Resources This book is available in Oxford Scholarship Online - view abstracts and keywords at book and chapter level.
Related Categories
|
|
|
Behind the Berlin Wall
East Germany and the Frontiers of Power
Patrick Major
336 pages
|
12 b/w illustrations, numerous maps
|
234x156mm
978-0-19-924328-0
|
Hardback
|
26 November 2009
|
|
This item is printed to order. Items which are printed to order are normally despatched and charged within 5-10 days.
|
|
|
- The symbol of the Cold War, as seen 'from below'
- Covers the entire history of the GDR and beyond, from 1945 to the present day
- Provocatively argues that Beatlemania and not Kennedy, ordinary letter-writers and not dissident elites, finally undermined the Wall through people power
- Innovative cultural approach - draws on music, film, and East German spy thrillers
Few historical changes occur literally overnight, but on 13 August 1961 eighteen million East Germans awoke to find themselves walled in by an edifice which was to become synonymous with the Cold War: the Berlin Wall.
This new history rejects traditional, top-down approaches to Cold War politics, exploring instead how the border closure affected ordinary East Germans, from workers and farmers to teenagers and even party members, 'caught out' by Sunday the Thirteenth. Party, police and Stasi reports reveal why one in six East Germans fled the country during the 1950s, undermining communist rule and forcing the
eleventh-hour decision by Khrushchev and Ulbricht to build a wall along the Cold War's frontline.
Did East Germans resist or come to terms with immurement? Did the communist regime become more or less dictatorial within the confines of the so-called 'Antifascist Defence Rampart'? Using film and literature, but also the GDR's losing battle against Beatlemania, Patrick Major's cross-disciplinary study suggests that popular culture both reinforced and undermined the closed society. Linking external and internal developments, Major argues that the GDR's official quest for international recognition, culminating in Ostpolitik and United Nations membership in the early 1970s, became its undoing, unleashing a human rights movement which fed into, but then broke with, the
protests of 1989. After exploring the reasons for the fall of the Wall and reconstructing the heady days of the autumn revolution, the author reflects on the fate of the Wall after 1989, as it moved from demolition into the realm of memory.Readership: Students and scholars of Cold War history and politics; all those interested in the history of the Berlin Wall and life in East Germany
|
|
|
Patrick Major, Professor of History, University of Reading
|
|
|
"Major's mastery of the archival sources is most impressive...a model of a truly integrated history...indispensable for anyone seeking to understand the origins and reality of the modern 'State With the Wall'." - Diethelm Prowe, German History "Major succeeds in producing a truly integrated, readable, and thought-provoking history of politics and people that adds significantly to our understanding of the GDR." - Bill Niven, Central European History "This study offers such a wealth of data, information, insights, and judgements" - Michael Kubina, German Historical Institute London Bulletin "provide[s] a fascinating and astute insight into the workings of East German
communism." - Josie McLellan, English Historical Review
|
|
|
1: Introduction
Part I: Before the Wall 1945-61
2: East Germany's Dual Crisis: Politics and Economics on the Eve of the Wall
3: Crossing the Line: Republikflucht between Defection and Migration
4: Holding the Line: Policing the Open Border
Part II: Behind the Wall 1961-89
5: Walled In: 13 August 1961
6: In the Shadow of the Wall
7: Wanderlust: Travel, Emigration and the Movement
Part III: Beyond the Wall
8: The Fall of the Wall: 9 November 1989
9: Seeking Closure: Remembering the Wall
|
|
|
|
The specification in this catalogue, including without limitation price, format, extent, number of illustrations, and month of publication, was as accurate as possible at the time the catalogue was compiled. Occasionally, due to the nature of some contractual restrictions, we are unable to ship a specific product to a particular territory. Jacket images are provisional and liable to change before publication.
|
|
