Society and Culture

Abstract

Abstract This chapter analyses the relationship between the ‘Prussia-Renaissance’ and ‘popular culture’. The historians of the GDR, much like the political figures they directly and indirectly served, were motivated and sustained by a popular culture that, through new forms of media, was becoming increasingly saturated by Prussia-fascination. They fed the East German public’s increasing appetite for history, but were ultimately consumed by it in turn, as the new set of popular historical and heritage practices they helped generate came to undermine their privileged interpretative sovereignty over the past. The chapter accordingly documents the distorting impact that the pursuit of ‘popular history’ had upon the state’s Marxist-Leninist historical dogmas. Furthermore, the chapter also documents how the ‘Prussia-Renaissance’—and especially the figure of Frederick the Great—stimulated a surge of subversive creative energies, as authors, playwrights, artists, and satirists increasingly began to turn to the GDR’s historical culture as a space for artistic exploration.