Palmowski, Jan (2009) Inventing a socialist nation : Heimat and the politics of everyday life in the GDR, 1945-1990. New studies in European history . Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. ISBN 9780521111775

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Abstract

"Twenty years after the collapse of the German Democratic Republic, historians still struggle to explain how an apparently stable state imploded with such vehemence. This is the first book to show how 'national' identity was invented in the GDR and how citizens engaged with it. Jan Palmowski argues that it was hard for individuals to identify with the GDR amid the threat of Stasi informants and with the accelerating urban and environmental decay of the 1970s and 1980s. Since socialism contradicted its own ideals of community, identity and environmental care, citizens developed rival meanings of nationhood and identities and learned to mask their growing distance from socialism beneath regular public assertions of socialist belonging. This stabilized the party's rule until 1989. However, when the revolution came, the alternative identifications citizens had developed for decades allowed them to abandon their 'nation', the GDR, with remarkable ease"--Provided by publisher.

Item Type:	Book
Divisions:	Faculty of Arts > School of Modern Languages and Cultures > German Studies
Series Name:	New studies in European history
Publisher:	Cambridge University Press
Place of Publication:	Cambridge
ISBN:	9780521111775
Official Date:	2009
Dates:	Date Event 2009 Published
Number of Pages:	342
Status:	Peer Reviewed
Publication Status:	Published

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