Home › Books › Beyond the Wall: A History of East Germany
Beyond the Wall: A History of East Germany
by
84/99
Critics' Rating Index
78/99
Readers' Rating Index
80/99
Scholars' Citation Index
84/99
Volume of Reviews
70/99
Volume of Reader Ratings
Sign in to add to your shelf, rate, or review this book.
About This Book
From the ashes of the Second World War to the fall of the Berlin Wall, the definitive new history of East Germany In 1990, a country disappeared. When the Iron Curtain fell, East Germany ceased to be. For over forty years, from the ruin of the Second World War to the cusp of a new millennium, the German Democratic Republic presented a radically different Germany than what had come before and what exists today. Socialist solidarity, secret police, central planning, barbed wire: this was a Germany forged on the fault lines of ideology and geopolitics. In Beyond the Wall, acclaimed historian Katja Hoyer sets aside the usual Cold War caricatures of the GDR to offer a kaleidoscopic new vision of this vanished country, revealing the rich political, social, and cultural landscape that existed amid oppression and hardship. Drawing on a vast array of never-before-seen interviews and documents, this is the definitive history of the other Germany, beyond the Wall.
Reviews
"But it's when she's discussing the lives of ordinary people that her book really comes alive ..."
"It is not an easy message to get across, but Hoyer is uniquely placed to do it."
"Compelling ... Definitive."
"One way of reading Hoyer's revisionist history is as a takedown of western hubris ..."
"Fast-paced, vivid and engaging."
"A comparative viewpoint might have made clearer the peculiarity of East Germany's achievement and its tragedy."
"Crafting an expansive and generous history of East Germany, Hoyer brings long-standing academic scholarship to a broader audience ..."
"Hoyer makes a strong case for paying the vanished state its historical due."
Preview
Reader Reviews
0 reviewsSign in to write a review.
No reader reviews yet. Be the first!