Inventing a Socialist Nation
Heimat and the Politics of Everyday Life in the GDR, 1945–90

This book shows how the state constructed 'national' identity' in the GDR and how citizens engaged with it.

Jan Palmowski (Author)

9781107690424, Cambridge University Press

Paperback / softback, published 22 August 2013

362 pages
22.9 x 15.2 x 1.9 cm, 0.48 kg

Review of the hardback: 'Palmowski has brilliantly captured the complexities of the GDR, including the juxtaposition of the combination of dictatorship and control of language against social development and subversion of language. He has written a remarkable book indeed.' Peter C. Caldwell, H-Net Reviews

Twenty years after the collapse of the German Democratic Republic, historians still struggle to explain how an apparently stable state imploded with such vehemence. This book shows how 'national' identity was invented in the GDR and how citizens engaged with it. Jan Palmowski argues that it was hard for individuals to identify with the GDR amid the threat of Stasi informants and with the accelerating urban and environmental decay of the 1970s and 1980s. Since socialism contradicted its own ideals of community, identity and environmental care, citizens developed rival meanings of nationhood and identities and learned to mask their growing distance from socialism beneath regular public assertions of socialist belonging. This stabilized the party's rule until 1989. However, when the revolution came, the alternative identifications citizens had developed for decades allowed them to abandon their 'nation', the GDR, with remarkable ease.

1. Introduction
Part I. Socialism, Heimat, and the Construction of Identity: 2. Cultural renewal and national division, 1945–c.1958
3. Trace of stones
Part II. Public and Private Transcripts: 4. Heimat and identity in the Honecker era
5. Citizenship and participation in the local community - 'Join In!'
6. Environmental destruction
Part III. Power, Practices and Meanings: 7. Social drama and the euphemization of power
8. Cultural practices, Eigen-Sinn, and obfuscated meanings
Conclusion: from citizens to revolutionaries.

Subject Areas: Social & cultural history [HBTB], 20th century history: c 1900 to c 2000 [HBLW], European history [HBJD]