Exiled in East Germany
Exiled in East Germany

Author: Sebastian Pampuch

Publisher: Walter de Gruyter GmbH & Co KG

Published: 2024-04-22

Total Pages: 320

ISBN-13: 3111203786

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The presence of Africans in the German Democratic Republic is very rarely thought of in connection with the experience of exile. Instead, Africans in the GDR are predominantly viewed through the prism of educational and labor migration. While such research has undoubtedly produced valuable insights, it often fails to adequately account for the implicit Eurocentrism, methodological nationalism, and anti-communist bias inherent in Western knowledge production. This study offers a different approach. Through biographical portrayal, it unfolds the life stories of African freedom fighters who lived in exile in the GDR and, ultimately, remained in reunified Germany, with the main case study being a Malawian activist who was expelled from East to West Berlin. Recounting his experiences along with those of some South African exiles, chief among them a former medical worker for the ANC’s armed wing, the study ethnographically reconstructs the multiple entanglements between the “Second” and “Third” worlds from the vantage point of the politically displaced within the concrete historical contexts of African decolonization, the struggle against the Malawian Banda dictatorship, and the struggle against South African apartheid.

Crossing the River
Crossing the River

Author: Victor Grossman

Publisher:

Published: 2003

Total Pages: 354

ISBN-13:

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Faced with an accusation from the US Army's highest legal authority in 1952, Grossman left his unit stationed in Bavaria and swam the Danube to East Germany. He traces his childhood and experiences as a student, worker, and soldier; then describes life in his new home among a surprisingly large community of defectors. There is no index. Annotation (c)2003 Book News, Inc., Portland, OR (booknews.com).

German Scholars in Exile
German Scholars in Exile

Author: Axel Fair-Schulz

Publisher:

Published: 2011

Total Pages: 0

ISBN-13: 9780739150238

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German Scholars in Exiledeals with intellectuals who fled Nazi Germany and found refuge in either the United States or in American Services in Great Britain and post-WWII Germany. The volume focuses on scholars who were outside the commonly known Max Horkheimer-Hannah Arendt circles, who are less well-known but not less important. Their experiences ranged from an outstanding career at an Ivy-League university to a return to the German Democratic Republic and a position as an economic advisor to East Berlin's party leadership. None had actual political power, but many asserted some degree of influence. Their intellecutal legacies can still be seen in today's political culture.

AntiFascism and Memory in East Germany
AntiFascism and Memory in East Germany

Author: Josie McLellan

Publisher: Clarendon Press

Published: 2004-10-07

Total Pages: 240

ISBN-13: 0191515337

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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 casts new 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 East Germans, 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 of their pre-war past.

The Last Revolutionaries
The Last Revolutionaries

Author: Catherine Epstein

Publisher: Harvard University Press

Published: 2009-06-30

Total Pages: 337

ISBN-13: 0674036549

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"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.

Stasiland
Stasiland

Author: Anna Funder

Publisher: Odyssey Editions

Published: 2015-10-29

Total Pages: 232

ISBN-13: 1623730376

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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.

Orderly and Humane
Orderly and Humane

Author: R. M. Douglas

Publisher:

Published: 2012

Total Pages: 0

ISBN-13: 9780300198201

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More than 12 million German-speaking civilians in Europe were driven from their homes in the wake of WWII, yet barely anyone noticed or remembers Immediately after the Second World War, the victorious Allies authorized and helped to carry out the forced relocation of German speakers from their homes across central and southern Europe to Germany. The numbers were almost unimaginable--between 12,000,000 and 14,000,000 civilians, most of them women and children--and the losses horrifying--at least 500,000 people, and perhaps many more, died while detained in former concentration camps, while locked in trains en route, or after arriving in Germany exhausted, malnourished, and homeless. This book is the first in any language to tell the full story of this immense man-made catastrophe. Based mainly on archival records of the countries that carried out the forced migrations and of the international humanitarian organizations that tried but failed to prevent the disastrous results, Orderly and Humane: The Expulsion of the Germans after the Second World War is an authoritative and objective account. It examines an aspect of European history that few have wished to confront, exploring how the expulsions were conceived, planned, and executed and how their legacy reverberates throughout central Europe today. The book is an important study of the largest recorded episode of what we now call "ethnic cleansing," and it may also be the most significant untold story of the Second World War.