Remembering the German Democratic Republic Divided Memory in a United Germany

This interdisciplinary volume provides a range of perspectives on the collective memory of the German Democratic Republic in contemporary Germany. Individual essays examine the controversial commemoration of the victims of state socialism, memories of the GDR state's institutions (e.g. The National People's Army and the State Security Police), museums and the debates they inspire, the memories of the GDR's former elites, memories of everyday life in the GDR, and the contested legacies of antifascism and socialism. Taken as a whole, the collection explores the parallels between coming to terms with the GDR past and continuing debates about memories of National Socialism.

DAVID CLARKE is Senior Lecturer in German at the University of Bath, UK. He has published widely on the literature of the GDR, and contemporary German cinema and literature.

UTE WÖLFEL is Lecturer in German at the University of Reading, UK,where she Teaches and Researches in GDR Studies, German Literature and Film. She is author of a monograph on the East German author Irmtraud Morgner, and has co-edited two volumes on German literature.

Foreword
Notes on the Contributors
PART I: INTRODUCTION
Remembering the German Democratic Republic in a United Germany; D.Clarke&U.Wölfel
The Politics of Remembering the GDR: Official and State-Mandated Memory since 1990; A.Beattie
PART II: MEMORIALS AND MUSEUMS
Representations of the Everyday and the Making of Memory: GDR History in Exhibitions and Museums; A.Ludwig
Reinterpreting the Soviet War Memorial in Berlin's Treptower Park after 1990; C.Glore Crimmins
'Transforming Berlin's Memory: Non-State Actors and GDR Memorial Politics Today; J.Wüstenberg
Reinventing Rosa Luxemburg: Commemorating Rosa Luxemburg in the Berlin Republic; B.Könczöl
PART III: GENERATIONS
Histories and Memories: Verklärung or Erklärung?; M.Fulbrook
Generation and Transition: East German Memory Cultures; R.Lehmann
PART IV: ORDINARY LIVES
Did Communists Have Better Sex? Sex and the Body in German Reunification; J.McLellan
From the 'Niche Society' to a Retreat from the World: East German Allotments as the Continuation of a GDR Tradition; A-M.Pailhès
'The Era Has Passed, But It's Nice to Remember': Eastern Identifications with the GDR Past and Unified Germany; C.Hyland
Remembering the Uprising of 17 June 1953; R.Millington
PART V: ELITE MEMORIES
Red Radiation: East German Army Officers in Post-Unification Germany; A.Bickford
Autobiography as Participation in the 'Master Narrative': GDR Academics after Unification; C.Lahusen
'The Past Does Not Repeat Itself, But it Rhymes': Autobiographies by Elites from the Confederation of States of America and the German Democratic Republic; S.Zahlmann
At Home with the Stasi: Gedenkstätte Hohenschönhausen as Historic House; S.Jones
Memories and Fantasies about and by the Stasi; D.Bathrick
Between Denigration, Idealization and Historicization: Memories of Nazism and Everyday Antifascism; J.Sayner
PART VII: REMEMBERING ANTIFASCISM
How Memory is Remembered: The Potsdam Memory Archive 1995–1996; H.Peitsch
Notes
Bibliography