Download or read book The Rise and Fall of the German Democratic Republic 1945 1990 written by J. M. Dennis and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2016-11-30 with total page pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This new book investigates communist rule in East Germany from its establishment as a sphere of Soviet influence after World War II to its rapid collapse after the fall of the Berlin Wall. Using newly available archive material, the early chapters trace the emergence of the GDR out of the Soviet zone of occupation. Later chapters cover the dramatic episodes of the 1953 uprising against Soviet dominance and the building of the Berlin Wall in 1961. The subsequent stabilisation of the GDR and the establishment of an uneasy compromise between the ruling elites and the population in the later 1960s and 1970s are explained with reference to a range of internal social, economic and political factors. The disintegration of the regime in 1989 is explained in the light of: The chronic weakness of Gorbachev's Soviet Union. The bravery of the protestors. The enduring appeal of West Germany's social market economy. Political pluralism. This clear and comprehensive survey marshals secondary and original primary sources in order to give a unique insight into the GDR's struggles and achievements.
Download or read book The Rise and Fall of the German Democratic Republic 1945 1990 written by Mike Dennis and published by Longman Publishing Group. This book was released on 2000 with total page 360 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This new book investigates communist rule in East Germany from the end of World War II to its rapid collapse after the fall of the Berlin Wall. Using newly available archival material, the early chapters trace the emergence of the GDR in 1949 from out of chrysalis of the Soviet zone of occupation. Later chapters cover the dramatic episodes of the 1953 uprising against Soviet dominance and the buildling of the Berlin Wall in 1961. The subsequent stabilization of the GDR and the establishment of an uneasy compromise between the ruling elites and the population in the later 1960s and 1970s are explained with reference to a range of internal social, economic and political factors. The disintegration of the regime in 1989, despite the comprehensive system of surveillance operated by the infamous Stasi, is explained in the light of * the chronic weakness of Gorbachev's Soviet Union * the bravery of the protestors * the enduring appeal of West Germany's social market economy and political pluralism.This clear and comprehensive survey marshals secondary and original primary sources in order to give a unique insight into the GDR's struggles and achievements.Mike Dennis is Professor of Modern History, University of Wolverhampton. His many publications include `The German Democratic Republic' (1988).
Download or read book State and Minorities in Communist East Germany written by Mike Dennis and published by Berghahn Books. This book was released on 2011-08-01 with total page 254 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Based on interviews and the voluminous materials in the archives of the SED, the Stasi and central and regional authorities, this volume focuses on several contrasting minorities (Jehovah’s Witnesses, Jews, ‘guest’ workers from Vietnam and Mozambique, football fans, punks, and skinheads) and their interaction with state and party bodies during Erich Honecker’s rule over the communist system. It explores how they were able to resist persecution and surveillance by instruments of the state, thus illustrating the limits on the power of the East German dictatorship and shedding light on the notion of authority as social practice.
Download or read book Sport under Communism written by M. Dennis and published by Springer. This book was released on 2012-04-24 with total page 235 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Based on original Stasi and Communist Party archival sources, this book uncovers why East Germany was for two decades running one of the most successful nations in the Summer and Winter Olympics, exploring how the central elite sports system was beset by internal tensions and disputes.
Download or read book The Rise and Fall of the German Democratic Republic written by Feiwel Kupferberg and published by Transaction Publishers. This book was released on with total page 248 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Most public debate on reunited Germany has emphasized economic issues such as the collapse of East German industry, mass unemployment, career difficulties, and differences in wages and living standards. The overwhelming difficulty resulting from reunification, however, is not persisting economic differences but the internal cultural divide between East and West Germans, one based upon different moral values in the two Germanies. The invisible wall that has replaced the previous, highly visible territorial division of the German nation is rooted in issues of the past-the Nazi past as well as the German Democratic Republic past. In emphasizing economic differences, the media and academics have avoided dealing with typically German cultural traits. These include the psychological posture of West Germany, which emphasized not differences between East and West but the break with Germany's Nazi past. The adversarial posture of certain professional groups in East Germany towards the liberal and democratic values of West Germany have also been an obstacle. Reviewing the problems accompanying reunification, chapter 1 explores German culture and history and the moral lessons evolved from the Nazi past. Chapter 2 focuses on the East-West mindset and how differences in attitude affect efforts to adapt to reunification. Chapter 3 discusses the simulated break with Nazi Germany in the German Democratic Republic. Chapters 4, 5, and 6 analyze the roots of the adversary posture of the professional groups in East Germany towards the values of the Berlin Republic. Chapter 7 demonstrates the strong presence of inherited, typically German cultural traits among East Germans, such as a lack of individualism, suspicion of strangers, and obedience to authority. Chapter 8 documents the extent to which a right-wing extremist culture has remained latent in Eastern Germany. Chapter 9 documents the extent to which moral reasoning in the GDR relieves the individual of any kind of responsibility for the actions of the state, reproducing the way ordinary Germans rationalized their participation in the Nazi regime immediately after World War II. Chapter 10 concludes with an overview of the historical and sociological factors revolving around the discussion of Nazi Germany, the GDR and inner unification. This volume will be important for historians, political scientists, anthropologists, sociologists, and a general public interested in Germany's reunification.
