The United States and Germany in the Era of the Cold War, 1945-1990
Author: Detlef Junker
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Published: 2004-05-17
Total Pages: 610
ISBN-13: 0521834201
DOWNLOAD EBOOKPublisher Description
Posts
Death in East Germany, 1945-1990
Author: Felix Robin Schulz
Publisher: Berghahn Books
Published: 2013-09-01
Total Pages: 248
ISBN-13: 1782380140
DOWNLOAD EBOOKAs the first historical study of East Germany‘s sepulchral culture, this book explores the complex cultural responses to death since the Second World War. Topics include the interrelated areas of the organization and municipalization of the undertaking industry; the steps taken towards a socialist cemetery culture such as issues of design, spatial layout, and commemorative practices; the propagation of cremation as a means of disposal; the wide-spread introduction of anonymous communal areas for the internment of urns; and the emergence of socialist and secular funeral rituals. The author analyses the manifold changes to the system of the disposal of the dead in East Germany—a society that not only had to negotiate the upheaval of military defeat but also urbanization, secularization, a communist regime, and a planned economy. Stressing a comparative approach, the book reveals surprising similarities to the development of Western countries but also highlights the intricate local variations within the GDR and sheds more light on the East German state and its society.
One Sound, Two Worlds
Author: Michael Rauhut
Publisher: Berghahn Books
Published: 2019-05-14
Total Pages: 336
ISBN-13: 1789201942
DOWNLOAD EBOOKFor all of its apparent simplicity—a few chords, twelve bars, and a supposedly straightforward American character—blues music is a complex phenomenon with cultural significance that has varied greatly across different historical contexts. One Sound, Two Worlds examines the development of the blues in East and West Germany, demonstrating the multiple ways social and political conditions can shape the meaning of music. Based on new archival research and conversations with key figures, this comparative study provides a cultural, historical, and musicological account of the blues and the impact of the genre not only in the two Germanys, but also in debates about the history of globalization.
Tailoring Truth
Author: Jon Berndt Olsen
Publisher: Berghahn Books
Published: 2017-06
Total Pages: 278
ISBN-13: 1785335022
DOWNLOAD EBOOKBy looking at state-sponsored memory projects, such as memorials, commemorations, and historical museums, this book reveals that the East German communist regime obsessively monitored and attempted to control public representations of the past to legitimize its rule. It demonstrates that the regime’s approach to memory politics was not stagnant, but rather evolved over time to meet different demands and potential threats to its legitimacy. Ultimately the party found it increasingly difficult to control the public portrayal of the past, and some dissidents were able to turn the party’s memory politics against the state to challenge its claims of moral authority.
Red Prometheus
Author: Dolores L. Augustine
Publisher: MIT Press
Published: 2007
Total Pages: 413
ISBN-13: 0262012367
DOWNLOAD EBOOKThis analysis of the relationship between science and totalitarian rule in one of the most technically advanced countries in the East bloc examines professional autonomy under dictatorship and the place of technology in Communist ideology. In Cold War-era East Germany, the German tradition of science-based technology merged with a socialist system that made technological progress central to its ideology. Technology became an important part of East German socialist identity--crucial to how Communists saw their system and how citizens saw their state. In Red Prometheus, Dolores Augustine examines the relationship between a dictatorial system and the scientific and engineering communities in East Germany from the end of the Second World War through the 1980s. Drawing on newly opened archives and extensive interviews, Augustine looks in detail at individual scientists' interactions with the East German system, examining the effectiveness of their resistance against the party's totalitarian impulses. She explains why many German scientists and engineers who were deported to the Soviet Union after World War II returned to East Germany rather than defecting to the capitalist West, traces scientists' attempts to hold on to some aspects of professional autonomy, and describes challenges to their professional identity on the factory floor. Augustine examines the quality of science and technology produced under Communist rule, looking at failed research projects and clashing cultures of innovation. She looks at technological myth-building in science fiction and propaganda. She explores individual career strategies, including the role played by gender in high-tech professions, and the ways that both enterprises and individuals responded to increasing state and party control of research during the 1980s. We cannot understand the economic choices made by East Germany, Augustine argues, unless we understand the cultural values reflected in the East German belief in technology as indispensable to progress and industrial development.
The History of the Stasi
Author: Jens Gieseke
Publisher: Berghahn Books
Published: 2014-01-01
Total Pages: 277
ISBN-13: 1782382550
DOWNLOAD EBOOKA 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.
A People's Music
Author: Helma Kaldewey
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Published: 2020
Total Pages: 345
ISBN-13: 1108486185
DOWNLOAD EBOOKChronicles the history of jazz over the complete lifespan of East Germany, from 1945 to 1990, for the first time.
Visions of the End of the Cold War in Europe, 1945-1990
Author: Frédéric Bozo
Publisher: Berghahn Books
Published: 2012
Total Pages: 367
ISBN-13: 0857452886
DOWNLOAD EBOOKExploring the visions of the end of the Cold War that have been put forth since its inception until its actual ending, this volume brings to the fore the reflections, programmes, and strategies that were intended to call into question the bipolar system and replace it with alternative approaches or concepts. These visions were associated not only with prominent individuals, organized groups and civil societies, but were also connected to specific historical processes or events. They ranged from actual, thoroughly conceived programmes, to more blurred, utopian aspirations -- or simply the belief that the Cold War had already, in effect, come to an end. Such visions reveal much about the contexts in which they were developed and shed light on crucial moments and phases of the Cold War.
After the Expulsion
Author: Pertti Ahonen
Publisher: Oxford University Press on Demand
Published: 2003
Total Pages: 313
ISBN-13: 9780199259892
DOWNLOAD EBOOKExamining the consequences of the removal of some 15 million Germans from Central and Eastern Europe after World War II, this text explores the impact of this human influx on the political development of West Germany, where more than half of those expelled settled, and analyses the consequences for Germany's foreign policy throughout the Cold War.
Constructing Socialism
Author: Raymond G. Stokes
Publisher:
Published: 2000
Total Pages: 288
ISBN-13:
DOWNLOAD EBOOKTrabant 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?
