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West Germany and the Iron Curtain takes a fresh look at the history of the Federal Republic and the German re-unification process from the spatial perspective of the West German borderlands that emerged along the volatile inter-German border after 1945. The book is the first environmental history of the Iron Curtain.
List of contents
- Acknowledgments
- Introduction: On the Western Side of Germany's Iron Curtain
- 1: The Making of the West German Borderlands, 1945-1955
- 2: The East of the West: An Economic Backwater at the Border
- 3: "Greetings from the Zonal Border": Tourism to the Iron Curtain
- 4: Salts, Sewage, and Sulfurous Air: Transboundary Pollution in the Borderlands
- 5: Transboundary Natures: The Consequences of the Iron Curtain for Landscape
- 6: Closing the Nuclear Fuel Cycle at Gorleben? West Germany's Energy Future in the Borderlands
- Conclusion: West Germany from the Periphery
- Abbreviations
- Bibliography
- Index
About the author
Astrid M. Eckert is Associate Professor of History at Emory University in Atlanta. She earned her PhD in History at Free University Berlin, Germany. She is the author of Struggle for the Files. The Western Allies and the Return of German Archives after the Second World War (2012). She was a Berlin Prize Fellow at the American Academy, and a Humboldt Foundation Fellow.
Summary
West Germany and the Iron Curtain takes a fresh look at the history of the Federal Republic and the German re-unification process from the spatial perspective of the West German borderlands that emerged along the volatile inter-German border after 1945. The book is the first environmental history of the Iron Curtain.
Additional text
This well-conceptualized and well-argued history of the border separating East and West Germany illustrates that even as it was shaped by politics, nature shaped politics in turn. A detailed and concrete case study in the mutual dependence of environment and society that will interest historians of Germany and environmental historians alike.
