The unspeakable sin that this book commits is that the author interviewed a broad cross section of people who lived in the GDR. And while they complain about repression, surveillance, and shortages, they also point out that some elements of life in Ostdeutschland were nicer than today in late capitalism. To name a few: there were no restrictions on abortion, there was free childcare, and everyone got housing, education, health care, and jobs.

Beyond the Wall” adds depth to caricatures of East Germany “Beyond the Wall” adds depth to caricatures of East Germany

While the end for East Germany came fast as its economy collapsed and its population actively protested on the streets, Hoyer seems keen to record some elements of its culture as positive. She notes the very high participation rate of women in the labour market, and the concomitant widely deployed state sponsored childcare facilities, both of which far exceeded comparable developments in the West. Unsurprisingly, the insidious reach of the Stasi was a serious deterrent to any potential dissenters. It was common for families and friends to inform on each other, and criticising the regime to almost anyone was incredibly risky and could also be a potentially extremely dangerous thing to do. Fear of losing opportunities, being subjected to a sustained harassment campaign or even torture and imprisonment ensured mass compliance with the regime, despite the hardships it often created. It is not an easy message to get across, but Hoyer is uniquely placed to do it. Just four-years-old when the Berlin Wall fell, and now resident in Britain, she shares the frustration of Angela Merkel, the former German chancellor, when details of her early life in East Germany are dismissed as irrelevant. It helps that she’s a historian of immense ability whose early promise has been more than fulfilled with this brilliant follow-up to her debut Blood and Iron. Exhaustively researched, cleverly constructed and beautifully written (in her second language), this much needed history of the GDR should be required reading across her homeland.I would have loved to have read a deeper analysis of the East German alcohol industry, and what role it played. The acclaim for this in Britain astounds me. It is, at best, a competent popular history – but groundbreaking scholarship this emphatically is not. In Beyond the Wall, acclaimed historian Katja Hoyer sets aside the usual Cold War caricatures of the GDR to offer a kaleidoscopic new vision of this vanished country, revealing the rich political, social, and cultural landscape that existed amid oppression and hardship. Drawing on a vast array of never-before-seen interviews and documents, this is the definitive history of the other Germany, beyond the Wall.

Beyond the Wall by Katja Hoyer | Waterstones Beyond the Wall by Katja Hoyer | Waterstones

Rather than establishing a new German state, West Germans considered themselves as the continuation of the state, with East Germany being an aberration resulting from 41 years of Soviet rule. The resulting changes in East Germany are often viewed positively, particularly with regard to improved living standards. However, East German-born historian Katja Hoyer’s book, Beyond the Wall: East Germany, 1949-1990 – our Book of the Month for April 2023 – challenges this perspective and offers a revisionist history of the time.This “ideological sediment” of diehard loyalists determinedly recreated the Soviet system they revered. They faced a population traumatised by defeat (and the accompanying mass rapes by Soviet soldiers), along with an economy crippled by their occupiers’ relentless demands for reparations. Harsh economic conditions prompted the workers’ uprising of 1953. It was bloodily crushed by the Soviets, dispelling any pretence that the place was run on behalf of the toiling masses. In 1990, a country disappeared. When the iron curtain fell, East Germany simply ceased to be. For over forty years, from the ruin of the Second World War to the cusp of a new millennium, the GDR presented a radically different German identity to anything that had come before, and anything that exists today. Socialist solidarity, secret police, central planning, barbed wire: this was a Germany forged on the fault lines of ideology and geopolitics. The East German communist regime (GDR /DDR) had, upon seizing power in the late 1940s, vowed to build the socialist society of the future out of the ruins of the Second World War. Instead, the regime brought misery to millions of its own citizens, devoted much of its energy to developing the most pervasive system of mass surveillance the world had seen up to that point, and seemed only capable of placating the population of the GDR by building a massive wall around them. Rather than focusing on what East Germans lost by its Soviet occupation, Hoyer’s book shines a light on what the East gained that the West never had – in particular around women’s rights.

Beyond the Wall by Katja Hoyer, review: a brilliant warts-and Beyond the Wall by Katja Hoyer, review: a brilliant warts-and

Diesseits der Mauer" von Katja Hoyer ist eines der interessantesten Sachbücher der letzten Monate. Es beschreibt die Geschichte der DDR. Neben der Zeit von 1949 bis 1990 behandelt es auch die Zeit vor der Gründung der DDR und die Zeit nach der sogenannten "Wiedervereinigung". Ich bin Jahrgang 1969. Ich bin im Westen Deutschlands aufgewachsen. Die Zeit seit den 80er-Jahren habe ich über Tageszeitungen, Magazine und Fernsehen mitbekommen. Das Internet gab es noch nicht. In der Schule kam das Thema DDR nur am Rande vor. Eine Ausnahme war die obligatorische Klassenfahrt nach Berlin (in der siebten Klasse). Hier war auch ein Tag im Osten der Stadt eingeplant. Mir ist eigentümlicherweise nur dieses schöne Lenin-Denkmal, welches wir für unsere Fototapete fotografiert haben, in Erinnerung geblieben. Und die Einweisung der Lehrer ("wenn ihr mit Bürgern sprecht, sagt nicht Ost-Berlin, sondern Berlin Hauptstadt der DDR", die Bürger waren ob unserer Ansprache arg verwundert). Über die DDR sagte das alles wenig aus.

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Moody, Oliver (2023-06-29). "Blood and Iron by Katja Hoyer review — Germany: glued together by enemy blood". ISSN 0140-0460 . Retrieved 2023-06-29. Hoyer explains that after years of political upheaval, war, economic turmoil and rapid political change, most Germans were exhausted and sought stability, a settled home life, and a future without war and economic disaster. Thus an anti-fascist, socialist one-party state like the GDR appealed to many East Germans. Trapped behind barbed wire, but increasingly prosperous, East Germany began to resemble the gilded cage of the eastern bloc, at least in the eyes of its socialist neighbours. However, as Hoyer points out, at least the gilding was real: East Germany really did enjoy the highest standard of living of any socialist state. Unemployment barely existed. Housing was universally available and relatively cheap. Abundant, accessible childcare allowed women to enter the workforce at a higher rate than in any other country in the world. As Erika Krüger, one of the workers Hoyer interviewed, recalled, life in the 1970s and 80s was “quite happy”: “We worked, received our regular wages as well as bonuses for hard work. We got by and had nothing to worry about.” Insofern sehe ich in „Diesseits der Mauer“ vor allem eine vertane Chance. Ein an sich interessante Buch-Idee, nämlich die DDR-Geschichte aus der Perspektive des Alltagslebens ihrer Bürger nachzuerzählen, scheitert tragisch an der fehlenden geschichtspolitischen Redlichkeit und der ausbleibenden Bereitschaft zur analytischen Tiefe ihrer Autorin Where “Beyond the Wall” slips a little is that Hoyer does not give as detailed an analysis as elsewhere as to how the Stasi developed to become one of the most notorious and all-consuming secret police apparatuses the world has ever seen. And the events leading up to the collapse of the regime in November 1989 are also skipped over in a surprisingly cursory manner.