Suchergebnisse

Auszug aus dem Buch "The Environmental Dialogue in the GDR: Literature, Church, Party and Interest Groups in their Socio-Political Context". Untersucht wird die Frage des Verhältnisses der DDR-Literatur zu ihrem soziopolitischen Kontext und speziell zu der zwischen 1983 und 1985 geführten Umwelttdiskussion. Es wird die Hypothese vertreten, daß die Literatur einen signifikanten Einfluß auf die sich verändernden politisch-kulturellen Werte in der DDR hatte. Die Wirkungsmöglichkeiten waren zwar begrenzt und vorwiegend indirekt, aber Ökologie- und Umweltfragen konnten verstärkt z.B. bei kirchlichen Gruppen diskutiert werden. Der Autor resümiert: "Die Literatur als Teil des Kommunikationsflusses in der DDR, des Dialogs, kann weiterhin zum besseren Verhältnis dort beitragen, wo Führung und Bevölkerung des Landes ihre Zukunft sehen, besonders nach Tschernobyl - wenn Literatur in ihrem politischen Kontext gesehen wird, als institutionell und funktionell interdependent mit anderen Elementen des soziopolitischen Systems der DDR." (psz)

Das von Michael Opitz und Michael Hofmann herausgegebene Metzler Lexikon DDR-Literatur unternimmt erfolgreich den Versuch, das heterogene Feld der DDR-Literatur zu beschreiben, ohne in ideologische Grabenkämpfe zu verfallen. Das Lexikon stellt nicht nur AutorInnen aus der DDR vor, sondern bietet Überblicke zu zentralen Themen und Genres, zu einflussreichen Anthologien und Zeitschriften, zu wichtigen (kultur)politischen Ereignissen, zum Literaturbetrieb und zur fatalen Verflechtung von Geist und Macht. Die hohe Zahl der BeiträgerInnen lässt verschiedene Standpunkte und Zugänge deutlich werden und widersetzt sich bewusst einer künstlichen Verengung des Begriffs 'DDR-Literatur'. ; The Metzler Lexikon DDR-Literatur (Metzler's Lexicon of GDR Literature) successfully delivers widely diversified information about all areas of literary life in the GDR without carrying out ideological evaluations. The encyclopeadia not only presents authors of and from the GDR, but gives insight into central topics and genres, important cultural and political events, influential anthologies and magazines, different aspects of literary life and to the fatal combination of intellect and power. It combines various positions and thereby consciously keeps the term 'GDR literature' open.

Hildegard Nickel summarizes positive and negative effects of 40 years of GDR socialism on women in her country. She critiques traditional GDR "studies of women" and calls for new research in women's studies.

A unique experiment at the frontlines of the Cold War, the German Democratic Republic collapsed more than thirty years ago. But it did not simply vanish. Far from being a footnote in history, the state and its legacies continue to inform identities, politics, and culture today. Studies of surveillance and government control, individual agency and equal opportunity, informal networks, strategic alliances, and strategies subverting limitations on freedom of expression prompt us to rethink our conceptualizations of the GDR.Introducing the work of a new generation of researchers, this collection applies such approaches to a wide range of examples from film, theatre, music, literature, radio, and law. The chapters explore and transgress temporal, national, and disciplinary boundaries. From these investigations emerges a pervasive pattern of informal, border-transcending spheres, subversive identity discourses, and effective agency. Drawing variously on concepts such as Eigen-Sinn, informal society, and alternative public spheres, the papers presented here highlight the relevance of GDR Studies looking forwards. More than a volume about just the past, The GDR Tomorrow holds implications for the future.

The article analyzes the contradictory positions taken by the SED on the issue of abortion, reflecting the anti-feminist foundation of socialism in the GDR. Throughout the 1950s and 60s the SED engaged in an unabashed pronatalist discourse in an effort to reconstruct the family while simultaneously pulling women into the work force. By 1970, the SED had to acknowledge the failure of its propagandistic and legislative attempts to construct the socialist "working mother." The 1972 decision to legalize abortion resulted from economic constraints and marked a turning point within the SED's strategy to legislate women's place in the GDR, coincidentally providing women with the right of self-determination over their bodies. (KvA)

