Cultural life in the former German Democratic Republic (GDR) was strictly controlled by the ruling party, the SED, who attempted to dictate how people spent their free time by prohibiting privately organized leisure time pursuits and offering instead cultural activities in state institutions and organizations. By exploring the nature of dictatorial rule in the GDR and analysing the population’s engagement with state-organized cultural activity, this book challenges the current assumptions about the GDR’s social and institutional history that ignore the interaction and inter-dependence between ‘rulers’ and ‘ruled’. The author argues that the people’s cultural life in the GDR developed a dynamic of its own; it was determined by their own interests and by the input of cultural functionaries, who often aimed to satisfy popular demands, even if they were at odds with the SED’s cultural policy. Gradually, these developments affected SED cultural policy, which in the 1960s became less focused on educationalist goals and increasingly oriented towards popular interests.
Table of Content
List of tables
Abbreviations
Acknowledgements
Chapter 1. Introduction
Chapter 2. Nonconformity, Coercion and Alienation: the 1950s
PART I: BENDING THE RULES WHILE UPHOLDING THE STRUCTURES: CULTURAL FUNCTIONARIES
Chapter 3. Neither Puppets nor Opponents
Chapter 4. Organising Culture: Compromise and Communication
PART II: ATTEMPTED SELF-DETERMINATION – PURSUING AN INTEREST: THE PARTICIPANTS
Chapter 5. Patterns of Participation
Chapter 6. Communication with Cultural Functionaries
PART III: FROM UTOPIANISM TO PRAGMATISM: CULTURAL POLICY
Chapter 7. Responding to Developments at the Grassroots
Chapter 8. From Art to Culture
Chapter 9. Breakdown of Communication: the late 1970s and 1980s
Chapter 10. Conclusion
Bibliography
Index
About the author
Esther von Richthofen grew up in Bonn, London and Brussels. For her undergraduate degree, she read Modern History at Oxford University. She did her M.A. and Ph D at UCL and specialized in the history of the German Democratic Republic. She is currently employed as the personal assistant of the president of the Humboldt University in Berlin.
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