The Freest Country in the World

East Germany's Final Year in Culture and Memory
Erscheinungsjahr 2023
ISBN: 978-1-64014-154-4
Verlag: Boydell & Brewer

Buch, Englisch, Band 236, 352 Seiten, Print PDF, Format (B × H): 152 mm x 229 mm, Gewicht: 640 g

Reihe: Studies in German Literature Linguistics and Culture

Shows that while the GDR is generally seen as - and mostly was - an oppressive and unfree country, from late 1989 until autumn 1990 it was the "freest country in the world": the dictatorship had disappeared while the welfare system remained.

Stephen Brockmann's new book explores the year 1989/1990 in East Germany, arguing that while the GDR is generally seen as - and was for most of its forty years - an oppressive and unfree country, from autumn 1989 until the autumn of 1990 it was the "freest country in the world," since the dictatorship had disappeared while the welfare system remained. That such freedom existed in the last months of the GDR and was a result of the actions of East Germans themselves has been obscured, Brockmann shows, by the now-standard description of the collapse of the GDR and the reunification of Germany as a triumph of Western democracy and capitalism.
Brockmann first addresses the culture of 1989/1990 by looking at various media from that final year, particularly film documentaries. He emphasizes punk culture and the growth of neo-Nazism and the Antifa movement - factors often ignored in accounts of the period. He then analyzes three later semiautobiographical novels about the period. He devotes chapters to dramatic films dealing with German reunification made relatively soon after the event and to more recent film and television depictions of the period, respectively. The final chapter looks at monuments and memorials of the 1989/1990 period, and a conclusion considers the implications of the book's findings for the present day.

Autoren/Hrsg.

Brockmann, Stephen

Fachgebiete

• Geisteswissenschaften Theater- und Filmwissenschaft | Andere Darstellende Künste Filmwissenschaft, Fernsehen, Radio Filmgeschichte
• Sozialwissenschaften Politikwissenschaft Politikwissenschaft Allgemein
• Geisteswissenschaften Literaturwissenschaft Literarische Stoffe, Motive und Themen
• Geisteswissenschaften Theater- und Filmwissenschaft | Andere Darstellende Künste Filmwissenschaft, Fernsehen, Radio Dokumentarfilme
• Geisteswissenschaften Literaturwissenschaft Deutsche Literatur

Inhaltsverzeichnis

Acknowledgments
Introduction: The Memory of Freedom
1: Protocols of History: Reunification Documentaries from 1989/1990
2: Anarchy in the GDR
3: The National Liberation Zone
4: Coming of Age as the State Dies: Three Novels and Their Heroes
5: Provincial Theater: Fiction Film Struggles to Address German Reunification in the Early 1990s
6: The Grand Theater of the East and the Imaginary Stasi: The Emergence of the Standard Depiction of German Reunification in Film and on Television
7: Ritual, Repetition, and Memory: Commemorating and Memorializing 1989/1990
Conclusion: The Last GDR
Selected Works Cited
Filmography
Index

Über Autor(innen)

Brockmann, Stephen
STEPHEN BROCKMANN is Professor of German with courtesy appointments in English and History at Carnegie Mellon University.