Beyond the Wall: East Germany, 1949-1990

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Myth-busting, artfully constructed history. Hoyer displays a special understanding and wants to present a corrective to previous reductive assessments of the GDR that depict it as a field-gray Stasiland. Her command of detail, broad historical brush strokes, and evident sympathy for her interview partners make fora fascinating read.”

Beyond the Wall (book) - Wikipedia

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. German historian and English resident Katja Hoyer's 2023 history of East Germany (Beyond the Wall) is a sympathetic history of the people of the communist totalitarian state of East Germany, which collapsed spectacularly on the night of 9 November 1989, when guards on the Berlin Wall gave up trying to prevent people from walking into West Berlin. Following the defeat of the Nazis in 1945, the idea took hold that Austria had been the first casualty of Hitler’s aggression when in 1938 it was incorporated into the Third Reich.’ Beyond the Wall also delves into the profound impact of the fall of the Berlin Wall and the subsequent reunification of Germany. Hoyer explores the mixed emotions experienced by East Germans during this period of profound change, including the loss of familiar structures and the challenges of transitioning to a market-based economy. She also reflects on the lasting legacy of the GDR and its impact on Germany's political and social landscape in the present day. I read from Hoyer's experience discussing the book in Germany that the German edition of Beyond the Wall stirred emotions in German readers, despite the fact that the 30-year gap between the German reunification and the present moment may provide relatively enough time to assess the process with more objectivity.Consummately fair-minded as she is as a historian, Katja Hoyer tells the stories of both those GDR citizens who experienced the desperation of those needing to escape across the wall, but also those residents who built ordinary lives under the regime and came to appreciate its unchallenging stability. Aside from the state’s inherent paranoia (understandable given its “precarious position on the faultlines of the Cold War divide”), what ultimately did for the GDR was that it was a system utterly incapable of renewing itself. Once the supply of cheap Soviet oil was choked off, the regime crumbled. East Germany never managed to renew its ideology and instead remained dominated by ‘the old men’ (and their intransigent mindsets) who had founded it over 40 years earlier. Moody, Oliver (2023-06-29). "Blood and Iron by Katja Hoyer review — Germany: glued together by enemy blood". ISSN 0140-0460 . Retrieved 2023-06-29. Mikanowski, Jacob (2023-04-02). "Beyond the Wall by Katja Hoyer review – the human face of the socialist state". The Observer. ISSN 0029-7712 . Retrieved 2023-06-03.

Beyond the Wall: A History of East Germany: Hoyer, Katja

Boyes, Roger (2023-06-03). "Beyond the Wall by Katja Hoyer review — why East Germany was doomed from the start". The Times. ISSN 0140-0460 . Retrieved 2023-06-03. Hachette Book Group is a leading book publisher based in New York and a division of Hachette Livre, the third-largest publisher in the world. Social Media I would have loved to have read a deeper analysis of the East German alcohol industry, and what role it played. Rather than focusing on what East Germans lost by its Soviet occupation, Hoyer’s book shines a light on what the East gained that the West never had – in particular around women’s rights. 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.

Katja Hoyer (born 1985) [1] is a German historian, journalist and writer. [2] [3] Life and career [ edit ] Was ich auch interessant fand, war wie die DDR in ihrer Anfangsphase (und später auch) um ihre Eigenständigkeit auch gegenüber der UdSSR pochte. Lange hält sich Hoyer mit der Frage auf, ob Stalin wirklich einen "eigenen" deutschen Staat wollte, oder ob er ihn eher widerwillig in Kauf nahm, nachdem sein Plan, die Westbindung von Westdeutschland zu verhindern, gescheitert war. East Germany is one of Europe’s ghosts. Katja Hoyer is just old enough to remember its demise. In October 1989, when she was four years old, her father took her on a trip to the top of Berlin’s Fernsehturm, or Television Tower. Then, and now, the tallest building in Germany, this “masterpiece of socialist architecture” was built between 1965 and 1969 as a demonstration of East Germany’s technological prowess. But on that day in October, when Hoyer looked down, she saw squads of the “People’s Police” arresting protesters on the massive cement square below. Neither policemen nor the protesters could have known that in a mere month, the Berlin Wall would fall. Nor would they have imagined that in a year’s time, the German Democratic Republic (or GDR) would cease to exist. Brilliant. Hoyer is a historian of immense ability. Exhaustively researched, cleverly constructed, and beautifully written, this much-needed history of the GDR should be required reading across her homeland. Five stars.”

Beyond the Wall by Katja Hoyer | Baillie Gifford Prize

Hoyer herself is East German, born in 1985, and four years old when it collapsed. She matured into a successful journalist and historian now living in England. Hoyer has no illusions about the fanatical politics and continual deprivations endured by the Easterners, but seems to want to put on record the authenticity and humanity of the people who lived in East Germany. The 1920s - Philosophy's Golden Age Wittgenstein changed his mind, Heidegger revolutionised philosophy (and the German language), and both the Frankfurt School and the Vienna Circle were in full swing. Matthew Sweet is joined by Wolfram Eilenberger, David Edmonds and Esther Leslie. Plus, a report on the plight of the Lukacs Archive in Budapest https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/m000q380 The acclaim for this in Britain astounds me. It is, at best, a competent popular history – but groundbreaking scholarship this emphatically is not. Heavy metal … a woman at work in East Germany, in an image from Beyond the Wall. Photograph: Imago ImagesBut such a view is condescending towards readers keen to explore a country that no longer exists. They are very much capable of entering the world described to them by former East Germans, and deciding for themselves what they make of the things they find there, as the responses to Beyond the Wall readily demonstrate. Where Jacob Mikanowski, a historian of Eastern Europe, found the “human face of the socialist state” in my book, as he wrote in the Guardian, Peter Hitchens of the Mail on Sunday decided it was a “fascinating” insight into “a filthy, malevolent little state”. The country my mother left behind was a country she believed in; a country we kept alive till her last breath; a country that never existed in that form,’ goes the narrative of the protagonist Alex Kerner at the end of the 2003 film Good Bye Lenin! which describes the German reunification process. Notwithstanding the exaggerated fictional premise of the film, the longing for a country that suddenly disappeared overnight and the need to reassess the German reunification process and discuss it again is emphasised throughout this book, a process that Katja Hoyer describes would entail involving ‘accepting that East and West Germans lived very different realities in the formative postwar decades, and that these are all part of the national story’. A gripping and nuanced history of the GDR from its beginnings as a separate German socialist state against the wishes of Stalin to its final rapprochement with its Western other against those of Gorbachev. Beyond the Wall is a unique fresco of everyday reality in East Germany. Elegantly moving between diplomatic history, political economy, and cultural analysis, this is an essential read to understand not only the life and death of the GDR but also the parts of it that still survive in the emotions of its former citizens.” a b Peter, Conradi (2023-06-29). "Katja Hoyer tried to tell a different story about East Germany. Now Germans are furious". ISSN 0140-0460 . Retrieved 2023-06-29.