The Germans and the East
The Germans and the East

Author: Charles W. Ingrao

Publisher: Purdue University Press

Published: 2008

Total Pages: 470

ISBN-13: 9781557534439

DOWNLOAD EBOOK

The editors present a collection of 23 historical papers exploring relationships between "the Germans" (necessarily adopting different senses of the term for different periods or different topics) and their immediate neighbors to the East. The eras discussed range from the Middle Ages to European integration. Examples of specific topics addressed include the Teutonic order in the development of the political culture of Northeastern Europe during the Middle ages, Teutonic-Balt relations in the chronicles of the Baltic Crusades, the emergence of Polenliteratur in 18th century Germany, German colonization in the Banat and Transylvania in the 18th century, changing meanings of "German" in Habsburg Central Europe, German military occupation and culture on the Eastern Front in Word War I, interwar Poland and the problem of Polish-speaking Germans, the implementation of Nazi racial policy in occupied Poland, Austro-Czechoslovak relations and the post-war expulsion of the Germans, and narratives of the lost German East in Cold War West Germany.

Jews and Germans in Eastern Europe
Jews and Germans in Eastern Europe

Author: Tobias Grill

Publisher: Walter de Gruyter GmbH & Co KG

Published: 2018-09-24

Total Pages: 320

ISBN-13: 3110492482

DOWNLOAD EBOOK

For many centuries Jews and Germans were economically and culturally of significant importance in East-Central and Eastern Europe. Since both groups had a very similar background of origin (Central Europe) and spoke languages which are related to each other (German/Yiddish), the question arises to what extent Jews and Germans in Eastern Europe share common historical developments and experiences. This volume aims to explore not only entanglements and interdependences of Jews and Germans in Eastern Europe from the late middle ages to the 20th century, but also comparative aspects of these two communities. Moreover, the perception of Jews as Germans in this region is also discussed in detail.

The German Myth of the East
The German Myth of the East

Author: Vejas G. Liulevicius

Publisher: Oxford University Press

Published: 2010-12-09

Total Pages: 314

ISBN-13: 0199605165

DOWNLOAD EBOOK

An examination of the various different expressions of the distinctive German 'myth of the East' that has been such a marked feature of German culture over the last two centuries, influencing German attitudes both to Eastern Europe itself and also to Germans' own sense of identity.

Becoming East German
Becoming East German

Author: Mary Fulbrook

Publisher: Berghahn Books

Published: 2013-09-01

Total Pages: 313

ISBN-13: 0857459759

DOWNLOAD EBOOK

For roughly the first decade after the demise of the GDR, professional and popular interpretations of East German history concentrated primarily on forms of power and repression, as well as on dissent and resistance to communist rule. Socio-cultural approaches have increasingly shown that a single-minded emphasis on repression and coercion fails to address a number of important historical issues, including those related to the subjective experiences of those who lived under communist regimes. With that in mind, the essays in this volume explore significant physical and psychological aspects of life in the GDR, such as health and diet, leisure and dining, memories of the Nazi past, as well as identity, sports, and experiences of everyday humiliation. Situating the GDR within a broader historical context, they open up new ways of interpreting life behind the Iron Curtain – while providing a devastating critique of misleading mainstream scholarship, which continues to portray the GDR in the restrictive terms of totalitarian theory.

Orderly and Humane
Orderly and Humane

Author: R. M. Douglas

Publisher: Yale University Press

Published: 2012-06-26

Total Pages: 696

ISBN-13: 0300183763

DOWNLOAD EBOOK

The award-winning history of 12 million German-speaking civilians in Europe who were driven from their homes after WWII: “a major achievement” (New Republic). Immediately after the Second World War, the victorious Allies authorized the forced relocation of ethnic Germans from their homes across central and southern Europe to Germany. The numbers were almost unimaginable: between 12 and 14 million civilians, most of them women and children. And the losses were horrifying: at least five hundred thousand people, and perhaps many more, died while detained in former concentration camps, locked in trains, or after arriving in Germany malnourished, and homeless. In this authoritative and objective account, historian R.M. Douglas examines an aspect of European history that few have wished to confront, exploring how the forced migrations were conceived, planned, and executed, and how their legacy reverberates throughout central Europe today. The first comprehensive history of this immense manmade catastrophe, Orderly and Humane is an important study of the largest recorded episode of what we now call "ethnic cleansing." It may also be the most significant untold story of the World War II.

