Twenty years after the dramatic events that led to the opening of the Berlin Wall and the collapse of the GDR, the subjective dimension of German unification is still far from complete. The
nature of the East German state remains a matter of cultural as well as political debate. This volume of new research focuses on competing memories of the GDR and the ways they have evolved in
the mass media, literature, and film since 1989-90. Taking as its point of departure the impact of iconic visual images of the fall of the Wall on our understanding of the historical GDR, the
volume first considers the decade of cultural conflict that followed unification and then the emergence of a more complex and diverse "textual memory" of the GDR since the Berlin Republic was
established in 1999. It highlights competing generational perspectives on the GDR era and the unexpected "afterlife" of the GDR in recent publications. The volume as a whole shows the vitality
of eastern German culture two decades after the demise of the GDR and the centrality of these memory debates to the success of Germany's unification process. Contributors: Daniel Arg癡les,
Stephen Brockmann, Wolfgang Emmerich, Andrea Geier, Hilde Hoffmann, Astrid K繹hler, Karen Leeder, Andrew Plowman, Gillian Pye, Benjamin Robinson, Catherine Smale, Rosemary Stott, Dennis Tate,
Arne de Winde and Frederik Van Dam, Nadezda Zeman穩kov獺. Renate Rechtien is Lecturer in German Studies, and Dennis Tate is Emeritus Professor of German Studies, both at the University of Bath,
UK.
