East German Society Research Articles

‘Chile – Ballad of the Cameraman’: New Song and ‘Revolutionary’ South America in Wolf Biermann's Anthems of East German Critical Solidarity

Abstract Using GDR dissident singer-songwriter Wolf Biermann's ‘Chile – Ballade vom Kameramann’ as a point of departure, this article explores the role that ‘revolutionary’ South America and its musical corollary, the Nueva Canción, played in expressions of inner-communist critique in 1970s East Germany. Biermann's critique was Janus-faced. Lyrically, the ‘Chilean’ allegory of his ballad, in which a cameraman is murdered by a soldier, expressed support for the Allende administration while simultaneously destabilizing Soviet Bloc rhetoric. Musically, references to Nueva Canción music such as that of singer-songwriter Daniel Viglietti represented the anti-imperialist Other while simultaneously rejecting GDR-style socialist realism. On the one hand, Biermann's inspiration in South America can be heard as a colonizing gesture; on the other, it can be understood to reflect a provincialized East German society looking to the Third World for alternative sociopolitical – and musical – models.

Loneliness and Pathos in Heiner Carow's Coming Out (1989)

Abstract: Heiner Carow's Coming Out (1989) is unique as the first (and last) East German feature film to place a homosexual relationship front and center. Coming Out challenges the social and institutional attitudes and conventions of a heterosexist East German society. Taking seriously Carow's suggestion that cinema is a form of debate, this article explores through precise considerations of form and affect how the film sought to move a predominantly heterosexual audience emotionally as part of its project to meaningfully integrate the queer community into the social whole. I analyze the film's mood-rich disclosure of its world, the employment of melodramatic conventions, and the use of strategies that blend the diegetic world with extradiegetic reality. Through my analysis of Coming Out along both aesthetic and affective lines, I emphasize the film's value beyond its amply discussed representation of queer life in the GDR as an example of how cinematic affect operates politically through particular strategies unique to film form.

Echoes of Silence: The Politics of Generational Memory in East Germany’s Literary Intelligentsia

Abstract This article examines family memoirs and novels by children or grandchildren of East Germany’s literary founding generation. Written after reunification, this generational literature looks back on family life in the German Democratic Republic. It paints a group portrait of a distinct milieu in East German society and inside the Communist elite. Shaped by politics, habitus and social background, this milieu was stamped by German history, Jewish history and the history of Communism. A unifying thread runs through this family literature: intense generational dissonance stemming from parental silence about the Nazi past and the socialist present. In children’s memory, parents’ stories about exile clung to a narrative of victorious anti-fascist struggle and left out their suffering as Jews in Nazi-occupied Europe or as Communists in the Stalinist USSR. The article traces the postwar reverberations of silence about the past. Younger generations asked the founding generation who in the family survived, and how, and who did not survive, and why. How, they wondered, could parents condone socialist repression after resisting Nazi terror? Children confronted parental silence emotionally, culturally and politically, in a similar mode, the article argues, to the generational stance of 68ers in West Germany. In their discontent with anti-fascist parents, however, this group of East Germans shared the point of view of youth rebels in non-German Europe who challenged parents who opposed, not supported, National Socialism.

Four-Color Communism: Comic Books and Contested Power in the German Democratic Republic by Sean Eedy

