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"Socialism and culture Germany (East)"
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Becoming East German : socialist structures and sensibilities after Hitler
For roughly the first decade after the demise of the GDR, professional and popular interpretations of East German history concentrated primarily on forms of power and repression, as well as on dissent and resistance to Communist rule. Socio-cultural approaches have increasingly shown that a single-minded emphasis on repression and coercion fails to address a number of important historical issues, including those related to the subjective experiences of those who lived under Communist regimes. With that in mind, the essays in this volume explore significant physical and psychological aspects of life in the GDR, such as health and diet, leisure and dining, memories of the Nazi past, as well as identity, sports, and experiences of everyday humiliation. Situating the GDR within a broader historical context, they open up new ways of interpreting life behind the Iron Curtain-- while providing a devastating critique of misleading mainstream scholarship, which continues to portray the GDR in the restrictive terms of totalitarian theory.
Book
“They Saw Their Guilt on Screen:” The Archive Effects of Death Camp Sachsenhausen (1947)
Premiered in a Stalinist show-trial in 1947, the overlooked East German Holocaust film Todeslager Sachsenhausen (Death Camp Sachsenhausen) is treated at length for the first time in English. Using the framework of Jaimie Baron’s archive effect and drawing on archival records to chart the film’s production and contested reception through the end of the twentieth century, this article maps the complex and contradictory discourses of authenticity and archivality that defined its use and reuse as they intersect with volatile notions of history during German division and reunification. Analysis of the film’s heterogeneously authentic sources leads to the discovery that it was the first Holocaust film written by a Jewish Holocaust survivor.
Journal Article
The German patient
The German Patient takes an original look at fascist constructions of health and illness, arguing that the idea of a healthy \"national body\"—propagated by the Nazis as justification for the brutal elimination of various unwanted populations—continued to shape post-1945 discussions about the state of national culture. Through an examination of literature, film, and popular media of the era, Jennifer M. Kapczynski demonstrates the ways in which postwar German thinkers inverted the illness metaphor, portraying fascism as a national malady and the nation as a body struggling to recover. Yet, in working to heal the German wounds of war and restore national vigor through the excising of \"sick\" elements, artists and writers often betrayed a troubling affinity for the very biopolitical rhetoric they were struggling against. Through its exploration of the discourse of collective illness, The German Patient tells a larger story about ideological continuities in pre- and post-1945 German culture.
eBook
ERASED NAMES, DIVIDED MEMORIES: TOPONYMY AS A BATTLEFIELD IN EAST GERMANY
The naming of objects, animals, and places transcends mere linguistic function, acting as a cultural mirror that reflects beliefs, values, and systems of world classification. Toponymy shapes the physical and symbolic landscapes where communities live and move, offering a unique lens to study socio-political transformations. This essay examines the emblematic case of East Germany, where toponymy underwent profound shifts during the 20th century, mirroring the region’s turbulent political history. Under the Nazi regime (1933-1945), toponymy served as a tool of propaganda and control: Jewish names were erased, replaced by names glorifying militarism and National Socialist ideals. Following the establishment of communist East Germany (1949-1990), Nazi symbols were replaced with names celebrating socialism, equality, and internationalism, often honoring figures like Karl Marx, Friedrich Engels, and Ernst Thälmann. Streets and squares bore names such as Platz der Befreiung (“Liberation Square”) or Straße der Freundschaft (“Street of Friendship”), embedding ideological narratives into the urban fabric. After reunification (1990), historical, pre-communist names were often reinstated amid contentious public debates. The renaming of Karl-Marx-Stadt back to Chemnitz exemplifies the challenges of reconciling with the past while fostering an inclusive identity. The analysis of East German toponymy underscores the interplay between language, thought, and culture, revealing how names act as cognitive, social, and symbolic tools that shape human understanding of the world
Journal Article
Attraction and Aversion in Germany's '1968': Encountering the Western Revolt in East Berlin
This article uses oral history interviews and archival sources to investigate the entanglements between East and West German activists of 1968. Cold War Berlin remained an important zone of exchange between East and West after the border closure of 1961; the study focuses on what a particular group of young East Berliners with oppositional leanings, who engaged in different forms of political and cultural experimentation in the late 1960s, and who took their ideas from both Eastern Socialist reformers and Western New Leftists, made of their direct encounters with the Western revolt. The article shows that the connections between East and West around 1968 were indeed striking, but contends that these produced ambiguous results; both attraction and aversion marked the exchanges and personal interactions of Eastern and Western activists in this period. Engaging with the broader literatures on the 'transnational 1960s' and the 'asymmetrical entanglement' of the two Germanies after 1945, this research suggests that the two German states represent a fruitful case to study the meaning of transnationalism around 1968 for the opposite reason of what one may intuitively expect. Encounters between the Socialist East and liberal capitalist West could be facilitated with relative ease, because of the geographical proximity of the two states and the shared language, but, far from spelling ever-greater convergence, increasing connections and closeness could actually foster a greater sense of difference.
