German Post-Socialist Memory Culture

Epistemic Nostalgia

Amieke Bouma (Autor)

Buch | Softcover

304 Seiten

2025
Routledge (Verlag)
978-1-041-18025-8 (ISBN)

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After German unification, former officers of the GDR state security service united with GDR professors and cultural managers to establish the East German Committee of Associations (OKV). On the basis of encompassing oral history into this complex web of interest organizations and memory clubs, Bouma argues that these activists are driven by an epistemic nostalgia: a longing for the time when their political understanding of the world was seemingly unchallenged. Far from constituting a ‘second life of the Stasi’, the main goal of OKV associations has been to validate the personal biographies of their activists, against the now prevalent view that the GDR was a ‘state of injustice’. While the OKV quickly adapted to the new legal procedures in post-socialist Germany, their staunch defence of the GDR heritage complicates their relation to SED successor party Die Linke and other radical left parties and associations, even when they share practical goals. Breaking new ground in the study of post-socialist memory culture, this book explains why former GDR cadres replicate GDR memory culture against their stigmatized status in unified Germany.

Amieke Bouma is lecturer in History at the University of Amsterdam. Her research interests include post-socialist historiography and radical left politics in Europe.

List of Figures, Acknowledgements, List of Abbreviations, Introduction, Part I: Memory and Nostalgia, Part II: The Ostdeutsches Kuratorium von Verbänden, Part III: The Maintenance of Communal Continuity in Activism and Outreach, Conclusion, Bibliography, Index

Erscheinungsdatum	19.11.2025
Reihe/Serie	Heritage and Memory Studies
Verlagsort	London
Sprache	englisch
Maße	156 x 234 mm
Gewicht	560 g
Themenwelt	Sozialwissenschaften ► Soziologie
ISBN-10	1-041-18025-X / 104118025X
ISBN-13	978-1-041-18025-8 / 9781041180258
Zustand	Neuware