Reviewed by: Four-Color Communism: Comic Books and Contested Power in the German Democratic Republic by Sean Eedy Anna Horakova Four-Color Communism: Comic Books and Contested Power in the German Democratic Republic. By Sean Eedy. New York and Oxford: Berghahn, 2021. Pp. 218. Hardcover $135.00. ISBN 978-1800730007. Sean Eedy's monograph fills a gap in GDR, comics, media, and education studies by charting the ways in which the East German government sought to summon the popular appeal and educational powers of comics to instigate enthusiasm for socialism and the development of the socialist personality among the GDR's youths. Eedy's study focuses on the paradoxical efforts by the Freie Deutsche Jugend (FDJ) as the most representative state-mediating institution of the GDR's youths, to channel the semantically polyvalent and, as he suggests, potentially uncontrollable hybrid medium of the comics. Seeking to portray the interplay between dissent and state power in the culture of the GDR in nuanced and historically contingent ways, Four-Color [End Page 174] Communism constitutes an invaluable contribution to recent scholarship dedicated to dissident or marginalized cultures in the GDR, alongside Seth Howes's Moving Images on the Margins (2019), Sara Blaylock's Parallel Public (2022), and Sarah E. James's Paper Revolutions (2022). However, instead of documenting the critique of state power from within the ranks of East German avant-garde artists and filmmakers, Eedy's study locates this critique within its mass-produced but still relatively marginalized comic book print culture. In so doing, Eedy's monograph follows in the footsteps of Scott McCloud's classic study Understanding Comics (1993), as it maintains a dual focus on close reading and historical context, teasing out the formal qualities of GDR comics as well as their uneasy relation to state power and oblique practice of social and institutional critique. Eedy's study traces the origins of East German comic book production to larger postwar anxieties about the medium's rootedness in perceived "US cultural imperialism and the destruction of national and cultural identities" (21) that were likewise shared by, for instance, West Germany, France, and the UK. The first two chapters, "Comics and the Crisis of Kultur in the SED State" and "State Power and the East German Zeitgeist," offer a meticulously researched and historically grounded account of how the GDR's policies desired to create alternatives to American (and later West German) productions in order to encourage East German child-readers to perpetuate the East German socialist state. The chapters follow the evolution of the country's two major comics, Mosaik von Hannes Hegen and Atze (and to a lesser extent, Frösi), from their inception in the mid-1950s as a bulwark against the perceived capitalist-imperialist influence of Western comics that were feared to be deleterious to the fledgling socialist state, all the way to the surprisingly positive impact of the Berlin Wall's construction on the quality of East German comics that were now allowed to become "more than derivative clones of West German and American publications" (8). That even at their qualitative peak, however, East German comic books did not evolve in the supposed vacuum of the "walled-in state" is correctly maintained by Eedy, who demonstrates the formal influence on these comic books exerted by both their German precursors (such as nineteenth-century and Weimar-era comics and children's literature) and Disney studios productions. In terms of the latter, Eedy's study takes seriously the official demand to "create a socialist alternative to Mickey Mouse," demonstrating Disney's influence especially on Mosaik's creator and drafts-man Hannes Hegen, and discussing how Mosaik's subsequent popularity with East German children is attributable to the transnational influences it had been intended to countermand (a topic that is discussed in depth in chapter five, "Western Influence, Popular Taste, and the Limitations of the FDJ's Publishing Regime"). Crucial to Eedy's study is a theoretical model of the GDR society as Nischengesellschaft (first defined by Günter Gaus), where the population is thought of as having retreated into the private, domestic sphere to escape from the thorough politicization [End Page 175] of East German society by the...

Living with the Stasi: Experiences and Opinions of East Germans, 1945-90

This paper discusses how East German citizens felt about the East German Secret Police (Stasi). It focuses on German sentiment and everyday life during East German rule, rather than how Germans retrospectively reacted once the Berlin Wall fell and the true extent of Stasi surveillance had been discovered. It also attempts to disaggregate different demographics of East German society – artists, doctors, the clergy, etc. – and posits that there was no universal ‘East German experience’ of the Stasi. It further explores equally wide range of reasons why an East German citizen might become an ‘inoffizielle mitarbeiter’ – an informer – for the notorious secret police.

Red Metal: Die Heavy-Metal-Subkultur der DDR

When thinking of East Germany, leather vests, long hair and loud guitars don’t typically spring to mind. Yet Nikolai Okunew, in his book Red Metal: Die Heavy-Metal-Subkultur der DDR, makes a strong case that they should. Exploring the heavy metal subculture in the German Democratic Republic during the 1980s, Okunew argues that the music scene provides an important lens for examining state socialism in the last decade of its existence. Indeed, over five thematic chapters, Okunew contends that the ‘red metal’ scene was a specific phenomenon of late socialism, whose behaviours and practices helped expand the boundaries of socialist norms, even as the subculture embodied and hastened those developments leading to the demise of the East German state. Red Metal opens with an exploration of metal fashion and how the leather vests, steel rivets and long hair which characterized the subculture were a form of ‘aesthetic disobedience’ to socialist norms (p.17). Copying their looks from Western images, youths used fashion to mark themselves off from mainstream society and competing youth subcultures, spending significant resources and energy—traveling to Budapest, negotiating the black market—to put together their outfits. These sartorial innovations were a means of expressing individuality and building community, and were accepted by everyday East German society by the late 1980s.

The Association of Neurosurgeons in the German Democratic Republic and its First Congresses in Divided Germany.

