Download or read book East German Girl written by Sigrid Jackson and published by iUniverse. This book was released on 2011-09-07 with total page 157 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: War memories do not have an age requirement. They force you to mature and give you no choice but to cope with the realities of the world. In this memoir, author Sigrid Jackson tells what it was like being a child of war in East Germany before and after World War II. In East German Girl, Jackson describes what it was like to live through the bombing raids, food shortages, diphtheria, communism, and being forced to leave her home with her mother and brother to be relocated to a rural farm. Using personal anecdotes to illustrate how God has worked in her life, Jackson demonstrates the courage that was necessary to escape East Germany to freedom in the west when she was just twelve years old. From an alcoholic, absentee father to an unsuspecting future husband, life continuously threw her curveballs, but East German Girl narrates an inspirational story of war, communism, family betrayal, and finally resilience.
Download or read book Miracles and Cloudberries written by Shívana Alexís and published by BalboaPress. This book was released on 2011-06-03 with total page 397 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Ariane grows up neglected by an emotionally distant mother in post-war Communist East Germany. At the age of twelve, she discovers her mother dead in their apartment. She struggles to overcome emotional trauma and tries to deal with ghost-like memories of the past. Her father's disappearance is cloaked in mystery while political intrigue surrounds the death of her mother. Feeling forsaken by everyone, she carries her pain in silence and clings to the words of her uncle Emil, who had assured her that miracles had kept her alive. He, himself, missed out on miracles but was taken away by the STASI, the secret police of East Germany. When Ariane later is threatened with political blackmail, she makes a life altering decision to leave the GDR. Her escape leads her into the arms of an American soldier. When they become separated, she once again must trust that miracles will usher in a happy ending.
Download or read book An East German Girl written by Claudia Frances Muro and published by . This book was released on 2024 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "An American-born daughter recounts her German-born mother’s life in Europe and America beginning in the 1940s until the present. Claudia reveals the courage and spunk of her grandparents, her mother Sigrid, and her extended family, who experienced War, Depression, and Communism. She shares both historical and family tidbits and discovers intellectual as well as amusing connections to her relatives. Claudia and Sigrid reflect on how their [Lutheran] German heritage has shaped their outlooks on politics, society, and our humanity. They also reflect on the meaning and importance of freedom."--Amazon.
Download or read book Why Women Have Better Sex Under Socialism written by Kristen R. Ghodsee and published by Bold Type Books. This book was released on 2018-11-20 with total page 184 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A spirited, deeply researched exploration of why capitalism is bad for women and how, when done right, socialism leads to economic independence, better labor conditions, better work-life balance and, yes, even better sex. In a witty, irreverent op-ed piece that went viral, Kristen Ghodsee argued that women had better sex under socialism. The response was tremendous — clearly she articulated something many women had sensed for years: the problem is with capitalism, not with us. Ghodsee, an acclaimed ethnographer and professor of Russian and East European Studies, spent years researching what happened to women in countries that transitioned from state socialism to capitalism. She argues here that unregulated capitalism disproportionately harms women, and that we should learn from the past. By rejecting the bad and salvaging the good, we can adapt some socialist ideas to the 21st century and improve our lives. She tackles all aspects of a woman's life - work, parenting, sex and relationships, citizenship, and leadership. In a chapter called "Women: Like Men, But Cheaper," she talks about women in the workplace, discussing everything from the wage gap to harassment and discrimination. In "What To Expect When You're Expecting Exploitation," she addresses motherhood and how "having it all" is impossible under capitalism. Women are standing up for themselves like never before, from the increase in the number of women running for office to the women's march to the long-overdue public outcry against sexual harassment. Interest in socialism is also on the rise -- whether it's the popularity of Bernie Sanders or the skyrocketing membership numbers of the Democratic Socialists of America. It's become increasingly clear to women that capitalism isn't working for us, and Ghodsee is the informed, lively guide who can show us the way forward.
