13308

The German Democratic Republic: Global Histories

Ned Richardson-Little

Kommentar

In the popular imagination, East Germany is often understood in terms of its isolation from the world, behind the barbed wire and concrete of the Berlin Wall and its other militarizes border fortifications. In recent years, however, the history of the German Democratic Republic (GDR) has turned towards transnational and global perspectives. The GDR was a product of Cold War dynamics generated between the two German states, within Eastern Europe, and on the global stage. Political, economic, and social life in East Germany was entangled with international affairs from cross-border cultural trends, global commodities trading, and transnational solidarity movements. Although migration out of the country was extremely difficult, the GDR was the destination for thousands of students, refugees, and contract workers from other socialist states and non-aligned countries of the Global South. The opening of the Berlin Wall took place in the context of the collapse of the Eastern Bloc, but also the violent crackdown against the opposition in the People’s Republic of China and the end of the GDR had political reverberations as far away as Nicaragua, Vietnam and Namibia. Using a variety of recent academic case studies across these themes, this course will explore how we can understand the global GDR. Schließen

Literaturhinweise

• Sara Pugach, “Eleven Nigerian Students in Cold War East Germany: Visions of Science, Modernity, and Decolonization,” Journal of Contemporary History 54, no. 3 (2019):

• Pence, Katherine. “Showcasing Cold War Germany in Cairo: 1954 and 1957 Industrial Exhibitions and the Competition for Arab Partners.” Journal of Contemporary History 47, no. 1 (2012): 69–95.

• Jadwiga E. Pieper Mooney, “East Germany: Chilean Exile and the Politics of Solidarity in the Cold War” in European Solidarity with Chile, 1970s-1980s, ed. Kim Christiaens, Idesbald Goddeeris, Magaly Rodríguez García (Frankfurt am Main: Peter Lang, 2014);

• Christina Schwenkel, “Rethinking Asian Mobilities: Socialist Migration and Post-Socialist Repatriation of Vietnamese Contract Workers in East Germany,” Critical Asian Studies 46, no. 2 (2014): 235–58.

• Lea Börgerding, “Staging Emancipation and Its Limits: East German Cultural Diplomacy, the German Democratic Women’s League, and the 1975 World Congress of Women in East Berlin,” Women’s History Review (2023):1-19.

• George Bodie, “‘It Is a Shame We Are Not Neighbours’: GDR Tourist Cruises to Cuba, 1961–89,” Journal of Contemporary History 55, no. 2 (2020): 411–34.
Schließen

13 Termine

Regelmäßige Termine der Lehrveranstaltung

Mo, 12:00 - 14:00 13 Termine

Mo, 13.04.2026 12:00 - 14:00

Dozenten:
Dr. Ned Richardson-Little