The German Society of Neurosurgery (DGNC) was founded in Bonn in 1950 and saw itself as the all-German representation of neurosurgeons. The development of neurosurgery in divided Germany was different in each case as part of a system and was not unaffected by the confrontation between the two blocs (cold war), which also had a negative impact on the field of science. Thus, early on, restrictions on intra-German travel from the East made normal relations difficult. But travel restrictions also came from the West, where an Allied Travel Office in West Berlin decided whether an East German could enter a North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) country. Nevertheless, it was possible that Georg Merrem from Leipzig took over the second chairmanship of the board of the DGNC of the election period from 1960 to 1962 and eight individual memberships of German Democratic Republic (GDR) neurosurgeons were still tolerated by the state side. The construction of the Berlin Wall on August 13, 1961 meant that these connections also collapsed. Merrem, at that time the only full professor of neurosurgery in the GDR, founded the "Association of Neurosurgeons in the GDR" in 1962 in agreement with the state authorities. With the foundation of a GDR neurosurgeons' society, the demarcation from the DGNC desired by the state was visibly accomplished. There were no official relations between the two neurosurgical societies. During the period of its existence until 1990, the entire work of the East German society was under the guidance and control of state institutions, which in turn derived their work from the guidelines of the party and the decisions of the council of ministers. Using the example of the congress activities of the first 5 years after the Wall was built, we show this dependence on state institutions. It extends from congress planning to reporting. With available figures of participating speakers from West Germany and other countries, it is demonstrated for the individual congresses in Leipzig, Magdeburg, and Erfurt that the German-German connection was continued despite all adverse circumstances. The presence of West German colleagues, who were not deterred from attending the congress even by the construction of the Berlin Wall, can be seen as a visible expression of an unbroken togetherness. However, already in 1967, the party and the council of ministers passed the resolution "On the organization of work in the field of science and culture of the GDR to West Germany as well as West Berlin." This regulated membership, the associated travel, and the conditions for publications in West German journals. Among other things, this directive prohibited membership in scientific societies, including the DGNC, based in West Germany. The organization of its own congresses took on a special significance because a congress visit from East to West was regulated by the state and thus only possible in isolated cases.

Science, Education and Periodical Publications of the Sorbs in the German Democratic Republic and Immediately Following the Fall of Communism

The political changes in 1989/1990 affected all of East German society, including in particular the country’s ethnic Sorbs. Sorbian institutions that had enjoyed a relatively regular influx of financial resources in the GDR now found themselves in an uncertain situation. The new democratic and liberal society did not guarantee Sorbs their previous certainties in the fields of science, education, culture, and other areas. This article looks at selected institutions to provide an idea of how the transformation process took place. One educational institution that did not survive the collapse of the GDR is the Zentrale sorbische Sprachschule Milkel (Sorb.: Centralna serbska rěčna šula w Minakału), which provided language instruction and an overview of Sorbian history and culture for many people who subsequently went on to work for Sorbian institutions. By comparison, one organization that weathered the changes was the Sorbian Institute, although the dissolution of the Akademie der Wissenschaften der DDR necessitated a change in legal form (e.V.). One new institution, whose main task is to distribute financing to the most important Sorbian organizations, is the Foundation for the Sorbian People. Smaller changes affected the Sorbian print media at this time as well.

After the Battles: The History of East German Society and its Sources

After the Battles: The History of East German Society and its Sources

Modern Hungers: Food and Power in Twentieth-Century Germany by Alice Weinreb, and: Imaginations 8-1: New Research on East Germany ed. by Marc Silberman

