scholarly journals “… and he flew out of the window on a wooden spoon”

2007 ◽  
Vol 52 (2) ◽  
pp. 173-193
Author(s):  
Gaby Thomson-Wohlgemuth
Keyword(s):  
Fairy Tales ◽  
East Germany ◽  
Third Reich ◽  
Cultural Elements ◽  
The Third ◽  
East German ◽  
The Third Reich

Abstract Translation may be viewed in part as a transfer of cultural elements from one text to another and, under certain circumstances, this may occur between texts written in the same language. This is indeed the situation researchers find when analysing the early East German versions of the Brothers Grimm’s fairy tales and comparing them with their (same language) originals. East Germany was a country with a mission to overcome capitalist thinking and to create a new kind of society. Motivated by this, the establishment permitted only certain kinds of texts to reach their audiences. One of the genres vehemently debated in the early days was fairy tales and particularly so the Grimms’ tales due to their high standing in the Third Reich. This article explores the first ‘translations’ of the Grimms’ fairy tales in East Germany, investigating elements that were regarded as ideologically valuable and hence emphasized in the texts and those that were deemed harmful to a socialist education and hence modified.

The Production of “Official Memory” in East Germany: Old Communists and the Dilemmas of Memoir-Writing

1999 ◽  
Vol 32 (2) ◽  
pp. 181-201 ◽  
Author(s):  
Catherine Epstein
Keyword(s):  
Communist Party ◽  
East Germany ◽  
Third Reich ◽  
Concentration Camp ◽  
Men And Women ◽  
The Third ◽  
Museum Exhibitions ◽  
The Third Reich ◽  
Ruling Party ◽  
Socialist Unity

In East Germany, official memory was reputedly embodied in Old Communists, those men and women who had joined the German Communist Party (KPD) before Hitler's rise to power in 1933. After 1945, the Socialist Unity Party (SED), East Germany's ruling party, exploited the tragic experiences of Old Communists during the Third Reich—exile, resistance, and concentration–camp incarceration—to foster a triumphant official memory of heroic, Communist-led antifascist struggle. Intended to legitimate the SED regime, this official memory was rehearsed in countless “lieux de mémoire,” including films, novels, school textbooks, museum exhibitions, and commemorative rituals. Concurrently, party authorities encouraged Old Communists to share their past lives with younger East Germans; in particular, they urged Old Communists to write memoirs of their participation in the antifascist struggle against Hitler.

The Workhouse Dresden-Leuben After 1945: A Microstudy of Local Continuities in Postwar East Germany

2018 ◽  
Vol 55 (1) ◽  
pp. 120-144
Author(s):  
Markus Wahl
Keyword(s):  
East Germany ◽  
State Level ◽  
Third Reich ◽  
Social Deviance ◽  
German State ◽  
The Everyday ◽  
East German ◽  
The Third Reich ◽  
State And Local ◽  
The Impact

By using the workhouse of Dresden as a microstudy, this article explores local continuities in postwar East Germany. It argues that this example not only illustrates the persistence of mentalities towards ‘sexual and social deviance’, not least as a legacy of the Third Reich, but also questions the assumption of a strictly centralized state and 1945 as a caesura. In a first step, the article shows the continuity of personnel at the state level, who decided that the workhouse as an institution should have a future in the new East German state after 1945, before revealing that local authorities were also unable to dissociate themselves with the views towards this institution of the past. In the end, the article enters this institution with help of archival sources, architectural plans, and photographs, exploring the impact of this state and local continuity on the everyday lives of inmates in this workhouse in Dresden. In doing so, it contributes to the historiography of East Germany by revealing the agency of different individuals, even if confined to a ‘total institution’.

Research Opportunities in West and East German Archives for the Weimar Period and the Third Reich

1979 ◽  
Vol 12 (1) ◽  
pp. 38-67
Author(s):  
George O. Kent
Keyword(s):  
Third Reich ◽  
Research Opportunities ◽  
The Third ◽  
Comprehensive Survey ◽  
East German ◽  
The Third Reich ◽  
Fruitful Research

This paper is an attempt to draw attention to some of the major as well as some of the lesser known collections in the archives of the German Democratic and the German Federal Republics. It will suggest broad topics and areas that might lead to fruitful research, and is not intended as a comprehensive survey of these holdings.