Download or read book The History of the Stasi written by Jens Gieseke and published by Berghahn Books. This book was released on 2014-01-01 with total page 277 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A well-balanced and detailed look at the East German Ministry for State Security, the secret police force more commonly known as the Stasi. “This is an excellent book, full of careful, balanced judgements and a wealth of concisely-communicated knowledge. It is also well written. Indeed, it is the best book yet published on the MfS.”—German History The Stasi stood for Stalinist oppression and all-encompassing surveillance. The “shield and sword of the party,” it secured the rule of the Communist Party for more than forty years, and by the 1980s it had become the largest secret-police apparatus in the world, per capita. Jens Gieseke tells the story of the Stasi, a feared secret-police force and a highly professional intelligence service. He inquires into the mechanisms of dictatorship and the day-to-day effects of surveillance and suspicion. Masterful and thorough at once, he takes the reader through this dark chapter of German postwar history, supplying key information on perpetrators, informers, and victims. In an assessment of post-communist memory politics, he critically discusses the consequences of opening the files and the outcomes of the Stasi debate in reunified Germany. A major guide for research on communist secret-police forces, this book is considered the standard reference work on the Stasi.
Download or read book After Auschwitz written by Enrico Heitzer and published by Berghahn Books. This book was released on 2021-01-14 with total page 323 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: From the moment of its inception, the East German state sought to cast itself as a clean break from the horrors of National Socialism. Nonetheless, the precipitous rise of xenophobic, far-right parties across the present-day German East is only the latest evidence that the GDR’s legacy cannot be understood in isolation from the Nazi era nor the political upheavals of today. This provocative collection reflects on the heretofore ignored or repressed aspects of German mainstream society—including right-wing extremism, anti-Semitism and racism—to call for an ambitious renewal of historical research and political education to place East Germany in its proper historical context.
Download or read book The East German Economy 1945 2010 written by Hartmut Berghoff and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2013-10-07 with total page 261 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The contributors to this volume consider the economic history of East Germany within its broader political, cultural and social contexts.
Download or read book The German Democratic Republic written by Peter Grieder and published by Bloomsbury Publishing. This book was released on 2012-11-02 with total page 176 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A clear, concise and thought-provoking introduction to the history of East Germany which engages critically with key debates and advances new interpretations of the origins, development and demise of the GDR. Peter Grieder also offers an original conceptualization of the GDR as a totalitarian welfare state.
Download or read book Between Reform and Revolution written by David E. Barclay and published by Berghahn Books. This book was released on 1998 with total page 634 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Twenty-three chapters by American, British, and German scholars explore the meanings of German socialism and communism from a variety of methodical and thematic perspectives often influenced by feminist and poststructuralist theories. Among the topics explored are: the Lassallean labor movement; depictions of gender, militancy, and organizing in the German socialist press at the turn of the century; communism and the public spheres of Weimar Germany; cultural socialism, popular culture, mass media, and the democratic project, 1900-1934; unity sentiments in the socialist underground, 1933-1936; population policy in the DDR, 1945-1960; the post-war labor unions and the politics of reconstruction; communist resistance between Comintern directives and Nazi terror; and the passing of German communism and the rise of a new New Left. Annotation copyrighted by Book News, Inc., Portland, OR
Download or read book The Rise and Fall of a Socialist Welfare State written by Manfred G. Schmidt and published by Springer Science & Business Media. This book was released on 2012-11-15 with total page 320 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book provides a comprehensive analysis of social policy in the German Democratic Republic (GDR, 1949-1990), followed by an analysis of the “Social Union”, the transformation of social policy in the process of German unification in 1990. Schmidt’s analysis of the GDR also depicts commonalities and differences between the welfare state in East and West Germany as well as in other East European and Western countries. He concludes that the GDR was unable to cope with the trade-off between ambitious social policy goals and a deteriorating economic performance. Ritter embeds his analysis of the Social Union in a general study of German unification, its international circumstances and its domestic repercussions (1989-1994). He argues that social policy played a pivotal role in German unification, and that there was no alternative to extending the West German welfare state to the East. Ritter, a distinguished historian, bases his contribution on an award-winning study for which he drew on archival sources and interviews with key actors. Schmidt is a distinguished political scientist.