Reviewed by: Modern Hungers: Food and Power in Twentieth-Century Germanyby Alice Weinreb, and: Imaginations 8-1: New Research on East Germanyed. by Marc Silberman Matthias Rothe Modern Hungers: Food and Power in Twentieth-Century Germany. By Alice Weinreb. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2017. Pp. 317. Cloth $44.99. ISBN 978-0190605117. Imaginations 8-1: New Research on East Germany. Edited by Marc Silberman. Imaginations: Journal of Cross-Cultural Image Studies http://imaginations.csj.ualberta.ca/?p=9471. 05 21, 2017. The special edition of Imaginationson "New Research on East Germany," edited by Marc Silberman, offers a thematic introduction by the editor, a visual essay, and seven articles by scholars of literature, film, performance, history, and art history. It is thus a multidisciplinary endeavor that not only revisits particular aspects of East German society: communalism in a housing project (Eli Rubin), popular taste (Alice Weinreb), and the medical system (Sonja Klocke), but also East Germany's dissolution and legacy. Maria Hetzer presents performances based on women's memories of the time of political transition, Jake P. Smith discusses the arrival of West German countercultural groups in the East, and April Eisman undertakes a meticulous analysis of post-Wende exhibitions of East German art. Moreover, art as a source of (historical) knowledge is the subject of Tobias Ebbrecht-Hartmann's analysis of Thomas Heise's films, and of Benjamin Robinson's rereading of Anna Seghers' novel, Die Entscheidung(1959). The diversity of topics and approaches nevertheless demonstrates an overall [End Page 434]coherence, owed to the recurrence of themes and historical moments, and to the fact that the authors workshopped their papers together. The title of this edition might strike some readers as a paradox: what can be new about something that has long ceased to exist? Marc Silberman anticipates such bewilderment. Many sources, he explains, people as well as archives, became accessible only after the end of East Germany and are still waiting to be discovered. More importantly, a new generation of scholars is at work, no longer constrained by a Cold War mindset. They don't have to condemn or defend anymore and hence two complementary approaches become possible: toward the small, the quotidian reality of habits and encounters, and toward the big, that resituates East Germany within larger (global) sites of conflicts and tensions. Ideological distance has provided an opportunity. Although the second approach, the view from the bird's-eye perspective of the global, is almost entirely absent in this edition, readers will nevertheless find many surprising insights in the explorations of East German Lebenswelten. What comes into view is the daily "management" of contradictions inherent to life in East Germany—for the most part contradictions between socialist ideals and the proper dynamics of practice. Alice Weinreb, for example, discusses the fact that East Germany, much like many other industrialized nations—the global is present here by implication—began to deal with an obesity problem at the end of the 1970s, evidencing that material well-being does not necessarily equal progress. Sonja Klocke, drawing on literature and film, describes a medical system that simultaneously empowered and disempowered its patients. Thomas Heise's documentary method—elaborated convincingly by Tobbias Ebbrecht-Hartmann—can almost be understood as the methodological premise of such historical-ethnographic or, in the case of Maria Hetzer's visual essay, artistic inquiries. They all gather "remnants of GDR history and develop strategies for making them readable in the present," not only as something that has failed, but also "as testimony to potential and unrealized futures" (Ebbrecht-Hartmann, n.p.). April Eisman's analysis of post-1989 East German art exhibitions exposes a central obstacle to such constructive appropriation of the past: history as it is rewritten from the point of view of the victor. Yet ideological distance can also be a danger. There is undoubtedly something liberating in the fact that the analytical frameworks long used to portrait East German society have become obsolete. However, dismissing them does not enable one to then see "socialism itself" (Rubin, n.p.), neither does it mean that the space is now cleared and one can start over, in theory and topic. The wasteland that West...

Depictions of Social Dissent in East German Television Detective Series, 1970–1989

This article discusses the processing of social dissent and its media relevance in East German society in the 1970s and 1980s. The Gegenwartskriminalfilm (contemporary crime movie) Polizeiruf 110 and the courtroom television show Der Staatsanwalt hat das Wort are fruitful film sources for analyzing the specific ways in which social reality and social inequality were constructed and negotiated in the Communist state. Social images as mirror and manifestation of effective public attention to and the perception of social problems shed light on the social symbolic order: They reveal the opposition of “good” and “bad” behavior, with a contrast in their symbolic representations.

Recognition of Divided Situation and Process of Mutual Understanding According to West and East Germany

