Джози Маклеллан0.0 In the aftermath of the reunification of Germany one former dissident recalled nostalgically that under the East German regime 'we had more sex and we had more to laugh about'. Love in the Time of Communism is a fascinating history of the GDR's forgotten sexual revolution and its limits. Josie McLellan shows that under communism divorce rates soared, abortion become commonplace and the rate of births outside marriage was amongst the highest in Europe. Nudism went from ban to state-sponsored boom, and erotica became common currency in both the official economy and the black market. Public discussion of sexuality was, however, tightly controlled and there were few opportunities to challenge traditional gender roles or sexual norms. Josie McLellan's pioneering account questions some of our basic assumptions about the relationship between sexuality, politics and society and is a major contribution to our understanding of the everyday emotional lives of postwar Europeans.
Николь Кремер0.0 Die Studie untersucht bisher wenig beachtete Mobilisierungsformen und Bindekrafte der nationalsozialistischen Kriegsgesellschaft. Sie fasst das engmaschige Organisationsnetz ins Auge, das der Aktivierung von Frauen fur Kriegsaufgaben diente, und entdeckt insbesondere den zivilen Luftschutz - von der Brandbekampfung bis zum Dienst in Auffang- und Rettungsstellen zur Bewaltigung von Folgen der Flachenbombardements - als weiblich dominiertes Handlungsfeld. Wie die Einbindung von Frauen in die kampfende Volksgemeinschaft wird auch das Spektrum der Hilfs- und Versorgungsleistungen analysiert, auf die weibliche Kriegshinterbliebene, Ausgebombte und Evakuierte Anspruch hatten. Damit leistet Nicole Kramer zugleich einen markanten Beitrag zur Erforschung der NS-Sozialpolitik.
Эдит Шеффер0.0 The building of the Berlin Wall in 1961 shocked the world. Ever since, the image of this impenetrable barrier between East and West, imposed by communism, has been a central symbol of the Cold War.
Based on vast research in untapped archival, oral, and private sources, Burned Bridge reveals the hidden origins of the Iron Curtain, presenting it in a startling new light. Historian Edith Sheffer's unprecedented, in-depth account focuses on Burned Bridge-the intersection between two sister cities, Sonneberg and Neustadt bei Coburg, Germany's largest divided population outside Berlin. Sheffer demonstrates that as Soviet and American forces occupied each city after the Second World War, townspeople who historically had much in common quickly formed opposing interests and identities. The border walled off irreconcilable realities: the differences of freedom and captivity, rich and poor, peace and bloodshed, and past and present. Sheffer describes how smuggling, kidnapping, rape, and killing in the early postwar years led citizens to demand greater border control on both sides--long before East Germany fortified its 1,393 kilometer border with West Germany. It was in fact the American military that built the first barriers at Burned Bridge, which preceded East Germany's borderland crackdown by many years. Indeed, Sheffer shows that the physical border between East and West was not simply imposed by Cold War superpowers, but was in some part an improvised outgrowth of an anxious postwar society.
Ultimately, a wall of the mind shaped the wall on the ground. East and West Germans became part of, and helped perpetuate, the barriers that divided them. From the end of World War II through two decades of reunification, Sheffer traces divisions at Burned Bridge with sharp insight and compassion, presenting a stunning portrait of the Cold War on a human scale.
Тим Коул0.0 'The universe began shrinking,' wrote Elie Wiesel of his Holocaust experiences in Hungary, 'first we were supposed to leave our towns and concentrate in the larger cities. Then the towns shrank to the ghetto, and the ghetto to a house, the house to a room, the room to a cattle car...' Adopting an innovative multi-perspectival approach framed around a wide variety of material traces - from receipts to maps, name lists to photographs - Tim Cole tells stories of journeys into and out of Hungarian ghettos. These stories of the perpetrators who oversaw ghettoization and deportation, the bystanders who witnessed and aided these journeys, and the victims who undertook them reveal the spatio-temporal dimensions of the Holocaust. But they also point to the visibility of these events within the ordinary spaces of the city, the importance of an economic assault on Jews and the marked gendering of the Holocaust in Hungary.
