Product details
- ISBN 9781805391180
- Dimensions: 152 x 229mm
- Publication Date: 15 Sep 2023
- Publisher: Berghahn Books
- Publication City/Country: GB
- Product Form: Paperback
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Across half a century, from the division of Germany through the end of the Cold War, a cohort of thirty women from the small German town of Schönebeck in what used to be the GDR circulated among themselves a remarkable collective archive of their lives: a Rundbrief, or bulletin, containing hundreds of letters and photographs. This book draws on that unprecedented resource, complemented by a set of interviews, to paint a rich portrait of “ordinary” life in postwar Germany. It shows how these women—whether reflecting on their experiences as Nazi-era schoolchildren or witnessing reunification—were united by their complex interactions with official power and their commitment to sustaining a shared German identity as they made the most of their everyday lives in both the GDR and the Federal Republic.
Phil Leask is an honorary research fellow in the School of European Languages, Culture and Society at University College London. The author of numerous novels and short stories as well as scholarly reviews and articles, he has also contributed to several edited volumes: Becoming East German: Socialist Structures and Sensibilities after Hitler (ed. Mary Fulbrook and Andrew I. Port, Berghahn 2013); Ruptures in the Everyday: Views of Modern Germany from the Ground (ed. Andrew S. Bergerson and Leonard Schmieding, Berghahn 2017); and Psychodynamics of Writing (ed. Martin Weegmann, Routledge 2018.).