이 논문의 목적은 독일의 분단 극복을 위한 노력에 관한 개괄적 이해를 통해 우리 사회의 냉전적 문화를 성찰하는 데 있다. 이 글에서 서술한 대상은 사회문화적 측면에서 본 동독 사회의 실상, 즉 구호와 슬로건, 정치언어가 과잉된 국가주의와 권위주의가 팽배했던 그 사회의 실체에 대한 내용이다. 그럼에도 불구하고 분단독일의 문화계는 이념적 대립 상황에서도 상호이해를 위한 노력을 경주했다. 따라서 여기서는 정치세력간의 대립 구도에서 ‘완충’ 역할을 했던 문화계의 노력과 그 의미에 대해서도 고찰하였다. 우리나라도 2000년 이후 남북 간 화해와 협력의 시대를 열고 평화통일의 기반을 마련할 수 있으리라는 기대를 갖게 되었으나 최근 경협(經協)이 중단됨으로써 남북관계는 대립관계로 회귀하고 말았다. 우리나라를 둘러싼 경제 및 안보와 관련한 여러 상황들은 교착상태에 있는 남북 관계에 부정적 영향을 줄지 모른다는 우려를 낳고 있다. 그럼에도 불구하고 비록 더디지만 다시 화해의 여정으로 발 들여 놓으리라 우리는 믿고 있다. 이러한 맥락에서 독일이 40년의 분단 체제를 어떻게 극복했는지에 관한 분석은 많은 시사점과 교훈을 주고 있다.The purpose of this paper is to describe struggles to overcome divided culture of germany and to draw a lesson from their efforts. Germany was divided into East and West. The Germans have lived divided for 40 years. The east german society was full of empty slogans for political purposes. Authoritarian and patriarchal culture was characteristics in society of east germany. Under this circumstances, the religious, literary and cultural fields in divided Germany continued to try to promote cooperation for mutual understanding and performed as a mediator between good will of two Germans.

Power and Society in the GDR Reconsidered: Involuntary Psychiatric Commitment, 1949–1963

AbstractThis article focuses on compulsory psychiatric admissions in the early German Democratic Republic (GDR). Until 1968 there were no East German laws regulating such hospitalizations, a regulatory vaccuum filled by neither the police nor the judicial system. Instead, families made decisions in conjunction with medical personnel about sometimes unlimited stays in psychiatric institutions and clinics—a practice that calls into question popular scholarly characterizations of the relationship between state and society in the GDR. Previous research has explicitly argued that GDR citizens had agency and acted in a so-called eigensinnige manner in many areas, but has not examined this issue with regard to the sensitive practice of forced psychiatric admissions: where there was no state interest, no Eigensinn vis-à-vis authorities was necessary. This was an especially curious constellation given that psychiatric institutions were run by the East German state and that state interventions in this area had been well established under the Third Reich, as well as in the Soviet Union, which served in many areas as a model for the GDR. One might well have expected that continuing state intervention would have thus been path-dependent. This article suggests resurrecting the term Vergesellschaftung (socialization), only shortly discussed in the 1990s, as a way in which to understand the way in which agency on the part of patient families compensated for the absence of formal state regulations regarding such admissions. The term nicely captures such routine forms of compensation by East German society in areas where the state abdicated its responsibility—as was the case in the early GDR when it came to forced psychiatric hospitalizations.

Inscription and Rebellion: Illness and the Symptomatic Body in East German Literature by Sonja E. Klocke

Reviewed by: Inscription and Rebellion: Illness and the Symptomatic Body in East German Literature by Sonja E. Klocke Regine Criser Inscription and Rebellion: Illness and the Symptomatic Body in East German Literature. By Sonja E. Klocke. Rochester, NY: Camden House, 2015. Pp. 248. Cloth $80.00. ISBN 978-1571139337. The rapid process of the German unification was underwritten with a general dismissal or disapproval shared by the majority of West and East Germans alike of anything related to the German Democratic Republic (GDR). While East Germans were busy adjusting to new money, new laws, and new interpretations of their past, the unification manifested in the restructuring of East German public life. In many instances that meant the replacement of GDR structures, systems, and personnel with models and people from the Federal Republic of Germany (FRG). Only much later did the realization set in that some aspects of GDR society might have been deserving of a more thoughtful analysis and maybe even of survival. In her exemplary work in German studies, Sonja Klocke turns her attention to one of these subjects, the GDR medical system, and connects her thorough analysis of it with historically contextualized close readings of Christa Wolf's oeuvre. Klocke treats both the medical institutions and Wolf's literary production as GDR microcosmoses. She argues that a more nuanced understanding of each can lead to a more complex comprehension of German history that could challenge hegemonic historiographies by providing a space for the alternative accounts of the GDR as developed in literary texts and medical records. Klocke's analysis of the GDR's medical system is detailed and balanced. She effectively and insightfully explains the particular function of healthy citizens in a socialist state and how that ideology was implemented in a centrally planned economy dominated by resource shortfalls. More importantly, she engages in depth with the representation of illness, sickness, and health care facilities in Wolf's writings, using Foucault's concept of the "symptomatic body" as her analytic framework. Her close readings showcase how Wolf constructed and employed her characters' ailing bodies to uphold or protest political and social norms and expectations. The GDR's health care system has so far attracted little attention in the realm of German studies and has often been limited to one chapter in more complex historical overviews of German history, for example in Mary Fulbrook's The People's State: East German Society from Hitler to Honecker (2005). By contrast, Klocke interweaves medical history and literary scholarship throughout the four chapters of the book, which exemplifies the intersections she claims exist between both discourses, especially in the GDR. Her in-depth description of the GDR's medical system not only expands the existing understanding of the system's particularities, downfalls, and advantages, but her concise and jargon-free style also makes this crucial aspect of East German society accessible to an audience beyond GDR scholars and makes her book an attractive option for graduate courses. [End Page 684] The same can be said about her close readings of Wolf's oeuvre. While there has been scholarship on the female body as well as on illness in Wolf's writings (see for example Carol Anne Costabile-Heming's "Illness as Metaphor: Christa Wolf, the GDR, and Beyond," 2010), Klocke expands this research by pinpointing illness as a recurring motif in Wolf's writings before and after the collapse of the GDR. She argues that the use of the "symptomatic body" must be understood as a literary convention that is shaped by but not limited to the socialist state. Her intimate and encyclopedic knowledge of Wolf's oeuvre is apparent, and even scholars with detailed knowledge of Wolf's writings will discover new sources as well as encounter familiar texts in a new light. While all of this would already make for an outstanding contribution to the field of German studies, particularly the study of GDR history and culture, Klocke's monograph does not stop here. Rather, she extends her analysis to writers who grew up in the GDR but mainly started publishing after 1989 and draws out the specters of the GDR in their texts. Even though Klocke investigates well-known...

