„Born in the GDR. Living in the shadow of the Wall”

In October 2014 a book will be published, which seems to be really interesting for those, who are interested in the GDR and the life there. Hester Vaizey tells in her book, „Born in the GDR. Living in the shadow of the Wall”, the true stories of eight people.

These people were born in the GDR after August 1961, didn’t know anything else as the life in the GDR and then, the Wall fell. What happened to these people? How changed their life? How did they feel about the “new world”?

25 years after the Wall, Hester Vaizey tries in her book to hear, how these eight people remember their old life in East Germany. She wants to know how they feel about their life there, is there fear and loathing, or do they regret the end of GDR. And of course she wants to know, how they feel about their new life after the fall of the Wall.

I think the idea of Hester Vaizey to ask how the generation, who knew nothing else than the GDR, reacted to the end of the state and the changes in their life is good. It is an interesting and important view also in respect of some comments you can hear in the East of Germany still today. The winged-word “formerly was everything better” and that there wasn’t everything wrong in the GDR you can hear sometimes and it gives me always food for thought. I hope this book could give an insight in the process of the turnaround and the reunification of Germany from East Germans point of view.

The book will be published in October 2014 and the ISBN is 978-0-19-871873-4. It comes in the Oxford University Press and will cost 20£.

Photo: Bundesarchiv, Bild 183-R1122-022 / Grubitzsch (geb. Raphael), Waltraud / CC-BY-SA