Divided, But Not Disconnected - German Experiences of the Cold War

The Allied agreement after the Second World War did not only partition Germany, it divided the nation along the fault-lines of a new bipolar world order. This inner border made Germany a unique place to experience the Cold War, and the "German question" in this post-1945 variant remained inextricably entwined with the vicissitudes of the Cold War until its end. This volume explores how social and cultural practices in both German states between 1949 and 1989 were shaped by the existence of this inner border, putting them on opposing sides of the ideological divide between the Western and Eastern blocs, as well as stabilizing relations between them. This volume's interdisciplinary approach addresses important intersections between history, politics, and culture, offering an important new appraisal of the German experiences of the Cold War.

List of contents

Acknowledgements

List of Abbreviations

Introduction

Tobias Hochscherf, Christoph Laucht and Andrew Plowman

Chapter 1. Divided, but not Disconnected: Germany as a Border Region of the Cold War

Thomas Lindenberger

Chapter 2. Fighting the First World War in the Cold War: East and West German Historiography on the Origins of the First World War, 1949-61

Matthew Stibbe

Chapter 3. Divided Memory of the Holocaust during the Cold War

Bill Niven

Chapter 4. Commemorating Luther: Contested Memories and the Cold War

Jon Berndt Olsen

Chapter 5. The Third World Origins of the Consensual Turn: West German Labor Internationalism and the Cold War

Quinn Slobodian

Chapter 6. The German Question and Polish-East German Relations, 1945-1962

Sheldon Anderson

Chapter 7. From Bulwark of Peace to Cosmopolitan Cocktails: Marketing West Berlin as a Cold War Showcase from the 1960s to the 1970s

Michelle A. Standley

Chapter 8. Projections of History: East German Film-Makers and the Berlin Wall

Séan Allan

Chapter 9. Defending the Border? Satirical Treatments of the Bundeswehr after the 1960s

Andrew Plowman

Chapter 10. East versus West: Olympic Sport as a German Cold War Phenomenon

Christopher Young

Chapter 11. Glimpses through the Iron Curtain: German Feature Film Import into the G.D.R.

Rosemary Stott

Chapter 12. Visual Representation, the Male Hero, and the Transfer of Images in the Cold War

Inge Marszolek

Chapter 13. Re-enacting the First Battle of the Cold War: Post-Wall German Television Confronts the Berlin Airlift in Die Luftbrücke - Nur der Himmel war frei

Tobias Hochscherf and Christoph Laucht

Chapter 14. Unusual Censor Readings: G.D.R. Science Fiction and the Ministry of Culture

Patrick Major

Chapter 15. Funerals in Berlin: The Geopolitical and Cultural Spaces of the Cold War

James Chapman

Select Bibliography

Notes on Contributors

Index

About the author

Tobias Hochscherf is Professor of Audio-Visual Media at the University of Applied Sciences at Kiel, Germany. His research interests focus on European film and television cultures. He is author of The Continental Connection: German-speaking Émigrés and British Cinema, 1927-45 (Manchester UP, 2011) and has published widely in academic journals and edited collections.

Christoph Laucht is Lecturer in 20th Century British History at the University of Leeds. His research interests include the cultural history of the nuclear age, the transnational history of the Cold War and film and history. He is author of Elemental Germans: Klaus Fuchs, Rudolf Peierls and the Making of British Nuclear Culture 1939-59 (Palgrave Macmillan, 2012) and has widely published on British and American nuclear history, Cold War history and film and history.

Andrew Plowman is Senior Lecturer in German at the University of Liverpool. He is the author of a study on German autobiography and of numerous articles on contemporary German literature. His current research focuses on the cultural representation of the Bundeswehr.

Summary

The Allied agreement after the Second World War did not only partition Germany, it divided the nation along the fault-lines of a new bipolar world order. This inner border made Germany a unique place to experience the Cold War, and the "German question" in this post-1945 variant remained inextricably entwined with the vicissitudes of the Cold War..

Additional text

"[A] timely and important contribution to the current scholarship on the Cold War and the critical reassessment of Cold War history within an interdisciplinary, comparative, and transnational framework...The editors are to be commended for promoting a comparative perspective in the individual essays themselves and through the thoughtful selection of topics from East and West German perspectives."� ���Sabine Hake, University of Texas, Austin

Product details

• Authors: Tobias Laucht Hochscherf, Tobias Hoscherf, Tobias Laucht Hoscherf
• Assisted by: Tobias Hochscherf (Editor), Christoph Laucht (Editor), Andrew Plowman (Editor)
• Publisher: BERGHAHN BOOKS, INC
• Languages: English
• Product format: Paperback / Softback
• Released: 01.07.2013
• EAN: 9781782380993
• ISBN: 978-1-78238-099-3
• No. of pages: 276
• Subjects: Humanities, art, music > History > Regional and national histories; History: 20th Century to Present