After Auschwitz

From the moment of its inception, the East German state sought to cast itself as a clean break from the horrors of National Socialism. Nonetheless, the precipitous rise of xenophobic, far-right parties across the present-day German East is only the latest evidence that the GDR’s legacy cannot be understood in isolation from the Nazi era nor the political upheavals of today. This provocative collection reflects on the heretofore ignored or repressed aspects of German mainstream society—including right-wing extremism, anti-Semitism and racism—to call for an ambitious renewal of historical research and political education to place East Germany in its proper historical context.

From the moment of its inception, the East German state sought to cast itself as a clean break from the horrors of National Socialism. Nonetheless, the precipitous rise of xenophobic, far-right parties across the present-day German East is only the latest evidence that the GDR’s legacy cannot be understood in isolation from the Nazi era nor the political upheavals of today. This provocative collection reflects on the heretofore ignored or repressed aspects of German mainstream society—including right-wing extremism, anti-Semitism and racism—to call for an ambitious renewal of historical research and political education to place East Germany in its proper historical context.

New Perspectives on the German Democratic Republic: A Plea for a Paradigm Shift
Enrico Heitzer, Martin Jander, Anetta Kahane, and Patrice G. Poutrus

Part I: German Democratic Republic

Chapter 1. The Loyalty Trap: Wolfgang Steinitz and the Generation of GDR–Founding Fathers and Mothers
Anette Leo

Chapter 2. The Effects of a Taboo: Jews and Antisemitism in the GDR
Anetta Kahane

Chapter 3. Divided City – Shared Memory? Dealing with the Nazi Past in East and West Berlin from 1948 to 1961
Gerd Kühling

Chapter 4. The GDR and Opposition from the Right: A Plea for Broader Perspectives
Enrico Heitzer

Chapter 5. The GDR’s Judgment against Hans Globke: On the Conviction of the Nazi Lawyer and Head of the Federal Chancellery under Konrad Adenauer by the GDR’s Supreme Court in the Summer of 1963
Klaus Bästlein

Chapter 6. Might Through Morality? Some Comments on Antifascism in the GDR
Christoph Classen

Chapter 7. Toward a Sociology of Intelligence Agents: The GDR Foreign Intelligence Service as an Example
Helmut Müller Enbergs

Chapter 8. At War with Israel: Anti-Zionism in East Germany from the 1960s to the 1980s
Jeffrey Herf

Chapter 9. Holocaust Lite? Fiction in Works by Christa Wolf and Fred Wander
Agnes Mueller

Chapter 10. The Stigma of “Asociality” in the GDR: Reconstructing the Language of Marginalization
Katharina Lenski

Chapter 11. Lesbians and Gays in the German Democratic Republic: Self-Organizing, Politics of Remembrance, Discrimination, and Public Silencing
Christiane Leidinger and Heike Radvan

Chapter 12. Have We Learned the “Right” Lessons from History? Antiziganism and the GDR’s Dealings with Sinti and Roma
Ingrid Bettwieser and Tobias von Borcke

Chapter 13. The GDR People’s Chamber Declaration of 12 April 1990: Ending the “Universalization” of the Holocaust
Martin Jander

Part II: Federal Republic of Germany

Chapter 14. Understanding Silence: An Ongoing Search for People, Things, and Connections Not Really Unknown
Regina Scheer

Chapter 15. “A Reassessment of European History?” Developments, Trends, and Problems of a Culture of Remembrance in Europe
Günter Morsch

Chapter 16. Analogies and Imbalances: The Effects of Memorial Site Policies on Dealing with Places from the GDR Past on NS Reappraisal
Carola Rudnick

Chapter 17. From the Ideological Repudiation of Culpability to Ethnocentric Propaganda
Anetta Kahane

Chapter 18. The Book and the Audience: Comments on the Reception of Undeclared Wars with Israel in Germany
Jeffrey Herf

Chapter 19. Another Past that Lives On: My Trying Journey from Contemporary Witness to Contemporary Historian
Patrice Poutrus

Chapter 20. Nonconformity in a German Postwar Society: Questions for GDR and Transformation Studies
Raiko Hannemann

Chapter 21. Monumental Problems: Freedom and Unity Come to Berlin
Daniela Blei