The East German Society in the Post-Unification German Cinemas

이 논문은 독일이 통일된 이후 역사가 되어버린 동독사회의 모습이 어떠한 ‘문화적 기억’으로 재현되어 왔는지를 통일 이후 발표된 독일영화를 통해 살펴본다.BR 논문에서 〈존넨알레〉(1999), 〈굿바이, 레닌!〉(2003), 〈타인의 삶〉(2006)을 주된 분석 대상으로 삼은 이유는 이 영화들이 동독사회의 특정한 국면을 전형적으로 보여주고(전형성), 영상 예술로서 높은 작품성을 인정받고 있으며(예술성), 관객들의 폭 넓은 호응을 받았다(대중성)는 점에 주목하기 때문이다.BR 이 세 편의 영화에 나타난 동독사회의 모습은 서방세계가 동독 체제에 대해 갖고 있던 통념과 선입관을 확인시킨다기보다는 전복시키고 있다. 〈존넨알레〉는 동독의 청년세대가 서방의 젊은이들과 유사한 가치관과 생활방식을 가지고 삶을 영위했음을 보여주고, 〈타인의 삶〉은 동독의 지식인들이 감시와 억압 속에서도 사회주의의 이상을 고수하고 있었음을 암시하고 있으며, 〈굿바이, 레닌!〉은 독일통일이 평범한 동독인의 일상에 미친 파괴적 영향을 그려내고 통일의 역사적 의미를 묻고 있다.BR 이 영화들은 또한 동독사회를 단순히 ‘반공주의’의 입장에서 악마화하지 않는다는 공통점을 지닌다. 〈존넨알레〉에서 동독사회는 이제는 사라진 우애와 선의의 공동체로서 동독에 대한 향수, 즉 오스탈지아를 불러일으키는 대상으로 기억되며, 〈타인의 삶〉에서는 스탈린주의적 억압체제에 대한 전반적인 비판의 분위기 속에서도 이상사회주의자의 모습이 긍정적으로 재현되고, 〈굿바이, 레닌!〉에서는 통일 이후 급속한 자본주의화가 몰고 온 인간성의 파괴와 사회주의 유토피아의 붕괴가 반어와 멜랑콜리의 시선으로 그려지고 있다.BR 이런 의미에서 이 영화들은 동독인들의 ‘유토피아가 닿아있던 나라’(헬가 쾨니히스도르프)와의 ‘기품 있는 이별’을 형상화하고 있다고 할 수 있다.

Eyes on the ball: screening football in East German cinema

ABSTRACTIn communist East Germany, football was far more popular than the Olympic sports on which the country based its formidable sporting reputation. Very few of the films made by the state film studio Deutsche Film-Aktiengesellschaft (DEFA), though, took football as their subject matter – and those that did have been all but ignored by scholars of East German cinema. Focusing on two little-known works, the children's film Der neue Fimmel/The New Craze (1960) and the comedy Verzeihung, Sehen Sie Fußball?/Excuse Me, Are You Watching Football? (1983), this article examines the football film's evolving role as a marker of socialist values in East Germany. By analysing key themes in the two films, it argues that they chronicle a story of declining public faith in the cause of state socialism. DEFA's football films reflect and represent broad shifts in East German society in this period, charting transitions from the collective to the individual, from playing the game to watching it, and from an engagement with building socialism to a retreat from ideology to private concerns.