Download or read book After the Wall written by Jana Hensel and published by PublicAffairs. This book was released on 2008-03-04 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Jana Hensel was thirteen on November 9, 1989, the night the Berlin Wall fell. In all the euphoria over German reunification, no one stopped to think what it would mean for Jana and her generation of East Germans. These were the kids of the seventies, who had grown up in the shadow of Communism with all its hokey comforts: the Young Pioneer youth groups, the cheerful Communist propaganda, and the comforting knowledge that they lived in a Germany unblemished by an ugly Nazi past and a callous capitalist future. Suddenly everything was gone. East Germany disappeared, swallowed up by the West, and in its place was everything Jana and her friends had coveted for so long: designer clothes, pop CDs, Hollywood movies, supermarkets, magazines. They snapped up every possible Western product and mannerism. They changed the way they talked, the way they walked, what they read, where they went. They cut off from their parents. They took English lessons, and opened bank accounts. Fifteen years later, they all have the right haircuts and drive the right cars, but who are they? Where are they going? In After the Wall, Jana Hensel tells the story of her confused generation of East Germans, who were forced to abandon their past and feel their way through a foreign landscape to an uncertain future. Now as they look back, they wonder whether the oppressive, yet comforting life of their childhood wasn't so bad after all.
Download or read book EAST GERMAN POLICE GIRL written by NATALIA. PASTUKHOVA and published by . This book was released on 2022 with total page pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book Mothers Comrades and Outcasts in East German Women s Films written by Jennifer L. Creech and published by Indiana University Press. This book was released on 2016-08-08 with total page 307 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Mothers, Comrades, and Outcasts in East German Women's Film merges feminist film theory and cultural history in an investigation of "women's films" that span the last two decades of the former East Germany. Jennifer L. Creech explores the ways in which these films functioned as an alternative public sphere where official ideologies of socialist progress and utopian collectivism could be resisted. Emerging after the infamous cultural freeze of 1965, these women's films reveal a shift from overt political critique to a covert politics located in the intimate, problem-rich experiences of everyday life under socialism. Through an analysis of films that focus on what were perceived as "women's concerns"—marital problems, motherhood, emancipation, and residual patriarchy—Creech argues that the female protagonist served as a crystallization of socialist contradictions. By framing their politics in terms of women's concerns, these films used women's desire and agency to contest the more general problems of social alienation and collectivism, and to re-imagine the possibilities of self-fulfillment under socialism.
Download or read book German Girl written by Vivian Bolten Herz and published by . This book was released on 2014-06-11 with total page 370 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In German Girl?, I reflect on my extraordinary childhood years, 1942 to 1953, growing up in Nazi Germany. As a "Mischling," a child with one Jewish parent and one Christian parent, my experiences during World War II, and its effect on the years that followed, provide a unique picture of wartime life as seen through the eyes of a child. My Lutheran grandparents hid and protected me while my mother was jailed and questioned tortuously on the whereabouts of my father. A Jewish man, my father lived "underground." I describe my father's ingenuity and bravery, the enduring strength of my mother and the simple pleasures and comforting love of my grandparents stolen in a time of horror for so many. I have included copies of historical documents and photographs of the people discussed in the book.* I have filled my book with memories, pictures, reproductions of forged documents and the incredible story of growing up alongside the appalling destruction of WWII in East Berlin.
Download or read book Not a Novel A Memoir in Pieces written by Jenny Erpenbeck and published by New Directions Publishing. This book was released on 2020-09-01 with total page 185 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A collection of highly personal and poetic essays about life, literature, and politics by the renowned German writer, Jenny Erpenbeck Jenny Erpenbeck’s highly acclaimed novel Go, Went, Gone was a New York Times notable book and launched one of Germany’s most admired writers into the American spotlight. In the New Yorker, James Wood wrote: “When Erpenbeck wins the Nobel Prize in a few years, I suspect that this novel will be cited.” On the heels of this literary breakthrough comes , a book of personal, profound, often humorous meditations and reflections. Erpenbeck writes, “With this collection of texts, I am looking back for the first time at many years of my life, at the thoughts that filled my life from day to day.” Starting with her childhood days in East Berlin (“I start with my life as a schoolgirl … my own conscious life begins at the same time as the socialist life of Leipziger Strasse”), Not a Novel provides a glimpse of growing up in the GDR and of what it was like to be twenty-two when the wall collapsed; it takes us through Erpenbeck’s early adult years, working in a bakery after immersing herself in the worlds of music, theater, and opera, and ultimately discovering her path as a writer. There are lively essays about her literary influences (Thomas Bernhard, the Brothers Grimm, Kafka, and Thomas Mann), unforgettable reflections on the forces at work in her novels (including history, silence, and time), and scathing commentaries on the dire situation of America and Europe today. “Why do we still hear laments for the Germans who died attempting to flee over the wall, but almost none for the countless refugees who have drowned in the Mediterranean in recent years, turning the sea into a giant grave?” With deep insight and warm intelligence, Jenny Erpenbeck provides us with a collection of unforgettable essays that take us into the heart and mind of “one of the finest and most exciting writers alive” (Michel Faber).
