What Remains?

This book tells the story of the German Democratic Republic from the inside out, using the lens of generational change to deconstruct an intriguing array of social identities that had little to do with the official GDR version authoritarian rulers regularly sought to impose on their citizens. The author compares the identities of five societal subgroups (GDR writers and intellectuals; pastors and dissidents; women; youth; and working-class men), exploring the policies defining their lives and status before/during/after the 1989 Wende , as well as the diverging exit, voice and loyalty dilemmas encountered by each. The dialectical components treated in this work center on the extent to which eastern identities were lost, found and reconfigured across three generations, from 1949 to 1989, from 1990 to 2005, then up to 2020. It explores how the existence of a separate East German state and the socialization processes imposed on each subculture has not only complicated the search for national unity since 1990 but also -- perhaps more controversiallyinvoked new challenges directly related to ongoing East-West structural disparities since unification and the treatment of eastern Germans by often more privileged western Germans.

Analyses the evolution of East German identity from its origins in the German Democratic Republic to today Argues there is no single East German identity, but several sub-group identities Provides important context to current issues in German society

Auteur
Joyce Marie Mushaben is Curators' Distinguished Research Professor of Comparative Politics & Gender Studies (Emerita) at the University of Missouri-St. Louis, USA, and an Adjunct Professor in the BMW Center for German & European Studies at Georgetown University, USA.

Texte du rabat

This book tells the story of the German Democratic Republic from the inside out, using the lens of generational change to deconstruct an intriguing array of social identities that had little to do with the official GDR version authoritarian rulers regularly sought to impose on their citizens. The author compares the identities of five societal subgroups (GDR writers and intellectuals; pastors and dissidents; women; youth; and working-class men), exploring the policies defining their lives and status before/during/after the 1989 Wende, as well as the diverging exit, voice and loyalty dilemmas encountered by each. The dialectical components treated in this work center on the extent to which eastern identities were lost, found and reconfigured across three generations, from 1949 to 1989, from 1990 to 2005, then up to 2020. It explores how the existence of a separate East German state and the socialization processes imposed on each subculture has not only complicated the search for national unity since 1990 but also -- perhaps more controversially invoked new challenges directly related to ongoing East-West structural disparities since unification and the treatment of eastern Germans by often more privileged western Germans.

Contenu

Part I. DIMENSIONS OF THE DIALECTICAL IDENTITY.- Chapter One Exit, Voice and Loyalty : The Theoretical Parameters: Introduction.- 2. Selection by Consequences: What it meant to be GDR-German.- II. THE DECONSTRUCTION OF GDR-IDENITY.- Chapter Three Now out of Never : Exit, Voice and the Revolutionary Bandwagon.- Chapter Four Real-existing Socialism: Daily Life, Consumer Culture and Vitamin B.- III. RECONSTRUCTING EAST-GERMAN IDENTITY: SuBcultures.- Chapter Five Heimatgefühl and the Reconfiguration of Civil Society.- Chapter Six Conscience of the Nation: Writers, Artisans and the Fate of Intellectuals.- Chapter Seven From Losers to Winners, and Back: The Stasi, Pastors and Dissidents.- Chapter Eight East German Women: From State Paternalism to Private Patriarchy.- Chapter Nine The Anti-Political Identities of "Unified" Youth.- Chapter Ten No Country for Old Men: The Rise of the AfD.- Chapter 11 The Dialectical Identities of Germans United.- Epilogue: The Post-Merkel Era.- Appendix A: Interview Questionnaire. <b