On October 7th, 1949, the Democratic Republic of Germany was proclaimed, dividing Germany between East and West.
Seventy years later, we find ourselves in the days leading up to the German Studies Association’s annual meeting. A great deal has happened between 1949 and now, and we are delighted to present titles that provide comprehensive histories of this time period.
This week marks the fifty-eighth anniversary of the construction of the Berlin Wall. The Iron Curtain was assembled in the middle of Berlin in August 1961 and expanded over the following months to ultimately divide West Berlin from the surrounding East Germany, prohibiting East Germans to pass into West Germany for decades. Browse our relevant titles on the history and ramifications of a divided Germany.
Continue reading “A Divided Germany”On August 13, 1961, Berlin woke up to a shock: the East German Army had begun construction on the infamous Berlin Wall. The Wall was initially constructed in the middle of Berlin, and expanded over the following months. It entirely cut off West Berlin from the surrounding East Germany, prohibiting East Germans to pass into West Germany.
The Eastern Bloc claimed that the wall was erected to protect its population from fascist elements conspiring to prevent the “will of the people” in building a socialist state in East Germany. In practice, the Wall served to prevent the massive emigration and defection that marked East Germany and the communist Eastern Bloc during the post-World War II period. The Berlin Wall came to symbolize the “Iron Curtain” that separated Western Europe and the Eastern Bloc during the Cold War.
Browse Berghahn relevant titles on History of divided Germany:
MEMORIALIZING THE GDR
Monuments and Memory after 1989
Anna Saunders