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Informationen zum Autor Gerd Horten is Emeritus Professor of History at Concordia University, Portland, Oregon. His first book, Radio Goes to War: The Cultural Politics of Propaganda during World War II , was published by the University of California Press in 2002, and he has published articles in journals including German History and German Studies Review . Klappentext The fall of the Berlin Wall is typically understood as the culmination of political-economic trends that fatally weakened the East German state. Meanwhile, comparatively little attention has been paid to the cultural dimension of these dramatic events, particularly the role played by Western mass media and consumer culture. With a focus on the 1970s and 1980s, Don't Need No Thought Control explores the dynamic interplay of popular unrest, intensifying economic crises, and cultural policies under Erich Honecker. It shows how the widespread influence of (and public demands for) Western cultural products forced GDR leaders into a series of grudging accommodations that undermined state power to a hitherto underappreciated extent. Zusammenfassung Don't Need No Thought Control explores the dynamic interplay between popular demands, intensifying economic crises, and cultural policy decisions during the Erich Honecker era in a comprehensive and comparative analysis. Inhaltsverzeichnis List of Illustrations Acknowledgments Introduction: Disempowering a Dictatorship-Media and Consumer Culture in East Germany Chapter 1. Successful Media Campaigns in East Germany in the 1960s and 1970s: The Vietnam War and the 1972 Olympics Chapter 2. Fade Out: Hollywood Movie Imports and the Cultural Surrender of the GDR Film Control in the 1970s and 1980s Chapter 3. The Westernization of East German Television in the 1970s and 1980s Chapter 4. Fighting Against All Odds: GDR Popular Music and Youth Radio in an International Context Chapter 5. Western Consumer Culture or Bust: Intershops and East German Consumption Policies in the 1970s and 1980s Epilogue: Out With the Old-In With the New? Wende, Ostalgie and the Serpentine Unification Bibliography ...