Book Reviews

2005 ◽  
Vol 23 (2) ◽  
pp. 98-121
Keyword(s):  
Third Reich ◽  
European Policy ◽  
Social Democrats ◽  
Cambridge University ◽  
Mass Tourism ◽  
The Third ◽  
Princeton University ◽  
East German ◽  
The Third Reich

James Sloam, The European Policy of the German Social Democrats: Interpreting a Changing World (Houndmills, England: Palgrave/Macmillan, 2005)Reviewed by Gerard BraunthalJoel S. Fetzer and J. Christopher Soper, Muslims and the State in Britain, France, and Germany (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2005)Reviewed by Patrick IrelandMichael Gorra, The Bells in Their Silence. Travels Through Germany (Princeton, Princeton University Press, 2004)Reviewed by Peter C. PfeifferJay Howard Geller, Jews in Post-Holocaust Germany, 1945-1953 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2005)Reviewed by Lynn RapaportHope M. Harrison, Driving the Soviets up the Wall. Soviet – East German Relations, 1953-1961. (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2003)Reviewed by Bernd SchaeferShelley Baranowski, Strength through Joy: Consumerism and Mass Tourism in the Third Reich (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2004)Reviewed by Jeff Schutts

Tape Work and Memory Work in Post-War Germany

2017 ◽  
Vol 14 (1) ◽  
pp. 49-63 ◽  
Author(s):  
MARTHA SPRIGGE
Keyword(s):  
Third Reich ◽  
Early Response ◽  
Military Technology ◽  
Total War ◽  
The Third ◽  
Memory Work ◽  
East German ◽  
The Third Reich ◽  
Nazi Past ◽  
Post War

ABSTRACTSonic traces of the Third Reich have held significant memorial power in post-war Germany. This article traces three works that sample one of the most well-known recordings from the Nazi period: Joseph Goebbels's declaration of Total War, delivered on 18 February 1943, and broadcast on newsreel and radio the following week. In both message and material, this recording epitomizes Friedrich Kittler's claim that tape is a military technology. The works examined span different memory debates in post-war Germany: Bernd Alois Zimmermann realized Requiem für einen jungen Dichter (1967–9) as West Germans were engaging in the first public discussions of the Holocaust, Georg Katzer's Mein 1989 (1990) is an East German composer's early response to the fall of the Berlin Wall, while Marcel Beyer's novel Flughunde (The Karnau Tapes, 1995) reveals the continued attempt to address the legacy of the Third Reich after German Reunification. Analysed together, these works create new configurations of discourse about wartime memory, moving away from geopolitical contours. Each of these artists transforms tape's wartime uses – namely dissemination and encryption – into forms of memorial labour. Through their physical and conceptual manipulations of tape, these artists create less deterministic readings of the Nazi past.

scholarly journals Złudne nieuwikłanie. III Rzesza w interpretacji antyfaszystowskiej — casus NRD

2017 ◽  
Vol 38 (3) ◽  
pp. 75-99
Author(s):  
Szymon Pietrzykowski
Keyword(s):  
Primary Source ◽  
Third Reich ◽  
Extensive Literature ◽  
Historical Sources ◽  
The Third ◽  
Historical Continuity ◽  
The Holocaust ◽  
The Status ◽  
East German ◽  
The Third Reich

ILLUSORY NON-ENTANGLEMENT: THIRD REICH IN ANTIFASCIST NARRATIVE THE CASE OF GERMAN DEMOCRATIC REPUBLICAntifascism, a historiographical doctrine formulated in the 30s of the twentieth century by G. Dimitrov, as aresult of the Soviet victory over the Third Reich acquired the status of official narrative in countries of the Communist Bloc. It played aparticular role in GDR as a primary source of state’s legitimization, especially in the early postwar years. Relating on selected historical sources and extensive literature on this subject to mention, among others, D. Diner, J. Herf, S. Kattago, A. Wolff-Powęska, K. Wóycicki, J. McLellan, M. Fulbrook Iintend to capture the disingenuous­ness of East German antifascism. Making use of lies, illusion or denial, applying selectiveness on facts or specific way of their interpretation, the GDR authorities managed to integrate the society around apositive yet erroneous myth of victorious mass resistance of the German working class against fascism. What is more, such antifascism played adefensive supervisory function: „univer­salizing” the period of 1939–1945 as another stage of long-term rivalry between the proletariat and capitalists it discursively blurred the historical continuity between the GDR and the Third Reich, and sustained the illusion of lack of guilt for the Holocaust which actual i.e. Jewish specificity remained unrecognized.

East German Higher Education Policies and Student Resistance, 1945–1948

1995 ◽  
Vol 28 (3) ◽  
pp. 259-300 ◽  
Author(s):  
John Connelly
Keyword(s):  
East Germany ◽  
Third Reich ◽  
The Political ◽  
Student Resistance ◽  
Education Policies ◽  
Higher Education Policies ◽  
East German ◽  
The Third Reich ◽  
Disproportionate Number ◽  
Socialist Unity

Those who opposed Communist rule in East Germany often did so because Communism in practice strongly reminded them of the fascism they had experienced in the Third Reich. The new East German regime was also one that attempted total control of people's lives; therefore it became natural to describe it as totalitär. Most sensitive to the similarities between the old and new regimes were university students. They displayed stronger direct opposition to the Socialist Unity Party of Germany (SED) in the years from 1946–1949 than any other social group. This is reflected in the political battles that were fought in universities during these years, leading to SED election failures in the elections of the postwar years: 1946/47 and late 1947. The latter were the last freely contested elections in East Germany until 1989. It is also reflected in the disproportionate number of students arrested by Soviet and East German authorities in the early postwar years.

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