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Beyond the Wall: A History of East Germany
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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
"A comparative viewpoint might have made clearer the peculiarity of East Germany's achievement and its tragedy."
"As a guide to East Germany's political history, Hoyer is commendably brisk and judicious."
"Hoyer covers the large political history with economy and confidence ..."
"Crafting an expansive and generous history of East Germany, Hoyer brings long-standing academic scholarship to a broader audience ..."
"It helps that she's a historian of immense ability whose early promise has been more than fulfilled with this brilliant follow-up to her debut Blood and Iron."
"Tepid descriptions are among this important book's weaknesses ..."
"Compelling ... Definitive."
"One way of reading Hoyer's revisionist history is as a takedown of western hubris ..."
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