German Division as Shared Experience

Erica Carter is Professor of German and Film at King’s College London. Her books include Béla Balázs:  Early Film Theory (2010), Dietrich’s Ghosts: The Sublime and the Beautiful in Third Reich Film (2004) and How German is She? Postwar West German Reconstruction and the Consuming Woman (1997).

“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

• List of FiguresAcknowledgementsList of AbbreviationsIntroduction: German Division as Shared ExperienceErica Carter, Jan Palmowski and Katrin SchreiterChapter 1. Narrating the Everyday: Television, Memory and the Subjunctive in the GDR, 1969–89Jan PalmowskiChapter 2. Tension of Germanness in the Global South: German Immigrants in NamibiaHeidi ArmbrusterChapter 3. ‘Ich bin parteilich, subjektiv und emotional’: Eigensinn and the Narrative (Re)construction of Political Agency in Inge Viett’s Nie war ich furchtloserKatharina KarcherChapter 4. Asymmetrical (Be)longing: Villagers, Spatial Practices and the German ‘Other’Marcel ThomasChapter 5. Everyday Displacements in Cold War Berlin: Short Prose from East and WestÁine McMurtryChapter 6. DEFA’s ‘Home-made’ Experiment: Traces of GDR Reality and International Avant-garde Film in Jürgen Böttcher’s Transformations (1981)Franziska NössigChapter 7. Style Identities and Individualization in 1980s East and West GermanyAlissa BellottiChapter 8. Cultivating the Past: The Schrebergarten as a Political Space in Postwar German LiteratureKatrin SchreiterChapter 9. Painting in East Germany: An Elite Art for the Everyday (and Everyone)April EismanChapter 10. The Perceptual Fabric and Everyday Practices of Jazz and Pop in East and West GermanyMichael J. SchmidtChapter 11. Alles Geschmackssache? Shaping (Gustatory) Tastes in East and West GermanyAlice WeinrebConclusionErica Carter, Jan Palmowski, and Katrin Schreiter