Beyond the Wall: East Germany, 1949-1990

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Hoyer is becoming the authoritative voice in the English-speaking world for all things German. Thanks to her, German history has the prominence in the Anglosphere it certainly deserves.” While the end for East Germany came fast as its economy collapsed and its population actively protested on the streets, Hoyer seems keen to record some elements of its culture as positive. She notes the very high participation rate of women in the labour market, and the concomitant widely deployed state sponsored childcare facilities, both of which far exceeded comparable developments in the West. With Beyond the Wall, Hoyer confirms her place as one of the best young historians writing in English today. On the heels of her superb Blood and Iron, about the rise and fall of the Second Reich, comes another masterpiece, this one about the aftermath of the Third Reich in the East.Well-researched, well-written, and profoundly insightful, it explodes many of the lazy Western cliches about East Germany.”

Beyond the Wall: East Germany, 1949-1990 by Katja Hoyer Beyond the Wall: East Germany, 1949-1990 by Katja Hoyer

One of the best young historians writing in English today. . . Well-researched, well-written and profoundly insightful, Beyond the Wall explodes many of the lazy Western cliches about East Germany' Andrew Roberts German reviewers have also identified worryingly many factual inaccuracies. For example, Hoyer gets Angela Merkel’s age wrong in the very first sentence of the book. These combined with the immature writing style and a meagre bibliography serve to undermine the pretensions to scholarship.Beyond the Wall" adds depth to caricatures of East Germany". The Economist. ISSN 0013-0613 . Retrieved 2023-06-03. Katja Hoyer behauptet und mit dieser Behauptung wird sie nicht falsch liegen, dass die DDR für die Mehrzahl ihrer Bürger Heimat gewesen ist, oft eine unbequeme, oft eine gehasste, aber dennoch eine Heimat. Eine Heimat, auf die man stolz war. Eine Heimat mit sozialistischem Grundgedanken, den man prinzipiell bejahte; wenngleich dieser Sozialismus manchmal lächerliche Züge annahm. Und manchmal brutale. Diesseits der Mauer" von Katja Hoyer ist eines der interessantesten Sachbücher der letzten Monate. Es beschreibt die Geschichte der DDR. Neben der Zeit von 1949 bis 1990 behandelt es auch die Zeit vor der Gründung der DDR und die Zeit nach der sogenannten "Wiedervereinigung". Ich bin Jahrgang 1969. Ich bin im Westen Deutschlands aufgewachsen. Die Zeit seit den 80er-Jahren habe ich über Tageszeitungen, Magazine und Fernsehen mitbekommen. Das Internet gab es noch nicht. In der Schule kam das Thema DDR nur am Rande vor. Eine Ausnahme war die obligatorische Klassenfahrt nach Berlin (in der siebten Klasse). Hier war auch ein Tag im Osten der Stadt eingeplant. Mir ist eigentümlicherweise nur dieses schöne Lenin-Denkmal, welches wir für unsere Fototapete fotografiert haben, in Erinnerung geblieben. Und die Einweisung der Lehrer ("wenn ihr mit Bürgern sprecht, sagt nicht Ost-Berlin, sondern Berlin Hauptstadt der DDR", die Bürger waren ob unserer Ansprache arg verwundert). Über die DDR sagte das alles wenig aus. Heavy metal … a woman at work in East Germany, in an image from Beyond the Wall. Photograph: Imago Images

Beyond the Wall by Katja Hoyer review – overturning cliches

New angles on post-war Germany and Austria: Florian Huber, Sophie Hardach, Adam Scovell and Tom Smith https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/m0006sjx The author's youthfulness helps to assure the inevitable comparison with the Anne Frank diary although over and above the sphere of suffering shared, and in this case extended to the death march itself, there is no spiritual or emotional legacy here to offset any reader reluctance. But, in “Beyond the Wall,” the German historian Katja Hoyer claims that when it comes to the former East German state this characterisation is not the whole story. Ever since German reunification in 1990, inhabitants of the former West German Federal Republic have exhibited a patronising (at best) attitude towards ‘the Osties’, sneering at their obsolete Marxist state, and dismissing their experiences under that state in such a way that the GDR - and the lives of those who grew up under it - have been “written out of the national narrative”. In writing this book about the origins and history of the East German state, Katja Hoyer says her intention is to show that the GDR was “never a passive Soviet satellite” but was instead a distinct political entity with its own “economic, social, and cultural idiosyncrasies”. Hoyer maintains that the GDR “deserves a history that treats it as more than a walled ‘Stasiland’ and gives it its proper place in German history”.

Superb, totally fascinating, and compelling, Hoyer’s first full history of East Germany’s rise and fall is a work of revelatory original research—and a gripping read with a brilliant cast of characters.Essential reading.” Russian control stifled economic development with compulsory war reparations, and although by the end of the 1950s East Germany was progressing moderately well, its limited natural resources and industrial capacity made it heavily dependent on Russian oil and financial support. The withdrawal of the latter in the 1980s as the Russian economy struggled to finance a cripplingly expensive arms race with America exposed the substantial weakness of the East German economy. In Beyond the Wall, acclaimed historian Katja Hoyer sets aside the usual Cold War caricatures of the GDR to offer a kaleidoscopic new vision of this vanished country, revealing the rich political, social, and cultural landscape that existed amid oppression and hardship. Drawing on a vast array of never-before-seen interviews and documents, this is the definitive history of the other Germany, beyond the Wall. Request Desk/Exam Copy The book was not what I expected. Far from being an analysis of the brutality and repression of the regime and the Stasi, it is an upbeat story of a country which had its own identity and got as much right as it got wrong. By way of example, I had no idea that East Germany had the highest proportion of working women of any country in the world (a proportion which, by the way, has declined since reunification).