Download or read book Making Waves written by Shirley Babashoff and published by Santa Monica Press. This book was released on 2016-07-05 with total page 247 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In her extraordinary swimming career, Shirley Babashoff set thirty-nine national records and eleven world records. Prior to the 1990s, she was the most successful U.S. female Olympian and, in her prime, was widely considered to be the greatest female swimmer in the world. Heading into the 1976 Olympic Games in Montreal, Babashoff was pictured on the cover of Sports Illustrated and followed closely by the media. Hopes were high that she would become “the female Mark Spitz.” All of that changed once Babashoff questioned the shocking masculinity of the swimmers on the East German women’s team. Once celebrated as America’s golden girl, Babashoff was accused of poor sportsmanship and vilified by the press with a new nickname: “Surly Shirley.” Making Waves displays the remarkable strength and resilience that made Babashoff such a dynamic champion. From her difficult childhood and beginnings as a determined young athlete growing up in Southern California in the 1960s, through her triumphs as the greatest female amateur swimmer in the world, Babashoff tells her story in the same unflinching manner that made her both the most dominant female swimmer of her time and one of the most controversial athletes in Olympic history.
Download or read book Stasiland written by Anna Funder and published by Odyssey Editions. This book was released on 2015-10-29 with total page 232 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Stasiland tells true stories of people who heroically resisted the communist dictatorship of East Germany, and of people who worked for its secret police, the Stasi. Internationally hailed as a classic, it is ‘fascinating, entertaining, hilarious, horrifying and very important’ (Tom Hanks) and ‘a heartbreaking, beautifully written book.’ (Claire Tomalin). East Germany was one of the most intrusive surveillance states of all time. One in 7 people spied on their friends, family and colleagues. In ‘the most humane and sensitive way’ (J.M. Coetzee) Funder tells the true stories of four people who had the extraordinary courage to refuse to collaborate with the Stasi, and the price they paid. She meets Miriam Weber, who was imprisoned at 16 after scaling the Berlin Wall. She drinks with the legendary “Mik Jegger” of the Eastern Bloc who was ‘disappeared’. And she finds former Stasi men who defend their regime long past its demise, and yearn for the second coming of Communism. Stasiland won the Samuel Johnson Prize for best non-fiction published in English in 2004. It was a finalist for the Guardian First Book Award, the W.H. Heinemann Award, the Index Freedom of Expression Awards, The Age Book of the Year Awards, the Queensland Premier’s Literary Award and the Adelaide Festival Awards for Literature (Innovation in Writing). It is read in schools and universities in many countries, and has been adapted for CD and the stage by The National Theatre, London.
Download or read book Faust s Gold written by Steven Ungerleider and published by Macmillan. This book was released on 2015-03-10 with total page 225 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Steven Ungerleider's Faust's Gold is the stunning expose of the East German sports juggernaut of the 1970s and 1980s that forced young athletes to unknowingly take steroids. For nearly twenty-five years, East Germany's corrupt sports organization dominated international athletics. While the German Democratic Republic's secret "State Plan" was in effect, more than ten thousand unsuspecting young athletes--some as young as twelve years old--were given massive doses of performance-enhancing anabolic steroids. These athletes achieved miraculous success in international competitions, including the Olympics, but for many of them, their physical and emotional health was permanently damaged. Faust's Gold draws on the revelations of the ongoing trials of former GDR coaches, doctors, and sports officials who have now confessed to conducting ruthless medical experiments on young and talented athletes selected for Olympic training camps. It also draws on the extensive research of Brigitte Berendonk, who escaped from East Germany to begin a decade-long crusade to bring justice to her fellow athletes, and that of her husband, Professor Werner Franke. Berendonk's story, and those of her colleagues in the GDR, offers a unique insight into a bizarre regime. Faust's Gold is a true-life detective story that plunges into the dark, secretive world of the GDR doping scam, where elite competitors and their families are up against a formidable opponent: the East German secret police, known as the STASI. What emerges is a complex tapestry of the politicized modern Olympics that culminates in a powerful testimony to the massive wrong done by one Eastern Bloc nation to its world-class athletes.
