Divided subjects, invisible borders : re-unified Germany after 1989

Author / Creator

Gook, Ben, author

Available as

Online

Physical

Summary

Why do those born in eastern Germany today still identify with aspects of the GDR? What do Germany's memorials, films, nostalgias, memory debates and national commemorations tell us about the lives...

Why do those born in eastern Germany today still identify with aspects of the GDR? What do Germany's memorials, films, nostalgias, memory debates and national commemorations tell us about the lives of Germans today? 2015 marks the 25th anniversary of German re-unification. Yet Germany remains divided; the unified Germany of the official representations hides its informal division, a screen that can be detected in fraught debates and divided German lives since 1989. 'Divided Subjects, Invisible Borders' returns to the Nazi period and Cold War to argue that fantasies about whom the "real Germans" are have persisted down the decades to today, while official approaches to re-unification echoed and addressed those of post-war justice. Through examples from museums, film, commemoration, visual art, literature and political debate, it reveals how eastern Germany is represented, remembered and experienced in ways shaped by dominant ideas from the west.

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