Beyond the Wall - Penguin Books UK Beyond the Wall - Penguin Books UK

It is here where one occasionally wishes that Hoyer broadened her vision from East Germany to the eastern bloc as a whole. A comparative viewpoint might have made clearer the peculiarity of East Germany’s achievement and its tragedy. Both were rooted in the same geographic fact. As part of a larger, pre-war Germany, East Germany was faced with the constant counter-example of the neighbouring Federal Republic. Its proximity just over the Wall encouraged its leadership to make their version of socialism as effective as humanly possible. It also pushed them to create one of the most extensive systems of control the world has ever seen. Hoyer explains that after years of political upheaval, war, economic turmoil and rapid political change, most Germans were exhausted and sought stability, a settled home life, and a future without war and economic disaster. Thus an anti-fascist, socialist one-party state like the GDR appealed to many East Germans. A fantastic, sparkling book, filled with insights not only about East Germany but about the Cold War, Europe, and the forging of the twentieth and twenty-first centuries.” Many German critics seem to resent any account of the GDR that is not unremittingly negative. This seems to be rooted in a political context that fears persistent attempts at rehabilitating the memory of the GDR, connected with post-unification resentment and a lurch to the right in the former GDR states. It seems to be a truism in Germany that you can’t separate the good (or merely neutral) of East Germany from the bad - everything was rooted in the same inhumane dictatorship. To me as an outsider that is obviously reductive and certainly does not deserve to crowd out other interpretations. Hoyer’s explicit intention is to dignify East Germany - for good or bad the cradle of many Germans’ formative years, including Angela Merkel’s - with a history that recognises it as a state and society that cannot be simply dismissed as an abomination. She does this not by sugar-coating but by giving a cohesive account of the political and social history that leaves one in no doubt that this is not a country that should be mourned.Some might argue that the cost of these state enforced developments were in retrospect prohibitive, and that the social effects of state rather than familial nannying prevent the realisation of the benefits of allowing individuals the freedom to determine their preferred way of raising their children. Having the state set the role of women ought not to be a better alternative to self determination. It seems more like the dystopian 1984, than a symbol of social progress. These are all fair points. West Germany itself was stiflingly conformist. Not only that, it was infested with Nazis in its early decades, plagued by political corruption and subject to hidden American tutelage. It came close to adopting police-state tactics against terrorism in the 1970s. Barber, Tony (2021-01-18). "Blood and Iron by Katja Hoyer — conflicted Germany". Financial Times . Retrieved 2023-06-29.

Katja Hoyer: we need to hear ‘the whole story’ about East Germany Katja Hoyer: we need to hear ‘the whole story’ about East Germany

The reunification of Germany on October 3 1990 ended 41 years of division between the democratic West (FRG) and the communist East (GDR). But while West German lives “continued as before,” writes Katja Hoyer, for East Germans reunification “triggered a wave of change whose force, direction and pace were uncontrollable. It was sink or swim.” Hoyer’s book examines all aspects of East German life, including politics and everyday experiences, and reveals that perceptions of life in the GDR and the consumerism of the West aren’t necessarily as we might expect. Here we explore some of the aspects of East German life that Hoyer covers in her book that demonstrate how the commonly held view of authoritarianism in the GDR may not tell the whole story. The establishment of West and East Germany Drawing a line under both German states in 1990 was never going to happen. West Germans were too wedded to the idea of 1945 as their “zero hour”, the point at which the tender shoots of democracy grew from the ashes of the Second World War. Proud of West Germany’s prosperity and political stability, they saw it as the continuity state and East Germany as the anomaly.

a b Jeffries, Stuart (29 March 2023). "Beyond the Wall by Katja Hoyer review – overturning cliches of East Germany". The Guardian . Retrieved 25 July 2023. Insofern sehe ich in „Diesseits der Mauer“ vor allem eine vertane Chance. Ein an sich interessante Buch-Idee, nämlich die DDR-Geschichte aus der Perspektive des Alltagslebens ihrer Bürger nachzuerzählen, scheitert tragisch an der fehlenden geschichtspolitischen Redlichkeit und der ausbleibenden Bereitschaft zur analytischen Tiefe ihrer Autorin Ugaz’s case is all too familiar in Peru, where powerful groups regularly use the courts to silence journalists by fabricating criminal allegations against them.’ For all that, West Germany defies comparison to the brutal sham in the east. Cheap Soviet energy mitigated the gdr’s economic failures. Snooping and bullying by the secret policemen of the Stasi cowed its people. So did the presence of some 350,000 Soviet troops. For most of its existence it murdered people caught escaping.