Download or read book Nonviolent Revolutions written by Sharon Erickson Nepstad and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2011-07-28 with total page 198 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In the spring of 1989, Chinese workers and students captured global attention as they occupied Tiananmen Square, demanded political change, and were tragically suppressed by the Chinese army. Months later, East German civilians rose up nonviolently, brought down the Berlin Wall, and dismantled their regime. Although both movements used tactics of civil resistance, their outcomes were different. Why? In Nonviolent Revolutions, Sharon Erickson Nepstad examines these and other uprisings in Panama, Chile, Kenya, and the Philippines. Taking a comparative approach that includes both successful and failed cases of nonviolent resistance, Nepstad analyzes the effects of movements' strategies along with the counter-strategies regimes developed to retain power. She shows that a significant influence on revolutionary outcomes is security force defections, and explores the reasons why soldiers defect or remain loyal and the conditions that increase the likelihood of mutiny. She then examines the impact of international sanctions, finding that they can at times harm movements by generating new allies for authoritarian leaders or by shifting the locus of power from local civil resisters to international actors. Nonviolent Revolutions offers essential insights into the challenges that civil resisters face and elucidates why some of these movements failed. With a recent surge of popular uprisings across the Middle East, this book provides a valuable new understanding of the dynamics and potency of civil resistance and nonviolent revolt.
Download or read book The Last Revolutionaries written by Catherine Epstein and published by Harvard University Press. This book was released on 2009-06-30 with total page 337 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "The Last Revolutionaries" tells a story of unwavering political devotion: it follows the lives of German communists across the tumultuous twentieth century. Before 1945, German communists were political outcasts in the Weimar Republic and courageous resisters in Nazi Germany; they also suffered Stalin's Great Purges and struggled through emigration in countries hostile to communism. After World War II, they became leaders of East Germany, where they ran a dictatorial regime until they were swept out of power by the people's revolution of 1989. In a compelling collective biography, Catherine Epstein conveys the hopes, fears, dreams, and disappointments of a generation that lived their political commitment. Focusing on eight individuals, "The Last Revolutionaries" shows how political ideology drove people's lives. Some of these communists, including the East German leaders Walter Ulbricht and Erich Honecker, enjoyed great personal success. But others, including the purge victims Franz Dahlem and Karl Schirdewan, experienced devastating losses. And, as the book demonstrates, female and Jewish communists faced their own sets of difficulties in the movement to which they had given their all. Drawing on previously inaccessible sources as well as extensive personal interviews, Epstein offers an unparalleled portrait of the most enduring and influential generation of Central European communists. In the service of their party, these communists experienced solidarity and betrayal, power and persecution, sacrifice and reward, triumph and defeat. At once sordid and poignant, theirs is the story of European communism--from the heroic excitement of its youth, to the bureaucratic authoritarianism of its middle age, to the sorry debacle of its death.
Download or read book A Concise History of Germany written by Mary Fulbrook and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2019-01-03 with total page 307 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This third edition of Mary Fulbrook's much-admired and popular introduction to German history provides a clear and informative guide to the twists and turns of the story of the German lands and peoples from the early middle ages to the present day. Crisply synthesising a vast array of historical material, Fulbrook explores the interrelationships between social, political and cultural factors in the light of scholarly controversies. Since the second edition in 2004, there have been important changes in Germany, Europe and the wider world. This new edition features a significantly expanded chapter on Germany since 1990, encapsulating recent and dramatic developments that have transformed Germany's character and international standing. This single-volume history of Germany offers broad and accessible coverage and provides a useful guide for students, general readers, travellers to Germany and anyone with an interest in German history.
Download or read book Constructing Socialism written by Raymond G. Stokes and published by . This book was released on 2000 with total page 288 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Trabant cars carried many East Germans westward after the Berlin Wall came down in November 1989. The car's 1950s design, obvious environmental incorrectness and all-plastic body became a symbol of the technological limitations of East German communism. But as Raymond G. Stokes points out in this text, eastern Germany in 1945 was one of the most highly developed, technologically sophisticated industrial areas in the world. Despite the evident failings of its technology by the late 1980s, the German Democratic Republic maintained advanced technological capability in selected areas. If the system itself was fundamentally flawed, what explains successes under the very same system? Why could the successes not be repeated in other areas? And if examples of success are so isolated, how did East Germany last as long as it did?
Download or read book Remembering and Rethinking the GDR written by A. Saunders and published by Springer. This book was released on 2012-12-15 with total page 356 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Exploring the ways in which the GDR has been remembered since its demise in 1989/90, this volume asks how memory of the former state continues to shape contemporary Germany. Its contributors offer multiple perspectives on the GDR and offer new insights into the complex relationship between past and present.
Download or read book Sociology in Germany written by Stephan Moebius and published by Springer Nature. This book was released on 2021 with total page 228 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This open access book traces the development of sociology in Germany from the late 19th century to the present day, providing a concise overview of the main actors, institutional processes, theories, methods, topics and controversies. Throughout the book, the author relates the disciplines history to its historical, economic, political and cultural contexts. The book begins with sociology in the German Reich, the Weimar Republic, National Socialism and exile, before exploring sociology after 1945 as a key discipline of the young Federal Republic of Germany, and reconstructing the periods from 1945 to 1968 and from 1968 to 1990. The final chapters are devoted to sociology in the German Democratic Republic and the period from 1990 to the present day. This work will appeal to students and scholars of sociology, and to a general readership interested in the history of Germany. Stephan Moebius is Professor of Sociological Theory and Intellectual History at the University of Graz, Austria.
