The People's State: East German Society from Hitler to Honecker

by Mary Fulbrook (Author)

• Used

  Hardcover
  2005

  $30.56

  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 modernising 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.

• Used

  Paperback
  2008

  $23.02

  What was life really like for East Germans, effectively imprisoned behind the Iron Curtain? This book explores the transformation of East German society from the ruins of Hitler's Third Reich to a modernizing industrial state. It also examines changing conceptions of normality within an authoritarian political system.

• New

  Paperback
  2008

  $46.46

  What was life really like for East Germans, effectively imprisoned behind the Iron Curtain? This book explores the transformation of East German society from the ruins of Hitler's Third Reich to a modernizing industrial state. It also examines changing conceptions of normality within an authoritarian political system.