Prussia in the Historical Culture of the German Democratic Republic

Abstract

Abstract This book charts the afterlife of Prussia in the German Democratic Republic. No case study exemplifies the fluidity of the past within the GDR more powerfully than that of the history of the Prussian state. Initially attacked in East German official histories as the historical engine of German militarism and reaction, Prussia underwent a remarkable transformation in official and public memory from the late 1970s. In this ‘Prussia-Renaissance’, for the first time, the East German state began to recognise and even celebrate figures from Prussian history who had not served a ‘progressive’ agenda. But the GDR’s ‘Prussia-Renaissance’ was also a political and cultural phenomenon with a wide public resonance. Using the case study of Prussia, this book presents a multi-perspectival approach to the way that a distinctive ‘historical culture’ was constructed in the GDR. Examining political figures, historians, cultural elites, and heritage preservationists, as well as exhibitions, museums, television programmes, films, novels, plays, and artworks, it explores the way that the past was negotiated and disputed. In essence, the book poses four fundamental questions for our understanding of politics and culture in communist East Germany: how was history there ‘made’? How was it understood? How was it contested? And how was it used?