Inventing a Socialist Nation: Heimat and the Politics of Everyday Life in the GDR, 1945–90

by Jan Palmowski

• ISBN13: 9780521111775
• ISBN10: 0521111773
• Edition: 1st
• Format: Hardcover
• Copyright: 2009-12-14
• Publisher: Cambridge University Press

Summary

Twenty years after the collapse of the German Democratic Republic, historians still struggle to explain how an apparently stable state imploded with such vehemence. This is the first book to show how 'national' identity was invented in the GDR and how citizens engaged with it. Jan Palmowski argues that it was hard for individuals to identify with the GDR amid the threat of Stasi informants and with the accelerating urban and environmental decay of the 1970s and 1980s. Since socialism contradicted its own ideals of community, identity and environmental care, citizens developed rival meanings of nationhood and identities and learned to mask their growing distance from socialism beneath regular public assertions of socialist belonging. This stabilized the party's rule until 1989. However, when the revolution came, the alternative identifications citizens had developed for decades allowed them to abandon their 'nation', the GDR, with remarkable ease.

Table of Contents

List of illustrations	p. viii
List of maps	p. x
Acknowledgements	p. xi
List of abbreviations	p. xiv
Introduction	p. 1
Socialism, Heimat and the Construction Of Identity	p. 21
Cultural renewal and national division, 1945-c. 1958	p. 23
Traces of stones	p. 65
Public and Private Transcripts	p. 109
Heimat and identity in the Honecker era	p. 111
Citizenship and participation in the local community-'Join in!'	p. 149
Environmental destruction	p. 186
Power, Practices and Meanings	p. 223
Social drama and the euphemization of power	p. 226
Cultural practices, Eigen-Sinn and hidden meanings	p. 259
Conclusion: From citizens to revolutionaries	p. 295
Bibliography	p. 314
Index	p. 338
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