Prognostic Factors for Overall Survival in Relapsed Acute Myeloid Leukemia

Purpose: To define prognostic factors for overall survival in adult patients (pts) with relapsed acute myeloid leukemia (AML). Introduction: Prognostic factors for overall survival after AML relapse are poorly defined. Here, we investigate patient and disease related factors in terms of their impact on prognosis after AML relapse in a cohort of 495 adult AML relapse patients treated in two prospective AML trials of the East German Society of Hematology and Oncology (OSHO). Patients and methods: We retrospectively evaluated all consecutive relapsed AML pts treated in two OSHO trials (OSHO #61 (pts 60 years)). Age, cytogenetic risk at initial diagnosis, FLT3/NPM1 mutational status, type of AML ( de novo versus secondary to myelodysplastic syndrome or myeloproliferative neoplasia (MDS/MPN) versus therapy related), time interval from first complete remission (CR1) to relapse and allogeneic stem cell transplantation (alloSCT) as consolidation in CR1 were evaluated in univariate and multivariate analysis. Results: Between March 2002 and July 2014, a total of 862 and 968 patients (pts) were enrolled in the OSHO #61 and #69 trial, respectively. Five hundred and thirty two of 690 (77%) documented pts achieved first complete remission in the #61 and 501 of 813 (62%) pts in the #69 trial. Of these, 495 pts (252 male, 243 female) experienced AML relapse, 207(39%) pts in #61 and 288(57%) pts in #69. Median age at relapse was 63 years (range 18 to 86 years). Initial diagnoses were de novo AML, secondary AML to MDS/MPN and therapy related AML in 332(67%) pts, 129 (25.9%) pts and 30 (6%) pts, respectively. Time from CR1 to relapse was 18 months in 71 (14.3%) pts. Initial karyotpe was available for 449 pts (90.7 %). It was favorable, intermediate and poor in 20 (4.5%) pts, 301(67%) pts and 128(28.5%) pts, respectively. Sixty two (13.9%) relapsed pts had a monosomal karyotype at initial diagnosis. NPM1/FLT3 mutational status at initial diagnosis was available in 354 (78.8%) pts, 378 (71%) pts in #61 and 370 (74%) pts in #69. One hundred and three (20.8%) had allogeneic stem cell transplantation as consolidation in CR1 (56 pts) in #61 and (47 pts) in #69. Relapse therapy was documented in 450 (91%) pts. Six pts that had immunosuppression withdrawn as the only therapy and nine pts that had received a tyrosine kinase inhibitor as monotherapy were excluded from further analysis due to small numbers. All other treatments were as follows: intensive chemotherapy (INT) n=225, alloSCT with or without prior INT n=50, donor lymphocyte infusions (DLi) with or without prior chemotherapy n=22, palliative mild cytoreductive chemotherapy (mCT) n=66, azacitidine (Aza) n=52, best supportive care (BSC) n=20. With these, CR was achieved in 78 (36%), 34 (68%), 8 (36%), 6 (9%), 1 (2%), 0 (0%), respectively. Median overall survival probability (OS) for all 495 relapsed patients was 6 months. It was 11.3 months, 5.7 months, 4.5 months and 4.6 months for patients aged 18 to 50 years, 51 to 60 years, 61 to 70 years and 71 to 86 years, respectively (p 18 months, respectively (p<0.0005). In univariate analysis age (p<0.0005), initial cytogenetic risk (p<0.0005), type of AML (p=0.01), interval from CR1 to relapse (p<0.0005), alloSCT in CR1 (p=0.03) and type of relapse therapy (p<0.0005) had a significant impact on OS. In multivariate analysis favorable prognostic factors for OS were lower age (p<0.0005), favorable initial cytogenetics (p=0.01), longer interval from CR1 to relapse (p<0.0005) and not having undergone alloSCT in CR1. Conclusions: Our study shows that outcome of relapsed AML pts is poor. Younger age, favorable cytogenetics at initial diagnosis, a longer interval from CR1 to relapse and not having undergone alloSCT as consolidation in CR1 are positive prognostic factors, whereas type of AML and FLT3/NPM1 mutational status have no significant impact on survival after relapse. Disclosures Off Label Use: Azacitidine is licensed in Germany for the treatment of adult patients with the following conditions, who are not eligible for haematopoietic stem cell transplantation: • intermediate-2 and high-risk myelodysplastic syndromes (MDS) according to the International Prognostic Scoring System (IPSS), • chronic myelomonocytic leukaemia (CMML) with 10-29% marrow blasts without myeloproliferative disorder, • acute myeloid leukaemia (AML) with 20-30% blasts and multi-lineage dysplasia,according to World Health Organisation (WHO) classification.. Wolf: Bayer: Honoraria; Geo Pharma: Honoraria. Sayer: Takeda: Other; Medac: Other. Al-Ali: Novartis: Consultancy, Honoraria, Research Funding; Celgene: Honoraria, Research Funding.

