Beyond the Wall: East Germany, 1949-1990

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A great strength of the book is its use of anecdotes and personal stories to illustrate the diversity of life in the DDR - salvaging the lives of the citizens of the former DDR from the dustbin of history into which their former state has been unceremoniously dumped. Beyond the Wall is a satisfying synthesis of social history with political and diplomatic history and, as such, reads well; shifting between different conceptual lenses in a way that it feels dynamic and exciting throughout. You can find other conversations about German culture and history available on BBC Sounds and as the Arts & Ideas podcast

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

Katja Hoyer begins her book with a strong narrative, highlighting an important moment in modern German history. On 3 October 2021, Bundeskanzlerin Angela Merkel stepped down after almost 20 years held the position. In her remarks, she emphasised that her experience growing up in East Germany was not only “lost years”, as the common narrative about her life often describes. Her political career is often counted only in the period following the fall of the Berlin Wall, ignoring her formative years in East Germany that shaped the person she is today. 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. It wasn't all bad: East Germany became the most economically successful of the Soviet satellite states (albeit a low pass mark), and the lives and struggles of its people had by the 1970s moments of material success and relative happiness. Their achievements become over time emblematic of the human capacity to survive and even flourish to some extent when circumstances and fate seem to be acting against rational development and humane progress.One of the most interesting things that I had never thought about before, but explains a lot of why the DDR became what it was, is the origins story of the leaders of the DDR. Basically they were all German communists that fled to Soviet Russia in the 30s. What I also didn't know that 3 quarters of all German communists were murdered in the Stalinist terror. The horror. More members of the KPD's executive committee were murdered by Soviet Russia than bij Nazi Germany. To survive that and to climb to the higher positions one had to be rather morally flexible (the worst kind of scab) and become more stalinist than Stalin. These were the people that set up the DDR. Dedicated and in some way idealistic communists yes, but also the worst kind of party-hierarchy climbing apparatchiks.

Beyond the Wall by Katja Hoyer review - The Guardian

To those familiar with East German history, little will be new. Hoyer rehashes all the surface-level events and GDR trivia without injecting substance. The incisive authorial reflections that are to be found in other history books I’ve read are conspicuously absent here. The narrative unfolds in simplistic, caricatured fashion. There is also a certain immaturity to the writing. Stalin is said several times to be Walter Ulbricht’s ‘hero’. Cliches abound. Hoyer takes every opportunity that presents itself to say ‘literally’ after a metaphor. The book covers the history of East Germany in the period between 1949 and 1990, including the sudden and unexpected collapse of the state with the fall of the Berlin Wall, as well as many other points in the state's history. It includes both large historical events and anecdotal stories of ordinary people living within the state. [4] Reception [ edit ] Hoyer sets out her stall boldly at the start: ‘Perhaps the wounds of separation, of identities lost and gained, were too raw to be examined during the immediate post-reunification era when it seemed preferable to allow them to scab over. Now, it is time to dare to take a new look at the GDR.’ Unsurprisingly, the insidious reach of the Stasi was a serious deterrent to any potential dissenters. It was common for families and friends to inform on each other, and criticising the regime to almost anyone was incredibly risky and could also be a potentially extremely dangerous thing to do. Fear of losing opportunities, being subjected to a sustained harassment campaign or even torture and imprisonment ensured mass compliance with the regime, despite the hardships it often created.Rather than establishing a new German state, West Germans considered themselves as the continuation of the state, with East Germany being an aberration resulting from 41 years of Soviet rule. The resulting changes in East Germany are often viewed positively, particularly with regard to improved living standards. However, East German-born historian Katja Hoyer’s book, Beyond the Wall: East Germany, 1949-1990 – our Book of the Month for April 2023 – challenges this perspective and offers a revisionist history of the time. Originally under Soviet army occupation following the end of the second world war, East Germany became an independent country on 7 October 1949. But the story Hoyer tells in Beyond the Wall starts much earlier with the German Communist party’s struggle to survive “between Hitler and Stalin”. In the run-up to the second world war, party members faced arrest and torture in Nazi Germany. This drove much of its leadership into exile in the Soviet Union, where most eventually perished, either in the gulags or by firing squad, as victims of Stalin’s purges. Social control was a priority, with often ludicrous thought controls such as regulating the amount of western music teenagers could hear and play, and, of course, establishing the notorious Stasi, which spied on people's lives continuously. It often violently disciplined the livelihoods and liberty of those deemed to be entertaining non-socialist thoughts and habits. Hoyer's own father was interred when young for making a politically sensitive joke while working. 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.