Revisiting Socialism. The Case of GDR
East Germany's history seemed to have ended in 1989. Did it though? Current political, economic and cultural divides that become visible in state elections, protest movements and racist violence as well as in recent sociological studies (for example, Steffen Mau's much discussed 2019 Lütten Klein. Leben in der Transformationsgesellschaft) suggest the opposite. So let us revisit East German socialism 35 years after the Fall of the Berlin Wall. What was daily life, what were culture and art like in socialism and how come that this past still haunts the project of a unified Germany, leaving it incomplete, even in risk of failure? Is there something to be nostalgic about, something worth saving at times when capitalism seems to be incapable to respond to the existential threats we face? We will - without nostalgia - explore East German society through films, popular music, visual art and literature, putting an emphasis also on the so-called Wende, the time between the Fall of the Wall and the unification of East and West Germany in 1990. Furthermore, throughout we will discuss the concept of socialism and its multiple origins and changes.