Remembering East Germany

Remembering East Germany
Author: Richard A. Zipser
Publisher: Bookbaby
Total Pages: 380
Release: 2021-12-29
Genre: History
ISBN: 9781667807485

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Remembering East Germany is a memoir focused on experiences Richard A. Zipser had while travelling and doing research in communist East Germany during the 1970s and 1980s. The memoir is based primarily on a 396-page file the East German secret police--the Stasi--compiled on him with the help of at least ten informants over a twelve-year period. The reports in the file provide a kind of factual foundation for the memoir, as do reports about Zipser found in the Stasi-files of other persons, various printed materials, letters he wrote and received, and some memories as well. After the collapse of the Berlin Wall in 1989 and German reunification in 1990, Zipser was able to obtain a copy of his Stasi-file, a process that took seven years from beginning to end. His memoir provides unique insights into a society and literary scene that no other Westerner was able to experience so intensely. It reflects, on several levels, how he experienced communist East Germany and how it in turn experienced him. This fascinating book transports its readers back in time to the chilling Cold War days of yesteryear.

Remembering the German Democratic Republic

Remembering the German Democratic Republic
Author: D. Clarke
Publisher: Springer
Total Pages: 275
Release: 2011-11-08
Genre: Political Science
ISBN: 0230349692

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Memories of and attitudes to the German Democratic Republic (GDR), or East Germany, within contemporary Germany are characterized by their variety and complexity, whilst the debate over how to remember the GDR tells us a lot about how Germans see themselves and their future. This volume provides a range of international perspectives.

Memories of Life in East Germany: Snapshots

Memories of Life in East Germany: Snapshots
Author: Richard A. Zipser
Publisher: Bookbaby
Total Pages: 268
Release: 2022-07-15
Genre:
ISBN: 9781667842431

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The German Democratic Republic, commonly referred to as East Germany, was neither democratic nor a republic. It was a repressive dictatorship. "Memories of Life in East Germany: Snapshots" is a memoir comprised of 58 short prose texts focusing on experiences Richard A. Zipser had or things he observed while traveling and doing research in communist East Germany during the 1960s, 70s and 80s. This book is a companion piece to his first memoir, "Remembering East Germany," which he published in 2021. Like its predecessor, Snapshots offers readers the unique perspective of an American who, as an outsider living in East Germany, gained unusual insider knowledge and experience of that totalitarian society. Through the snapshots which capture telling moments, people, events, and encounters, Zipser partially recreates the bygone world he experienced firsthand as a young professor, for the benefit of English-speaking readers today. This fascinating book, like its "sibling" memoir, provides unique insights into a closed society behind the Iron Curtain that no other Westerner was able to experience so intensely. It reflects, on multiple levels, how Zipser experienced communist East Germany and how it in turn experienced him. His book will transport its readers back in time to the chilling Cold War days of yesteryear and East Germany, a country that in 1990 suddenly and unexpectedly vanished. Richard A. Zipser is Professor Emeritus of German at the University of Delaware. His field of specialization is literature of the former German Democratic Republic (East Germany). He is the author of several major books on different and very important aspects of East German literature and cultural policy.

Remembering the German Democratic Republic

Remembering the German Democratic Republic
Author: D. Clarke
Publisher: Springer
Total Pages: 299
Release: 2011-11-08
Genre: Political Science
ISBN: 0230349692

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Memories of and attitudes to the German Democratic Republic (GDR), or East Germany, within contemporary Germany are characterized by their variety and complexity, whilst the debate over how to remember the GDR tells us a lot about how Germans see themselves and their future. This volume provides a range of international perspectives.

Official Memory

Official Memory
Author: John Robert Nilsson
Publisher:
Total Pages: 234
Release: 2001
Genre: Germany (East)
ISBN:

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Legacies of Stalingrad

Legacies of Stalingrad
Author: Christina Morina
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Total Pages: 0
Release: 2013-08-22
Genre: History
ISBN: 9781107614406

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Christina Morina's book examines the history of the Eastern Front war and its impact on German politics and society throughout the postwar period. She argues that the memory of the Eastern Front war was one of the most crucial and contested themes in each part of the divided Germany. Although the Holocaust gained the most prominent position in West German memory, official memory in East Germany centered on the war against the USSR. The book analyzes the ways in which these memories emerged in postwar German political culture during and after the Cold War, and how views of these events played a role in contemporary political debates. The analysis pays close attention to the biographies of the protagonists both during the war and after, drawing distinctions between the accepted, public memory of events and individual encounters with the war.

Rereading East Germany

Rereading East Germany
Author: Karen Leeder
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Total Pages: 279
Release: 2015
Genre: History
ISBN: 1107006368

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The first volume in English about the German Democratic Republic (GDR) as a cultural phenomenon, with essays by leading scholars providing a chronological and genre-based overview along with close readings of individual works. It addresses the history and context of GDR culture, including the two decades since its decline.

Stasi

Stasi
Author: John O. Koehler
Publisher: Basic Books
Total Pages: 587
Release: 2008-08-05
Genre: History
ISBN: 0786724412

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In this gripping narrative, John Koehler details the widespread activities of East Germany's Ministry for State Security, or "Stasi." The Stasi, which infiltrated every walk of East German life, suppressed political opposition, and caused the imprisonment of hundreds of thousands of citizens, proved to be one of the most powerful secret police and espionage services in the world. Koehler methodically reviews the Stasi's activities within East Germany and overseas, including its programs for internal repression, international espionage, terrorism and terrorist training, art theft, and special operations in Latin America and Africa. Koehler was both Berlin bureau chief of the Associated Press during the height of the Cold War and a U.S. Army Intelligence officer. His insider's account is based on primary sources, such as U.S. intelligence files, Stasi documents made available only to the author, and extensive interviews with victims of political oppression, former Stasi officers, and West German government officials. Drawing from these sources, Koehler recounts tales that rival the most outlandish Hollywood spy thriller and, at the same time, offers the definitive contribution to our understanding of this still largely unwritten aspect of the history of the Cold War and modern Germany.

AntiFascism and Memory in East Germany

AntiFascism and Memory in East Germany
Author: Josie McLellan
Publisher: Oxford University Press
Total Pages: 241
Release: 2004-10-07
Genre: History
ISBN: 0199276269

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AntiFascism and Memory in East Germany is a book about remembering and about forgetting, about war, and about the peace which eventually followed. In the unlikely setting of the German Democratic Republic (GDR), the Spanish Civil War became the subject of a debate which both predated and outlasted the Cold War, involving historians, veterans, politicains, censors, artists, writers, and Church activists. Examining these multiple memories and interpretations of Spain castsnew and unexpected light on the legacy of the Spanish Civil War, and the relationship between history and memory under state socialism.The ruling Socialist Unity Party made full use of the antifascist legacy as legitimation for a non-democratic state. But despite dogged attempts at control and censorship, the state was unable to silence competing voices. All over East Germany, International Brigade veterans preserved their version of events - in letters to each other, in communications with the party, in discussions with friends and family around the kitchen table, and in memoirs written for the 'desk drawer'. For younger EastGermans, the war retained an undeniably romantic aura. From their perspective, Spain was a far-away land to which they were forbidden to travel, the stuff of camp-fire singalongs and fantasies of adventure.This book dissects the relationship between state-sponsored history, the lobbying of veterans, cultural interpretations of war, and the memory traces left behind by marginalised or politically oppositional groups and individuals. It is a cultural history of memory under state socialism, a social history of veteran groups and their relationship with the state, and a political history of communist culture. Above all, it is the story of how post-war Europeans came to terms with the heavy burden oftheir pre-war past.