Journal Article
From monuments to traces : artifacts of German memory, 1870-1990
Rudy Koshar constructs a powerful framework in which to examine the subject of German collective memory, which for more than a half century has been shaped by the experience of Nazism, World War II, and the Holocaust. Finding the assumptions of many writers and scholars shortsighted, Koshar surveys the evidence of postwar German memory in the context of previous traditions. From Monuments to Traces follows the evolution of German \"memory landscapes\" all the way from national unification in 1870-71 through the world wars and political division to reunification in 1990. The memory landscapes of any society may incorporate monuments, historical buildings, memorials and cemeteries, battlefields, streets, or natural environments that foster shared memories of important events or personalities. They may also be designed to divert public attention from embarrassing or traumatic histories. Koshar argues that in Germany, memory landscapes have taken shape according to four separate paradigms--the national monument, the ruin, the reconstruction, and the trace--which he analyzes in relation to the changing political agendas that have guided them over time. Despite the massive ruptures of Germany's history, we see that significant continuities have served to counterbalance the traumas of the German past. Many titles in the Voices Revived program are also newly available as ebooks, offered at a discounted price to support wider access to scholarly work.
eBook
Post-Socialist Culture and Entrepreneurship
In this article it is argued that locus of control beliefs and preferences concerning state action negatively affect the formation of new firms in former socialist countries. For this purpose Kirzner's theory of costless entrepreneurship is reviewed and criticized. German reunification, in which the formerly socialist East Germany joined the Federal Republic of Germany, represents an intriguing natural experiment in which the formal institutional structure of one nation was almost fully transplanted into another. Traditional as well as psychological factors are examined. The results suggest that about one-third of the east-west gap in new self-employment can be explained by inert informal institutions.
Journal Article
Revolution with a Human Face
In this social and cultural history of Czechoslovakia's \"gentle revolution,\" James Krapfl shifts the focus away from elites to ordinary citizens who endeavored-from the outbreak of revolution in 1989 to the demise of the Czechoslovak federation in 1992-to establish a new, democratic political culture. Unique in its balanced coverage of developments in both Czech and Slovak lands, including the Hungarian minority of southern Slovakia, this book looks beyond Prague and Bratislava to collective action in small towns, provincial factories, and collective farms.
Through his broad and deep analysis of workers' declarations, student bulletins, newspapers, film footage, and the proceedings of local administrative bodies, Krapfl contends that Czechoslovaks rejected Communism not because it was socialist, but because it was arbitrarily bureaucratic and inhumane. The restoration of a basic \"humanness\"-in politics and in daily relations among citizens-was the central goal of the revolution. In the strikes and demonstrations that began in the last weeks of 1989, Krapfl argues, citizens forged new symbols and a new symbolic system to reflect the humane, democratic, and nonviolent community they sought to create. Tracing the course of the revolution from early, idealistic euphoria through turns to radicalism and ultimately subversive reaction,Revolution with a Human Facefinds in Czechoslovakia's experiences lessons of both inspiration and caution for people in other countries striving to democratize their governments.
eBook
Differences in temporal reasoning
Hoyerswerda, Germany's fastest-shrinking city, faces problems with the future that seem initially unrelated to the past and yet excite manifold conflicting accounts of it. The multiple and conflicting temporal references employed by Hoyerswerdians indicate that the temporal regime of postsocialism is accompanied, if not overcome, by the temporal framework of shrinkage. By reintroducing the analytical domain of the future, I show that local temporal knowledge practices are not historically predetermined by a homogenous postsocialist culture or by particular generational experiences. Rather, they exhibit what I call temporal complexity and temporal flexibility-creative uses of a variety of coexisting temporal references. My ethnographic material illustrates how such expressions of different forms of temporal reasoning structure social relations within and between different generations. Corresponding social groups are not simply divided by age, but are united through shared and heavily disputed negotiations of the post-Cold War era's contemporary crisis.
Journal Article