This thesis reconsiders the nature of humiliation, defining it as an exercise of power, and argues that the SED consciously and as a matter of habit used humiliation to seek to shape people's lives in the GDR. It seeks to understand the processes that led to this happening and the consequences of it. The thesis considers different theoretical approaches to humiliation and contrasts it with shame. It argues that humiliation is a demonstrative use of power with a recurring set of elements: stripping of status; arbitrariness or unpredictability on the part of the humiliator; exclusion or rejection of the victim; and a personal sense of injustice matched by the lack of any remedy for the injustice suffered. It suggests that the emotions flowing from an act of humiliation follow a predictable course and the consequences for the victim, and often for the society, are serious and long-lasting. This understanding of humiliation is applied to a close reading of literary fiction, films, letters, diaries and memoirs from the whole period of the GDR and beyond. These sources suggest that humiliation or the fear of humiliation was a constantly recurring feature of the relationship between the people and representatives of the SED and the State. The thesis considers the founding myths, the norms and values implied by them, and how and why the Party breached these by humiliating its perceived opponents. It looks at the Party's hostility to Freudian as opposed to Marxist-Leninist ways of understanding human behaviour, analyses different forms of humiliation shown to take place in everyday life and discusses why the Party used humiliation against its own members. It concludes by considering the impact of humiliation on the attempts to develop the GDR as a 'normal' society and discusses some of the present-day implications of this understanding of humiliation.

Verlagsinfo: Competing representations of the former East German state in the German cultural memory. Twenty years after the fall of the Berlin Wall, the consequences of the country's divided past continue to be debated. The legacy of the German Democratic Republic occupies a major role in German popular culture, with audiences flocking to films claiming to depict the East German state "as it was." Politicians from both left and right make use of its legacy to support their parties' approach to unification, while former citizens of the GDR are still working through their own memories of the regime and adjusting to unification. Since 1989, competing representations of the East German state have emerged, some underlining its repressive nature, others lamenting the loss of a sense of community. The twentieth anniversary of the Wende is an occasion to reflect upon both the history of the GDR and the ways in which it has been remembered, and the present volume presents new research on the theme from a variety of perspectives, with sections on film and literature, museums and memorials, and historiography and politics.

From all of the German literature distributed in Poland during the first half of the nineteen fifties, that of the GDR was the most strongly represented, because like the People's Republic, it was part of the Eastern Bloc. A substantial part of this literature touched upon the themes of the Second World War. As some prominent Eastern German authors had taken part in the Spanish Civil War in 1936-1939, this subject also couldn't be ignored.The introduction in 1949 of socialist realism as the most important criterion of art, and particulary strong political pressure, led to a great deal of confusion and insecurity, not only for Polish publishing houses, but also among the censors, whose task was to take decisions about what literature could be printed. Censors' opinions in this period often differed, not only in terms of detailed matter, but also in the final decisions about the eventual fate of the title submitted for evaluation. ; From all of the German literature distributed in Poland during the first half of the nineteen fifties, that of the GDR was the most strongly represented, because like the People's Republic, it was part of the Eastern Bloc. A substantial part of this literature touched upon the themes of the Second World War. As some prominent Eastern German authors had taken part in the Spanish Civil War in 1936-1939, this subject also couldn't be ignored.The introduction in 1949 of socialist realism as the most important criterion of art, and particulary strong political pressure, led to a great deal of confusion and insecurity, not only for Polish publishing houses, but also among the censors, whose task was to take decisions about what literature could be printed. Censors' opinions in this period often differed, not only in terms of detailed matter, but also in the final decisions about the eventual fate of the title submitted for evaluation.

An Kinder- und Jugendliteratur (KJL) herrschte in der DDR, die ja bekanntlich in vielen Bereichen durch Mangelwirtschaft gekennzeichnet war, tatsächlich kein Mangel. Sie wurde vom Staat gefördert und unterstützt, weil sie als wichtiges Instrument der sozialistischen Erziehung von Kindern und Jugendlichen galt (vgl. Lüdecke 2002, S. 434). Insofern besaß die KJL in der DDR einen vergleichsweise höheren gesellschaftlichen, politischen und künstlerischen Stellenwert als in der alten Bundesrepublik. Auch war die Grenze zwischen AutorInnen, die für eine erwachsene und eine kindliche bzw. jugendliche Leserschaft schrieben, nicht so strikt gezogen, wie man dies aus der Bundesrepublik kannte. ; There was no shortage of children's and young adult literature in the German Democratic Republic (GDR )—it was promoted and supported by the state because it was an important instrument in the socialist education of children and young adults. Relative to this high status, it is not surprising that many of the best-known authors of children's and young adult's books in the GDR studied at the renowned »Johannes R. Becher« Institute for Literature in Leipzig. This first, and, for a long time, only institute for creative and literary writing in German speaking countries was founded in 1955 and mandated with the task of training socialist writers. It was closed after German reunification in 1990 but was incorporated in 1995 into the University of Leipzig as the Leipzig Institute for Literature. In this article, an overview of the structure, tasks and goals of the Johannes R. Becher Institute is given, and selected texts for children and young adults that were written by its students are examined. It also demonstrates how these texts can be socially and aesthetically classified within the framework and along the lines of the development of the socialist state.