Remembering 1989 : Future Archives of Public Protest.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Pinkert, Anke.

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Collective memory--Social aspects--Germany.

Collective memory.

Collective memory--Germany.

Protest movements--Germany (East)--History.

Protest movements.

Revolutions--Germany (East)--History.

Revolutions.

Germany (East)--Politics and government--1989-1990.

Germany (East).

Germany--History--Unification, 1990.

Germany.

Germany (East)--History--Historiography.

Germany--History--Unification, 1990--Historiography.

Physical Description:

1 online resource (403 pages)

Edition:

1st ed.

Place of Publication:

Chicago : University of Chicago Press, 2024.

Summary:

This account of the “laboratory of radical democracy” in the months before East Germany’s absorption in the West challenges memories of Germany’s reunification. For many, 1989 is an iconic date, one we associate with the fall of the Berlin Wall and the end of the Cold War. The year prompts some to rue the defeat of socialism in the East, while others celebrate a victory for democracy and capitalism in the reunified Germany. Remembering 1989 focuses on a largely forgotten interregnum: the months between the outbreak of protests in the German Democratic Republic in 1989 and its absorption by the West in 1990. Anke Pinkert, who herself participated in those protests, recalls these months as a volatile but joyous “laboratory of radical democracy,” and tells the story of how and why this “time out of joint” has been erased from Germany’s national memory. Remembering 1989 argues that in order to truly understand Germany’s historic transformation, we must revisit protesters’ actions across a wide range of minor, vernacular, and often transient sources. Drawing on rich archives including videotapes of untelevised protests, illegally printed petitions by Church leaders, audio recordings of dissident meetings, and interview footage with military troops, Pinkert opens the discarded history of East European social uprisings to new interpretations and imagines alternatives to Germany’s neoliberal status quo. The result is a vivid, unexpected contribution to memory studies and European history.

Contents:

Frontmatter

Contents

List of Figures

Preface

Introduction. From Neoliberal Triumph to Protest Memory

Chapter One Erasing ’89–90 from the Capital

Intertext Soviet Specters in the Periphery

Chapter Two Pacifying Memory

Chapter Three Possible Archives

Chapter Four Provisional History

Chapter Five Futures of Hope

Coda Unbound in the Open

Acknowledgments

Notes

Bibliography

Index

Notes:

Title from eBook information screen..

Description based on publisher supplied metadata and other sources.

Other Format:

Print version: Pinkert, Anke Remembering 1989

ISBN:

9780226835341

OCLC:

1453195576