Download or read book Crimes Unspoken written by Miriam Gebhardt and published by John Wiley & Sons. This book was released on 2016-12-20 with total page 198 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The soldiers who occupied Germany after the Second World War were not only liberators: they also brought with them a new threat, as women throughout the country became victims of sexual violence. In this disturbing and carefully researched book, the historian Miriam Gebhardt reveals for the first time the scale of this human tragedy, which continued long after the hostilities had ended. Discussion in recent years of the rape of German women committed at the end of the war has focused almost exclusively on the crimes committed by Soviet soldiers, but Gebhardt shows that this picture is misleading. Crimes were committed as much by the Western Allies – American, French and British – as by the members of the Red Army. Nor was the suffering limited to the immediate aftermath of the war. Gebhardt powerfully recounts how raped women continued to be the victims of doctors, who arbitrarily granted or refused abortions, welfare workers, who put pregnant women in homes, and wider society, which even today prefers to ignore these crimes. Crimes Unspoken is the first historical account to expose the true extent of sexual violence in Germany at the end of the war, offering valuable new insight into a key period of 20th century history.
Download or read book A Woman in Berlin written by and published by Macmillan. This book was released on 2006-07-11 with total page 289 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: For eight weeks in 1945, as Berlin fell to the Russian army, a young woman kept a daily record of life in her apartment building and among its residents. She tells of the shameful indignities to which women in a conquered city are always subject.
Download or read book Forty Autumns written by Nina Willner and published by HarperCollins. This book was released on 2016-10-04 with total page 223 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In this illuminating and deeply moving memoir, a former American military intelligence officer goes beyond traditional Cold War espionage tales to tell the true story of her family—of five women separated by the Iron Curtain for more than forty years, and their miraculous reunion after the fall of the Berlin Wall. Forty Autumns makes visceral the pain and longing of one family forced to live apart in a world divided by two. At twenty, Hanna escaped from East to West Germany. But the price of freedom—leaving behind her parents, eight siblings, and family home—was heartbreaking. Uprooted, Hanna eventually moved to America, where she settled down with her husband and had children of her own. Growing up near Washington, D.C., Hanna’s daughter, Nina Willner became the first female Army Intelligence Officer to lead sensitive intelligence operations in East Berlin at the height of the Cold War. Though only a few miles separated American Nina and her German relatives—grandmother Oma, Aunt Heidi, and cousin, Cordula, a member of the East German Olympic training team—a bitter political war kept them apart. In Forty Autumns, Nina recounts her family’s story—five ordinary lives buffeted by circumstances beyond their control. She takes us deep into the tumultuous and terrifying world of East Germany under Communist rule, revealing both the cruel reality her relatives endured and her own experiences as an intelligence officer, running secret operations behind the Berlin Wall that put her life at risk. A personal look at a tenuous era that divided a city and a nation, and continues to haunt us, Forty Autumns is an intimate and beautifully written story of courage, resilience, and love—of five women whose spirits could not be broken, and who fought to preserve what matters most: family. Forty Autumns is illustrated with dozens of black-and-white and color photographs.
Download or read book Burning Down the Haus written by Tim Mohr and published by Algonquin Books. This book was released on 2018-09-11 with total page 384 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: “A rallying call against authoritarianism everywhere.” —Ruth Franklin, author of the NBCC Award–winning Shirley Jackson: A Rather Haunted Life It began with a handful of East Berlin teens who heard the Sex Pistols on a British military radio broadcast to troops in West Berlin, and it ended with the collapse of the East German dictatorship. Punk rock was a life-changing discovery. The buzz-saw guitars, the messed-up clothing and hair, the rejection of society and the DIY approach to building a new one: in their gray surroundings, where everyone’s future was preordained by some communist apparatchik, punk represented a revolutionary philosophy—quite literally, as it turned out. But as these young kids tried to form bands and became more visible, security forces—including the dreaded secret police, the Stasi—targeted them. They were spied on by friends and even members of their own families; they were expelled from schools and fired from jobs; they were beaten by police and imprisoned. Instead of conforming, the punks fought back, playing an indispensable role in the underground movements that helped bring down the Berlin Wall. This secret history of East German punk rock is not just about the music; it is a story of extraordinary bravery in the face of one of the most oppressive regimes in history. Rollicking, cinematic, deeply researched, highly readable, and thrillingly topical, BurningDown the Haus brings to life the young men and women who successfully fought authoritarianism three chords at a time—and is a fiery testament to the irrepressible spirit of revolution.
Download or read book Restless Days written by Lilo Linke and published by . This book was released on 1935 with total page 454 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: She spent most of her youth fighting for the cause of democracy in Germany.