Occupation in the East
Occupation in the East

Author: Stephan Lehnstaedt

Publisher: Berghahn Books

Published: 2016-11-01

Total Pages: 318

ISBN-13: 1785333240

DOWNLOAD EBOOK

Following their occupation by the Third Reich, Warsaw and Minsk became home to tens of thousands of Germans. In this exhaustive study, Stephan Lehnstaedt provides a nuanced, eye-opening portrait of the lives of these men and women, who constituted a surprisingly diverse population—including everyone from SS officers to civil servants, as well as ethnically German city residents—united in its self-conception as a “master race.” Even as they acclimated to the daily routines and tedium of life in the East, many Germans engaged in acts of shocking brutality against Poles, Belarusians, and Jews, while social conditions became increasingly conducive to systematic mass murder.

Coming Home to Germany?
Coming Home to Germany?

Author: David Rock

Publisher: Berghahn Books

Published: 2002

Total Pages: 264

ISBN-13: 9781571817181

DOWNLOAD EBOOK

The end of World War II led to one of the most significant forced population transfers in history: the expulsion of over 12 million ethnic Germans from Central and Eastern Europe between 1945 and 1950 and the subsequent emigration of another four million in the second half of the twentieth century. Although unprecedented in its magnitude, conventional wisdom has it that the integration of refugees, expellees, and Aussiedler was a largely successful process in postwar Germany. While the achievements of the integration process are acknowledged, the volume also examines the difficulties encountered by ethnic Germans in the Federal Republic and analyses the shortcomings of dealing with this particular phenomenon of mass migration and its consequences.

The Lost German East
The Lost German East

Author: Andrew Demshuk

Publisher: Cambridge University Press

Published: 2012-04-30

Total Pages: 325

ISBN-13: 1107020735

DOWNLOAD EBOOK

After 1945, Germany was inundated with ethnic German refugees expelled from Eastern Europe. Andrew Demshuk explores why they integrated into West German society.

Comrades of Color
Comrades of Color

Author: Quinn Slobodian

Publisher: Berghahn Books

Published: 2015-12-01

Total Pages: 335

ISBN-13: 1782387064

DOWNLOAD EBOOK

In keeping with the tenets of socialist internationalism, the political culture of the German Democratic Republic strongly emphasized solidarity with the non-white world: children sent telegrams to Angela Davis in prison, workers made contributions from their wages to relief efforts in Vietnam and Angola, and the deaths of Patrice Lumumba, Ho Chi Minh, and Martin Luther King, Jr. inspired public memorials. Despite their prominence, however, scholars have rarely examined such displays in detail. Through a series of illuminating historical investigations, this volume deploys archival research, ethnography, and a variety of other interdisciplinary tools to explore the rhetoric and reality of East German internationalism.

The People's State
The People's State

Author: Mary Fulbrook

Publisher: Yale University Press

Published: 2008-12-02

Total Pages: 470

ISBN-13: 0300176384

DOWNLOAD EBOOK

What was life really like for East Germans, effectively imprisoned behind the Iron Curtain? The headline stories of Cold War spies and surveillance by the secret police, of political repression and corruption, do not tell the whole story. After the unification of Germany in 1990 many East Germans remembered their lives as interesting, varied, and full of educational, career, and leisure opportunities: in many ways “perfectly ordinary lives.” Using the rich resources of the newly-opened GDR archives, Mary Fulbrook investigates these conflicting narratives. She explores the transformation of East German society from the ruins of Hitler's Third Reich to a modernizing industrial state. She examines changing conceptions of normality within an authoritarian political system, and provides extraordinary insights into the ways in which individuals perceived their rights and actively sought to shape their own lives. Replacing the simplistic black-and-white concept of “totalitarianism” by the notion of a “participatory dictatorship,” this book seeks to reinstate the East German people as actors in their own history.