National Identity in Eastern Germany

National Identity in Eastern Germany PDF Author: Andreas Staab
Publisher: Praeger
ISBN:
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 200

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Book Description
Analyzes the development from the divided to the unified Germany and asks to what extent East Germans have adopted a national identity in line with that of the West Germans. The text examines such identity markers as attitudes toward territory, economics, ethnicity and mass culture.

National Identity in Eastern Germany

National Identity in Eastern Germany PDF Author: Andreas Staab
Publisher: Praeger
ISBN:
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 200

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Book Description
Analyzes the development from the divided to the unified Germany and asks to what extent East Germans have adopted a national identity in line with that of the West Germans. The text examines such identity markers as attitudes toward territory, economics, ethnicity and mass culture.

The Path to the Berlin Wall

The Path to the Berlin Wall PDF Author: Manfred Wilke
Publisher: Berghahn Books
ISBN: 1782382895
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 374

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Book Description
The long path to the Berlin Wall began in 1945, when Josef Stalin instructed the Communist Party to take power in the Soviet occupation zone while the three Western allies secured their areas of influence. When Germany was split into separate states in 1949, Berlin remained divided into four sectors, with West Berlin surrounded by the GDR but lingering as a captivating showcase for Western values and goods. Following a failed Soviet attempt to expel the allies from West Berlin with a blockade in 1948–49, a second crisis ensued from 1958–61, during which the Soviet Union demanded once and for all the withdrawal of the Western powers and the transition of West Berlin to a “Free City.” Ultimately Nikita Khrushchev decided to close the border in hopes of halting the overwhelming exodus of East Germans into the West. Tracing this path from a German perspective, Manfred Wilke draws on recently published conversations between Khrushchev and Walter Ulbricht, head of the East German state, in order to reconstruct the coordination process between these two leaders and the events that led to building the Berlin Wall.

Germany in Transit

Germany in Transit PDF Author: Deniz Göktürk
Publisher: Univ of California Press
ISBN: 0520248945
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 614

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Book Description
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The Plans That Failed

The Plans That Failed PDF Author: André Steiner
Publisher: Berghahn Books
ISBN: 178238314X
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 236

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Book Description
The establishment of the Communist social model in one part of Germany was a result of international postwar developments, of the Cold War waged by East and West, and of the resultant partition of Germany. As the author argues, the GDR’s ‘new’ society was deliberately conceived as a counter-model to the liberal and marketregulated system. Although the hopes connected with this alternative system turned out to be misplaced and the planned economy may be thoroughly discredited today, it is important to understand the context in which it developed and failed. This study, a bestseller in its German version, offers an in-depth exploration of the GDR economy’s starting conditions and the obstacles to growth it confronted during the consolidation phase. These factors, however, were not decisive in the GDR’s lack of growth compared to that of the Federal Republic. As this study convincingly shows, it was the economic model that led to failure.

Cold War Germany, the Third World, and the Global Humanitarian Regime

Cold War Germany, the Third World, and the Global Humanitarian Regime PDF Author: Young-sun Hong
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 1107095573
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 445

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Book Description
This book examines global humanitarian efforts involving the two German states and Third World liberation movements during the Cold War.

Germany from Partition to Reunification

Germany from Partition to Reunification PDF Author: Henry Ashby Turner
Publisher: Yale University Press
ISBN: 9780300053470
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 284

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Book Description
A revised edition of "The Two Germanies since 1945" which discussed the partitioning of Germany after World War II and the formation of the two states. This revised text covers unification - the exodus of East Germans to the Federal Republic, breaching of the Berlin Wall and overthrow of communism.

Dissolution

Dissolution PDF Author: Charles S. Maier
Publisher: Princeton University Press
ISBN: 1400822254
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 461

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Book Description
Against the backdrop of one of the great transformations of our century, the sudden and unexpected fall of communism as a ruling system, Charles Maier recounts the history and demise of East Germany. Dissolution is his poignant, analytically provocative account of the decline and fall of the late German Democratic Republic. This book explains the powerful causes for the disintegration of German communism as it constructs the complex history of the GDR. Maier looks at the turning points in East Germany's forty-year history and at the mix of coercion and consent by which the regime functioned. He analyzes the GDR as it evolved from the purges of the 1950s to the peace movements and emerging youth culture of the 1980s, and then turns his attention to charges of Stasi collaboration that surfaced after 1989. In the context of describing the larger collapse of communism, Maier analyzes German elements that had counterparts throughout the Soviet bloc, including its systemic and eventually terminal economic crisis, corruption and privilege in the SED, the influence of the Stasi and the plight of intellectuals and writers, and the slow loss of confidence on the part of the ruling elite. He then discusses the mass protests and proliferation of dissident groups in 1989, the collapse of the ruling party, and the troubled aftermath of unification. Dissolution is the first book that spans the communist collapse and the ensuing process of unification, and that draws on newly available archival documents from the last phases of the GDR, including Stasi reports, transcripts of Politburo and Central Committee debates, and papers from the Economic Planning Commission, the Council of Ministers, and the office files of key party officials. This book is further bolstered by Maier's extensive knowledge of European history and the Cold War, his personal observations and conversations with East Germans during the country's dramatic transition, and memoirs and other eyewitness accounts published during the four-decade history of the GDR.

German Comedy

German Comedy PDF Author: Peter Schneider
Publisher: Macmillan
ISBN: 0374523584
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 230

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Book Description
A tour of Germany after reunification provides anecdotes of the West German people, an East German baker, Bavarian yodelers, Stalinist functionaries, and Western capitalists

West Germany and the Iron Curtain

West Germany and the Iron Curtain PDF Author: Astrid M. Eckert
Publisher: Oxford University Press
ISBN: 0190690062
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 445

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Book Description
West Germany and the Iron Curtain takes a fresh look at the history of Cold War Germany and the German reunification process from the spatial perspective of the West German borderlands that emerged along the volatile inter-German border after 1945. These border regions constituted the Federal Republic's most sensitive geographical space where it had to confront partition and engage its socialist neighbor East Germany in concrete ways. Each issue that arose in these borderlands - from economic deficiencies, border tourism, environmental pollution, landscape change, and the siting decision for a major nuclear facility - was magnified and mediated by the presence of what became the most militarized border of its day, the Iron Curtain. In topical chapters, the book addresses the economic consequences of the border for West Germany, which defined the border regions as depressed areas, and examines the cultural practice of western tourism to the Iron Curtain. At the heart of this deeply-researched book stands an environmental history of the Iron Curtain that explores transboundary pollution, landscape change, and a planned nuclear industrial site at Gorleben that was meant to bring jobs into the depressed border regions. The book traces these subjects across the caesura of 1989/90, thereby integrating the "long" postwar era with the post-unification decades. As Eckert demonstrates, the borderlands that emerged with partition and disappeared with reunification did not merely mirror some larger developments in the Federal Republic's history but actually helped to shape them.

Drawing the Line

Drawing the Line PDF Author: Carolyn Woods Eisenberg
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 9780521627177
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 542

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Book Description
Eisenberg argues that the United States made the decision to divide Germany, and that this was the key development in the emergence of the Cold War.