Beyond the Wall: East Germany, 1949-1990

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The entire visual setup intends to evoke a sense of the time, even though much of the show deliberately diverges from the realities of the last years of East Germany. But after the Berlin Wall fell, such expensively egalitarian services were dismantled and East German mothers found it difficult to square parenting with a career.

Beyond the Wall by Katja Hoyer | Goodreads Beyond the Wall by Katja Hoyer | Goodreads

Unemployment skyrocketed as Western entrepreneurs took over, and working women lost cheap, universal child care in favor of the West’s skimpy, expensive version.Day in and day out, the seventeen year old boy dragged himself to his dead end job…’ Five pages later: Gerlinde Bohnisch-Metzmacher, a seventeen year old schoolgirl, walked through the historic Bachstrasse…’ And on it goes. Tens of thousands of young people from working-class backgrounds were encouraged to study and pursue higher education, offered leadership positions and awarded scholarships. Katja Hoyer is a German-British historian, journalist and the author of the widely acclaimed Blood and Iron.

Beyond the Wall: East Germany, 1949-1990 | History Hit Beyond the Wall: East Germany, 1949-1990 | History Hit

In Beyond the Wall, acclaimed historian Katja Hoyer offers a kaleidoscopic new vision of this vanished country.

Then, and now, the tallest building in Germany, this “masterpiece of socialist architecture” was built between 1965 and 1969 as a demonstration of East Germany’s technological prowess.

Beyond the Wall by Katja Hoyer | Baillie Gifford Prize

They lived as best they could inside a political and economic system that mostly functioned badly and harshly. Although the stereotypical view of the German Democratic Republic is one of omnipresent Stasi, old-fashioned looking Trabants, food and travel restrictions, Hoyer argues that for those seeking a quiet life, the GDR provided a stable environment. 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. Hoyer’s book examines all aspects of East German life, including politics and everyday experiences, and reveals that perceptions of life in the GDR and the consumerism of the West aren’t necessarily as we might expect. From the ashes of the Second World War to the fall of the USSR, this is the definitive story of the other Germany, the one beyond the Wall.One consequence was the rise in voluntary security organisations such as the Freiwilliger Helfer der Volkspolizei (Voluntary Auxiliary of the People’s Police). But he doesn't stop there; relying almost entirely on primary and unpublished sources, the author goes on to expose a web of conspiracy and corruption that extended far wider than even the FBI ever suspected. This was mostly because state nurseries admitted children from birth and were open from 6am to 6pm, around the working day, enabling women to parent as well as have a career.