In October 1989, when she was four years old, her father took her on a trip to the top of Berlin’s Fernsehturm, or Television Tower. Since reunification, many East Germans have faced high levels of unemployment, leading to a significant number rejecting traditional political parties and finding the current system unsatisfactory. Hoyer walks a fine line between conforming to liberal expectations of history, while carefully and cleverly transgressing them to paint a more sympathetic picture of the DDR than many readers will be used to. From the Vietnam coffee scheme to Honecker's interesting relationship with Kohl, there are some great stories in this book.

Beyond the Wall by Katja Hoyer | Hachette Book Group Beyond the Wall by Katja Hoyer | Hachette Book Group

In „Diesseits der Mauer“ präsentiert uns Katja Hoyer einen geschichtlichen Abriss der DDR, beginnend mit den Jahren des Moskauer Exils ihrer Gründerväter und -mütter, bis hin zur Deutschen Wiedervereinigung. Hoyer's narrative ultimately portrays the old story of a dictatorship that was, in her view, relatively comfortable for many.

It is here where one occasionally wishes that Hoyer broadened her vision from East Germany to the eastern bloc as a whole. Tens of thousands of young people from working-class backgrounds were encouraged to study and pursue higher education, offered leadership positions and awarded scholarships. Hoyer gives us not only pin-sharp historical analysis, but an up-close and personal view of both key characters and ordinary citizens whose lives charted some of the darkest hours of the Cold War. It includes both large historical events and anecdotal stories of ordinary people living within the state.

From rampaging teens to female assassins: why has East German

Ms Hoyer rightly highlights the gaps in modern Germany’s understanding of the four decades of oppression in its eastern regions and the resentments that bequeathed.Such as how high living standards were (comparatively, within the Communist sphere), how content much of the population was and how hard the authorities tried to meet the consumer demands of the people (especially in regards to American jeans! There are unforgettable and horrifying scenes here in this spare and sombre memoir of this experience of the hanging of a child, of his first farewell with his father who leaves him an inheritance of a knife and a spoon, and of his last goodbye at Buchenwald his father's corpse is already cold let alone the long months of survival under unconscionable conditions. In the late 1980s, the level of surveillance in East Germany was at an all-time high, yet the information gathered often went unused. In 1953, after years of deprivation, the nation exploded in violence, which required Soviet troops to suppress. However, while West Germans continued their lives as usual, the reunification brought about significant changes for East Germans.

Beyond the Wall by Katja Hoyer review - The Guardian

Published since September 1843 to take part in “a severe contest between intelligence, which presses forward, and an unworthy, timid ignorance obstructing our progress.Meyer’s intense prose follows them as they try to escape the world of drugs, drink, violence and crime they find themselves in, creating lingering images of the hope and despair experienced by many East Germans in the early 1990s. The author's youthfulness helps to assure the inevitable comparison with the Anne Frank diary although over and above the sphere of suffering shared, and in this case extended to the death march itself, there is no spiritual or emotional legacy here to offset any reader reluctance.

BBC Radio 3 - Free Thinking, East Germany BBC Radio 3 - Free Thinking, 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.

Her sharply drawn pen-portraits bring to life Walter Ulbricht, the ghastly party overlord, and his cronies. g. Farm to Factory: A Reinterpretation of the Soviet Industrial Revolution or Red Plenty), as well as a bit more about how marxist political theory interacted with real events to produce political decisions, beyond the aforementioned paranoia (e.