Micro-narratives Compensating the Omissions of Grand Historical Narratives

The journey of the East German society through the radically changing socio-political scenarios from the times of the GDR till the time after the reunification make its contemporary literature a very interesting subject.Angela Krauß is one of the most important contemporary German women authors, who have always conveyed the social history through individualized experiences. The reader is assigned, as Ranciere would say, the role of an ‘emancipated spectator’ who is intended to comprehend the narrative discourse that comes through the hitherto voiceless sidelined characters like nature and animals for example.

Zachodnioniemiecka Federalna Służba Wywiadowcza (BND) o reakcji obywateli NRD na interwencję Wojsk Układu Warszawskiego w Czechosłowacji. Przyczynek do historii 1968 roku

To all intents and purposes, the situation in the German Democratic Republic (GDR) was watched by the Federal Intelligence Service (Bundesnachrichtendienst; BND) from its inception right up until the unification of Germany. Such was also the case in 1968, during the period when reforms were being introduced in Czechoslovakia and the struggle for “socialism with a human face” was being played out. The observation sprang from the disquiet within the government and intelligence service of the Federal Republic of German (FRG) as regards the situation in Czechoslovakia and the GDR, as well as from concerns that the conflict would spread to the other Eastern Bloc countries. There were fears of action being launched against West Berlin and consideration was even given to the possibility of an escalation in tension and the outbreak of World War III. By 23rd August 1968, the BND had already compiled its first report and evaluations of the situation in the ‘Soviet Occupation Zone’ in the context of the intervention by the Warsaw Pact forces. The analyses noted the heated social discussion of the situation in Czechoslovakia and, first and foremost, in respect of the East German army’s participation. The psychological effects of the Soviet intervention were examined, as were their long-term implications. The motif of East German society’s objection to the part being played by the GDR in the intervention is evident in the appraisals. Indeed, as of the end of that August, the BND’s daily reports, accounts and analyses were dominated by intelligence on actions directed against the citizens’ discontent and the waves of protest connected with the Warsaw Pact forces’ operations in Czechoslovakia. Time and again, the appraisals compiled by the FRG’s intelligence services also discussed the social consequences of the intervention.

Jan Palmowski. Inventing a Socialist Nation: Heimat and the Politics of Everyday Life in the GDR, 1945–1990.

In this powerfully argued and elegantly written book Jan Palmowski puts forward the idea that as the ruling party of the German Democratic Republic (GDR), the Socialist Unity Party (SED) attempted to construct a sense of nationhood through the idiom of Heimat, thereby stabilizing its power over East German society. The Heimat idiom allowed the SED to highlight the GDR's differences with capitalist West Germany without endorsing ethnic constructions of nationhood that remained popular in other communist East European countries. Building on the work of Celia Applegate, Alon Confino, and others who have explored the role of Heimat in nineteenth-century German nation-building, Palmowski brings the story of Heimat firmly into the second half of the twentieth century. In this cultural history he uncovers the everyday practices of GDR citizens and relates those practices to high politics. Employing James C. Scott's concept of the “public transcript,” he describes the official pronouncements on Heimat as part and parcel of an official public transcript. However, rather than endorsing Scott's binary opposition between the public transcript and opposition to it, Palmowski's analysis skillfully highlights the manifold ways in which citizens engaged with public transcripts. They ranged from acceptance and compliance to rejection and opposition. Most common were subtle forms of adaptation and subversion. The public transcript of Heimat could be given other, alternative meanings and it was invested with different interpretations.