the organization, women were employed but they rarely made a career. In the bottom of the State Security hierarchy were the agents. This article examines who were the women agents in the rank of the MfS. Based on statistical materials, it gives an overview of women’s role and the character of their covert work. Inspired by Andrea Petö’s introduction of the concept of controlling images to intelligence studies, particular focus is devoted to the question whether the MfS agents complied to the stereotypes of women in intelligence work.

Book Reviews

2015 ◽  
Vol 33 (3) ◽  
pp. 88-107
Author(s):  
Louise K. Davidson-Schmich ◽  
Jennifer A. Yoder ◽  
Friederike Eigler ◽  
Joyce M. Mushaben ◽  
Alexandra Schwell ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Print Media ◽  
Forced Migration ◽  
Way Of Life ◽  
The West ◽  
Politics Of Memory ◽  
German State ◽  
East German ◽  
1960S And 1970S ◽  
The 1960S

Konrad H. Jarausch, United Germany: Debating Processes and Prospects Reviewed by Louise K. Davidson-Schmich Nick Hodgin and Caroline Pearce, ed. The GDR Remembered:Representations of the East German State since 1989 Reviewed by Jennifer A. Yoder Andrew Demshuk, The Lost German East: Forced Migration and the Politics of Memory, 1945-1970 Reviewed by Friederike Eigler Peter H. Merkl, Small Town & Village in Bavaria: The Passing of a Way of Life Reviewed by Joyce M. Mushaben Barbara Thériault, The Cop and the Sociologist. Investigating Diversity in German Police Forces Reviewed by Alexandra Schwell Clare Bielby, Violent Women in Print: Representations in the West German Print Media of the 1960s and 1970s Reviewed by Katharina Karcher Michael David-Fox, Peter Holquist, and Alexander M. Martin, ed., Fascination and Enmity: Russia and Germany as Entangled Histories, 1914-1945 Reviewed by Jennifer A. Yoder

Introduction

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jenny Andersson
Keyword(s):  
Cold War ◽  
Critical Systems Thinking ◽  
Critical Systems ◽  
Political Ideologies ◽  
The Future ◽  
History Of ◽  
Post War ◽  
The 1960S ◽  
The Cold War ◽  
Future Visions

The book proposes that the Cold War period saw a key debate about the future as singular or plural. Forms of Cold War science depicted the future as a closed sphere defined by delimited probabilities, but were challenged by alternative notions of the future as a potentially open realm with limits set only by human creativity. The Cold War was a struggle for temporality between the two different future visions of the two blocs, each armed with its set of predictive technologies, but these were rivaled, from the 1960s on, by future visions emerging from decolonization and the emergence of a set of alternative world futures. Futures research has reflected and enacted this debate. In so doing, it offers a window to the post-war history of the social sciences and of contemporary political ideologies of liberalism and neoliberalism, Marxism and revisionist Marxism, critical-systems thinking, ecologism, and postcolonialism.

Unifying without Integrating: The East German Collapse and German Unity

2010 ◽  
Vol 43 (3) ◽  
pp. 484-507 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jonathan R. Zatlin
Keyword(s):  
French Revolution ◽  
Democratic Republic ◽  
East Germany ◽  
Self Determination ◽  
Sovereign State ◽  
Political Sovereignty ◽  
New States ◽  
History Of ◽  
East German ◽  
Cultural Attachment

The demise of the German Democratic Republic (GDR) came as a surprise to most western observers. For historians of modern Europe, its disappearance remains remarkable for at least two reasons. First, East Germany has ceased to exist in an era when new states are constantly being born. Since the French Revolution unleashed the power of national self-determination as an ordering principle more than 200 years ago, new sovereign states have continued to emerge across the globe, whether through the breakup of multiethnic and colonial empires or the dissolution of pan-Slavic states in eastern Europe. Illiberal governments have been swept aside, often with the result that new states have been cast out of imperial entities by the centrifugal force of cultural attachment. In the history of European political sovereignty during the twentieth century, the particular has triumphed over the universal. Except in the case of the GDR. Against the tide of European history, the GDR has gone from sovereign state (East Germany) to regional designation (eastern Germany). In this sense, the story of the GDR's absorption by a larger polity is a tale of modern state-building told in reverse.

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.

City Plans

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Paul Stangl
Keyword(s):  
German Democratic Republic ◽  
State Policy ◽  
Democratic Republic ◽  
Socialist Realism ◽  
City Center ◽  
German State ◽  
Design Competition ◽  
East German ◽  
Political Turmoil ◽  
The City

Between 1945 and 1949 a series of modernist plans were developed for Berlin. In this time of political turmoil, planners and politicians projected a broad range of meanings onto the plans. After the founding of the East German state, Lothar Bolz orchestrated the adoption of socialist realism as state policy, requiring a return to traditional urban design. This theory included a range of tenets guiding planning, but Walter Ulbricht intervened to assure that planning would be dominated by a concern for parade routes leading to an immense square in the city center. In response to West Berlin’s international building exhibition, the German Democratic Republic held their own design competition for a “socialist” city center in 1958. The recent introduction of industrialized building, along with uncertainty and debate over the nature of “socialist” architecture, was evident in designs with a range of influences, including international modernism, midcentury modernism, and socialist realism.

5. Absurdism, protest, and commitment

2016 ◽  
Author(s):  
Kirsten E. Shepherd-Barr
Keyword(s):  
Civil Rights ◽  
Vietnam War ◽  
Civil Rights Movement ◽  
Gay Rights ◽  
Modern Drama ◽  
1960S And 1970S ◽  
Post War ◽  
The 1960S ◽  
Many Sources ◽  
The Cold War

The decades 1960–80 witnessed a seismic shift in modern drama. The rage that came to define, and fuel, much of the drama in the 1960s and 1970s is directed at the audience. ‘Absurdism, protest, and commitment’ shows it is a post-war rage stemming from many sources: the Vietnam War, the Cold War, a feeling of betrayal by government and politicians, the Civil Rights Movement, Black Power, gay rights, feminism, the growing gap between rich and poor, and ethnic oppression. It is all about denying the audience what it expects of a play, provoking it out of real or perceived complacency, startling, and offending it. The plays of Pinter, Shepard, Beckett, Stoppard, Friel, and Fugard are discussed.

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