HIST 339
The German Democratic Republic: A Cultural History
Last Offered n/a
Division II
This course is not offered in the current catalog or this is a previous listing for a current course.

This course is a history of the German Democratic Republic largely as experienced by its citizens. Using primarily cultural documents, novels, films, works of art, and documentaries, along with more traditional historical documents, the course will seek to reconstruct and analyze the experience of East Germans from 1945 until 1989 and beyond. Topics to be considered include the legacy of the Third Reich and the lost war, the founding of the socialist state, the impact of Marxist ideology on the lives of East Germans, the Ulbricht era, the impact of the building of the Wall in 1961, the Honecker era and the emergence of the Stasi state, the end of the GDR in 1989, and the experiences of East Germans in unified Germany.