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German Division as Shared Experience

Interdisciplinary Perspectives on the Postwar Everyday

Erica Carter editor Jan Palmowski editor Katrin Schreiter editor

Format:Paperback

Publisher:Berghahn Books

Published:15th Sep '23

Should be back in stock very soon

German Division as Shared Experience cover

Despite the nearly three decades since German reunification, there remains little understanding of the ways in which experiences overlapped across East-West divides. German Division as Shared Experience considers everyday life across the two Germanies, using perspectives from history, literary and cultural studies, anthropology and art history to explore how interconnections as well as fractures between East and West Germany after 1945 were experienced, lived and felt. Through its novel approach to historical method, the volume points to new understandings of the place of narrative, form and lived sensibility in shaping Germans’ simultaneously shared and separate experiences of belonging during forty years of division from 1945 to 1990.

“All told, this volume successfully brings together its fascinating chapters into a powerful interdisciplinary analysis. German Division as Shared Experience is a significant achievement that will serve as a bedrock for future research on the ‘entanglement’ of the Cold War Germanies. The editors and contributors have produced a genuinely pathbreaking book.”• The Journal of Modern History

“Thanks to an innovative approach to history that draws on material as heterogeneous as it is sensitive to cultural experiences of daily life, following Bourdieu and Foucault, this helps to bring out and question the experiences of Germans for more than forty years of division from 1945 to 1990. It offers a stimulating and unprecedented insight into a past that is (re)discovered on both sides of the Wall, strangely close and dissimilar at the same time.”• Francia

“A refreshing, enlightening read across a good range of topics. This collection shows itself to be as integrated across disciplinary approaches as it shows the German experience to have been during and after the period of division.”• Mark Allinson, University of Bristol

“This genuinely engaging book offers an intriguing exploration of the diverse cultural practices that shaped experiences of postwar Germany.”• Paul Steege, Villanova University

ISBN: 9781805391197

Dimensions: unknown

Weight: unknown

318 pages